EDUCATION
ELECTRONICS
ENVIRONMENT
HEALTH
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MANUFACTURING
PUBLIC SAFETY
EDUCATION
Anti-Tobacco Education Program
(Florida State University Office of Research Technology Transfer)
Visualizing the Effect of Tobacco
Six members of the Center for Integrating Research and Learning at Florida State University's National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, led by Dr. Sam Spiegel, worked with a team of researchers, educators and students to create Science, Tobacco & You, a multi disciplinary 4th and 5th grade science curriculum resource that engages students in developing skills in language arts, mathematics, social studies, and many other subjects. It allows a child to create a virtual representation of him or herself and see first hand what the effects of smoking or chewing tobacco are on his or her body. The cornerstone of the package is 22 activities contained in a Teacher/Student Guidebook supplemented by a dynamic CD-ROM and Web site, http://scienceu.fsu.edu.
In the fall of 1998, FSU contracted with the Florida Department of Health (FDOH) to distribute 1,835 Science kits to 4th and 5th grade students and teachers. At the suggestion of FDOH, the program was licensed to Training Solutions, Inc., (TSI) a Georgia-based corporation that leads the market in developing innovative interactive training programs. In fiscal year 2001, TSI launched product sales and the curriculum is used in 10,000 classrooms throughout the U.S. and Canada.
Florida State University Office of Research Technology Transfer: http://www.techtransfer.fsu.edu/
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Cognitive Tutor® Software
(Carnegie Mellon University)
Cognitive Tutor® Software Tackles Algebra
Dr. John R. Anderson's ACT and ACT-R theories of cognition provided the foundation for the Cognitive Tutor® products that have been further developed and marketed by Carnegie Mellon University and later licensed to Carnegie Learning, which spun out of the university in 1998. A second license was completed in 2001.
Carnegie Learning's instructional math software uses artificial intelligence to adapt its problem-solving lessons for students as they progress from grades 6 to 12. The Cognitive Tutor® program integrates technology and print curricula into realistic problem situations and utilizes the latest research insights into human thinking. Both minority and non-minority students using the Cognitive Tutor® demonstrate an 85% better performance on assessments of complex mathematical problem-solving, have a 70% greater likelihood of completing subsequent Geometry and Algebra II courses, and display an advantage of 15-25% on the SAT.
Significant fiscal year 2001 milestones for the company include introducing Cognitive Tutor® Quantitative Literacy Through Algebra (QLTA), implementing solutions in 33 of the 100 largest school districts in the U.S. and securing $14 million in second round funding.
Carnegie Learning: http://www.carnegielearning.com/
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Fast ForWord®,
(Rutgers University and Univ. of California at San Francisco)
Educational software, Fast ForWord®, is made commercially available less than two years after a start-up was founded.
Fast ForWord based on technology developed at Rutgers and the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF), is a computer based scientifically validated training program for individuals, particularly children, with language and reading problems. Since the mid-seventies, the UCSF group, Drs. Michael Merznich and William Jenkins, had been studying how people learn. Over many years, the UCSF team of neuroscientists established scientifically validated training programs for the human brain-analogous to neurological push-ups. Meanwhile, the Rutgers team, Drs. Paula Tallal and Steve Miller, specialists on the neurobiological basis of language, had been studying children with language difficulties. They hypothesized that children with language problems don't process sounds quickly enough. Between 1993 and 1995 the two teams collaborated to produce and then test a training program specifically aimed as increasing the speed with which children recognize sounds. Their work was published in 1996, and demonstrated that on average, children who use the Fast ForWord® program for 100 minutes a day, 5 days a week, for 4 to 8 consecutive weeks make, on average, 1 to 2-year gains in reading skills.
No established companies were interested in building a business based on this work, so in 1996, the Scientific Learning Corporation was founded with an exclusive license grant to the underlying intellectual property from the UCSF and Rutgers expressly for the purpose of making the training product available to the general public. Venture funding followed, and in the first year of operation, the company hired a staff of 30. Progress was rapid-the company conducted an initial field trial in 1996, made Fast ForWord® available to certified speech and language professionals in early 1997, and less than two years after founding, in March 1998, made Fast ForWord® available to students in public schools throughout the U.S. The company is now publicly traded, has sold several thousand copies of its educational software, and employs over 100 people.
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ELECTRONICS
Getting a Better View with Advanced Display Technology
The University of Akron
New surface plate technology, developed at The University of Akron, promises to make viewing computer monitors and a wide variety of consumer products easier on your eyes.
Invented by Drs. Frank Harris and Stephen Cheng of The University of Akron's Department of Polymer Science, the technology is a polymer film that improves the range of view for flat panel displays. Supported by NASA and the NSF, the technology was issued U.S. Patent 5,580,950 in 1996, titled "Negative Birefringent Rigid Rod Polymer Films."
In May 2002, The University of Akron licensed the technology to Nitto Denko of Osaka, Japan, one of the world's leading producers of flat-panel displays and created a research agreement for ongoing development. Nitto Denko has the largest worldwide market share for optical films for specialized industrial and medical applications and is incorporating the technology into the company's large display monitors.
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Broadband Wiring in the Hospitality Industry
Virginia Tech
Turbowave licensed the Stub Loaded Helix Antenna technology from VTIP and deployed it in fiscal year 2002 as wireless high-speed or broadband Internet access in guest rooms, conference rooms and public areas in more than 100 U.S. hotels in the hospitality industry.
These smart antennas are designed to increase transmission range and reduce multipath interference created by reflections from objects along the path to an access point.
The technology is included in the Stub Loaded Helix Array which is designed to make long-range shots in remote areas and in a smaller end user antenna, which attaches to a wireless card and increases signal strength.
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Carnegie Mellon University Start-Up Firm Akustica Inc. Improves Cellular Voice Quality
Carnegie Mellon University
In 2001, Carnegie Mellon University's MEMS Laboratory Director Kaigham "Ken" Gabriel joined James H. Rock to create Akustica Inc., a start-up company. Starting in fiscal year 2002, the company has raised $12 million in venture funding to date.
The licensed technology relates to fabricating membranes using standard semiconductor processes. These membranes react to sound much like a traditional microphone with the voice creating variations in air pressure that hit the membrane, moving it. The membrane's motion is converted into a voltage. Each individual membrane can target specific audio frequencies with better sensitivity than existing electret condenser microphones.
Akustica created multi-membrane microphones with an on-chip analog amplifier that can more accurately capture desired sounds and reduce unwanted noise in mobile phones, hearing aids and other electronics devices. Akustica is working with a leading cellular telephone company to develop a microphone chip product for cell phone and hearing aid applications.
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8Mbps Transmission in Copper Phone Lines
(Stanford University)
Professor's persistence pays off: 8Mbps transmission in copper phone lines. Discrete multi-tone technology is now used in ADSL standards.
In the mid 1980s, Professor John Cioffi at Stanford had ideas on how to increase the bandwidth of copper wire by a factor of 100, thereby, for example, enabling transmission of digital TV over phone lines. Despite receiving an NSF Presidential Investigator award in 1987, he had trouble obtaining funding for this idea because technically, it was considered a bit wild, and from a practical point of view, somewhat quaint. Why increase copper wire transmission bandwidth if optical fiber is the technology of the near future? In the late 1980s, Cioffi obtained some funding from a tech transfer company he read about in a brochure circulated by the Stanford licensing office. In 1990, he submitted his first invention disclosure. Unfortunately, the tech transfer company had gone out of business, and he was again looking for funding. The Stanford licensing office approached large telecom companies, such as AT&T and Northern Telecom, but with big investments in fiber optics, they declined to fund work aimed at improving the bandwidth of copper.
In 1991 a small Israeli company called ECI, had a contract to improve phone service in Eastern Europe, where fiber optics was not yet perceived as the technology of the immediate future, and approached Cioffi for assistance. With the one definite contract from ECI, but no venture funding, and hence no immediate cash, Cioffi decided to start his own company. He negotiated an exclusive license from Stanford, which included equity for Stanford in consideration of modest cash fees for what were then his four patent applications and started Amati Communications Corporation. In 1993 Amati's Discrete Multi-tone technology won a "bake-off" transmission contest with AT&T, and was selected by the ANSI (American National Standards Institute) to be the standard for ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Lines). Amati licensed its technology to companies such as Motorola, Alcatel, and Analog Devices. Amati merged with ICOT in 1995, and in 1997, the merged company had sales of $12.2 million and employed 120 people. Amati was acquired by Texas Instruments in February 1998 for $395 million.
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ACELP® Technology: A Standard in Low Bit Rate Speech Compression within Wireless and Internet Applications
Drs. Jean-Pierre Adoul, Claude Laflamme, Redwan Salami, Bruno Bessette, Roch Lefebvre, and collaborators of the world renowned Speech and Audio Compression Research Group of the Université de Sherbrooke worked for many years developing the Algebraic-Code-Excited Linear Prediction (ACELP®) Technology. Thirteen inventions have led to more than two hundred international patent filings pertaining to the technology. Université de Sherbrooke, in partnership with Sipro Lab Telecom Inc., a technology brokerage firm, founded VoiceAge Corporation (Montreal, Canada) in 1999.
VoiceAge is focused on developing and commercializing innovative narrow and wideband telecommunications solutions, particularly voice and audio compression technology. The company has entered into a number of non-exclusive licenses and partnerships involving ACELP® Technology. To date, 93 licenses have been signed with companies around the world, including audible.com, RealNetworksTM, Iomega, Microsoft, Voyant, Ericsson, Nokia, and Texas Instruments.
ACELP® Technology is positioned in ten International Telecommunications Standards, notably: GSM EFR (ETSI), PCS 1900, IS 136 (TIA, North American TDMA), IS 195 (TIA, North American CDMA), TETRA, G.729 and its Annexes, as well as G.723.1. A proprietary codec "ACELP®.net" is also a de facto standard on the Internet for voice applications. The ACELP®.net at 16 Kpbs, is comparable to MP3 at 64 Kpbs, shortening download time and extending playback time by as much as four times.
The new wideband technologies portfolio developed by VoiceAge Corporation has been chosen as the core technology to be integrated in the AMR WB standard for next generation telecommunications platforms by a grouping of regional standardization bodies called 3GPP. VoiceAge Corporation anticipates its wideband technologies to be the core qualitative audio improvement of next generation networks; it will be like migrating from AM to FM radio. Coupled with the much anticipated results from ITU-T, VoiceAge's technology is bound to become the first voice compression technology to be standardized in both wireless and wireline platforms, therefore redefining the concept of interoperability.
ACELP®-based proprietary products are integrated into more than 240 million PCs worldwide and more than 450 million cellular telephones have built-in ACELP® standard-based technology.
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ENVIRONMENT
Generating Environmentally Friendly, Low-Cost Electricity
University of California, Irvine and University of Florida
UC Irvine and the University of Florida have jointly invented a plasma electric generator that, once successfully demonstrated in the next several years, will produce clean, scalable, distributed electric power without the use of fossil fuels or radioactive waste problems. PEG uses a proton beam inject into a cycling, field-reversed boron-11 material where the reaction is contained by super-conducting magnets. The resulting plasma is channeled through a direct converter (reverse cyclotron process) to create direct electric power. Such electric power generation, operating with hydrogen and boron fuel, could produce environmentally friendly electricity at a fraction of the cost of current power plants.
Core technologies have been developed through cooperation agreements between UCI and the University of Florida, and a technology transfer agreement is in place with Tri Alpha Energy, a venture-backed start-up company near UCI. The company is also applying UCI technology to the economic and safe destruction of high-level waste from nuclear weapons development and spent fuel rods from nuclear fission plants.
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Generating Environmentally Friendly, Low-Cost Electricity
University of California, Irvine and University of Florida
UC Irvine and the University of Florida have jointly invented a plasma electric generator tha, once successfully demonstrated in the next several years, will produce clean, scalable, distributed electric power without the use of fossil fuels or radioactive waste problems. PEG uses a proton beam inject into a cycling, field-reversed boron-11 material where the reaction is contained by super-conducting magnets. The resulting plasma is channeled through a direct converter (reverse cyclotron process) to create direct electric power. Such electric power generation, operating with hydrogen and boron fuel, could produce environmentally friendly electricity at a fraction of the cost of current power plants.
Core technologies have been developed through cooperation agreements between UCI and the University of Florida, and a technology transfer agreement is in place with Tri Alpha Energy, a venture-backed start-up company near UCI. The company is also applying UCI technology to the economic and safe destruction of high-level waste from nuclear weapons development and spent fuel rods from nuclear fission plants.
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Gossamer Ceiling Fan
(University of Central Florida's Solar Energy Center)
Blowing Away the Competition
Aerodynamically designed ceiling fans developed by Danny Parker of the University of Central Florida's Solar Energy Center (FSEC) may be coming soon to a home near you With blades modeled after the propellers on the human-powered Gossamer Condor and Gossamer Albatross aircraft, the fans are flying off the shelves of Home Depot stores nationwide, where they are exclusively sold under the Hampton Bay label. The design was developed in concert with AeroVironment,Inc. a leading company in advanced technology and aerodynamic design.
These modern looking fans are manufactured by King of Fans of Fort Lauderdale, and can move up to 40 percent more air than standard flat blade models utilizing a motor found on many conventional ceiling fans.
Computer simulation of the energy lost due to turbulence across a cross section of (a) a conventional ceiling fan blade and (b) the twisted and tapered airfoil blades of the "Gossamer Wind." Simulated conditions: Both cross sections were examined at the tip of the airfoil (26" from the motor hub center) traveling at high speed (200 rpm). Note the reduced energy loss of the Gossamer airfoil due to greatly decreased flow turbulence and lack of flow separation. Simulation analysis courtesy of Guan Su at AeroVironment, Inc.
The advanced ceiling fan blades of the "Gossamer Wind" allow the use of a smaller ceiling fan motor. The combination reduces ceiling fan energy use by approximately 50% while reducing noise and wobble. The average ceiling fan using 25 - 100 Watts is in operation 6-12 hours or more each day. The "Gossamer Wind" will save the typical consumer $10-$20 per year in reduced energy use. Further, the improved comfort can allow the cooling thermostat to be raised. Conventional, premium ceiling fans cost more. However, the similarly priced "Gossamer Wind" can pay for itself though real savings in household energy use while providing improved comfort and convenience. This accounts for why our fan is the first ceiling fan to receive the Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star designation for energy efficiency.
The Florida Solar Energy Center in Cocoa and the fan's developer, Danny Parker, a senior researcher there, are sharing in royalties earned since the fans first arrived at Home Depot in March 2001.
The Gossamer Wind fans come in three models, two for homes (Callaway and Windward) and one for industrial or commercial use. Each shares the twisted blade design of propeller-driven planes.
The two home models are equipped with advanced remote controls, which turn the fans on or off and adjust fan speed depending on room temperature. A ceiling fan can only improve comfort if someone is there to feel its air motion. Optional smart controls for the "Gossamer Wind" greatly increase its convenience, energy savings and comfort potential. A 360-degree infrared motion sensor control automatically activates the fan when anyone enters a room and always remembers to turn it off when occupants are gone. The Windward II model comes with a dimmable fluorescent light and the Callaway uses conventional dimming incandescent bulbs. The fluorescent system cuts lighting energy use to about one-third of most conventional fan/light units and generates much less heat.
UCF is extremely proud of Mr. Parker as well as the licensing professionals who worked diligently on finding the right licensee to get our product to the market place. We feel that this product is a perfect example of how universities can participate in fundamental research that leads to products for the general consumer. For further information please check out these articles:
http://www.fsec.ucf.edu/Bldg/pubs/cr1059/
http://www.buildinggreen.com/products/gossamer.html
http://www.memagazine.org/backissues/aug01/features/helios/helios.html
http://www.fsec.ucf.edu/Bldg/active/bdac/prototype/catalog.htm
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Turfgrass Cultivars
(Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey)
The Grass Really is Greener
The Center for Turfgrass Science was established at Rutgers University in 1991 by Reed Funk. Thirty-six faculty as well as other researchers and students are currently associated with the Center. Since the Center was founded, many improved varieties of turfgrass have been developed by Rutgers through conventional breeding, particularly fescues, bluegrass and perennial ryegrass. Virtually all major producers, distributors and marketers of turfgrass in the U.S. rely on Rutgers for a significant portion of new cultivars, and Rutgers believes that more than half of all premium turfgrass seed sold in the U.S. originated at Rutgers.
Cultivars at Rutgers are licensed to over 26 licensees, including some in foreign countries. These cultivars are usually protected by Plant Variety Protection (PVP), but a few have utility patents as well. Rutgers is using modern genetic engineering technologies to continue producing commercially important species.
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey:http://ocltt.rutgers.edu
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Hangers Cleaners®
(University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Hangers Cleaners®: A Safer, Better Method for Dry Cleaning Clothes
Dry cleaners traditionally have relied on perchloroethylene (perc), a toxic chemical, in their cleaning process. Perc, a known groundwater contaminant and probable carcinogen, is classified as a hazardous material by the Environmental Protection Agency. The residue and lint generated during the cleaning process as well as the filters used also are classified as hazardous wastes. Regulatory restrictions make disposal of these by-products costly. Because of their reliance on perc, dry cleaners face zoning restrictions, regulatory oversight, taxes associated with hazardous waste disposal and increased insurance rates.
In 1995, Dr. Joseph DeSimone, William R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and of Chemical Engineering at North Carolina State University, discovered an effective, environmentally safe replacement for the traditional method of dry cleaning clothes. DeSimone's technology, the innovation behind the commercial entity known as Hangers Cleaners®, uses liquid carbon dioxide (CO2) to clean clothes, eliminating the need for toxic chemicals. Under the Hangers Cleaners® method, clothing is placed in the wash wheel of a patented MICO2 machine, which resembles a commercial front-loading washing machine. The machine is sealed, pressurized CO2 gas is pumped in and a patented combination of liquid CO2 and detergent is added. The clothes are agitated while the liquid is circulated through a dual filtration system that captures dirt, lint, loose fibers and solids. A carbon filter is used to remove dyes and odors. When the cycle is completed, the remaining CO2 is pumped out and the clothes are spun to remove any excess liquid. Close to 98 percent of the cleaning solution remaining can be used again and the dirt and residue caught in the filter can be thrown away simply.
Consumers receive the benefit of cleaner, fresher clothes, in addition to a safer environment. The Hangers Cleaners® method is odorless and uses cooler temperatures to clean clothes, eliminating problems associated with traditional dry cleaning, such as shrinking, stain setting and fading. Since CO2 is gentle on fabric, lint is minimalized and the life of the garment is extended.
The growth of Micell Technology, a UNC-Chapel Hill start-up company that obtained exclusive licensing rights in 1996, reflects the success of the Hangers Cleaners® technology. By 1999, Micell had opened seven Hangers Cleaners® franchises. By 2001, the number of franchises had increased to 51 located in 23 states. Micell has received numerous awards recognizing the revolutionary nature of the technology, including the 1998 R&D 100 Award, recognizing Hangers Cleaners® as one of the most technologically significant products of that year, and North Carolina's 2001 Governor's Award for Entrepreneurial Excellence.
See http://www.micell.com
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Polywood
(Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey)
Plastic Lumber Offers Stronger, Cheaper, Environmentally Safer Alternative to Treated Wood
In July of 1985, under the mentorship of the late Dr. Malcolm G. McLaren, director of the Insti-tute for Engineered Materials, Professor Darrell R. Morrow of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey (since retired) opened the Center for Plastics Recycling Research to develop market-able recycled product. Joined in 1988 by Thomas J. Nosker, Richard W. Renfree and Kenneth-Van Ness, graduates of Rutgers' Mechanics and Material Science Department, the team began focusing on creating a strong, durable, plastic lumber that could be used for general construction applications. By 1989, the center's experimentation focused on increasing the stiffness of plastic lumber.
Traditionally, plastic lumber has been made from high density polyethylene, (HDPE), the plastic used to produce milk jugs, making up the largest part of the waste stream. Because HDPE lumber lacked stiffness and had a thermal expansion coefficient much greater than softwoods, it could be used only for low-stress outdoor applications. Recognizing the need to reinforce the HDPE lum-ber in order to enter the high-performance structural markets, the center developed a polymer-polymer composite of HDPE and Polystyrene (PS), the plastic used to produce coffee cups, food containers and serving trays. By utilizing a melt process that combines HDPE and PS from un-washed curbside trailings in an extruder under controlled conditions of composition, temperature, pressure and shear rate, the center was able to create a unique microstructure that produced a plastic wood with a higher stress transfer and strength coefficient. Because of its stiffness and durability, the plastic wood created by this process can be used for railroad ties, bridge arches, telephone poles and substructures without splintering, warping, corroding or mildewing. Unlike treated wood usually used for these purposes, plastic lumber is non-toxic-it does not leach or bleed arsenic, heavy metals or chemicals into the soil and does not require specialized disposal. Their work has brought them a 2001 Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award from the Research & Development Council of New Jersey.
In 1996, Polywood Inc., a start-up company employing twenty individuals and located in Edison, New Jersey, became the exclusive licensee for the center's patented technology to make com-mingled plastic lumber. Polywood has relied on this technology to produce decking, banister spindles, stairways and picnic tables. Its main source of revenue, however, has been the produc-tion of railroad ties and structural lumber. In the past year, the sale of railroad ties tripled from 1.5 million to 5 million. With outstanding contracts from the Chicago Transit Authority and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, Polywood expects sales to reach $12 million in two years, creating 120 new jobs.
With a $2.35 million grant from the New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology in late 2001, the current team, Professors Thomas Nosker, Richard Lehman, Richard Renfree, James Idol, Thomas Tsakalakos, and Holly Crawford of Rutgers' School of Engineering are currently engaged in the creation of a new research center focusing on the further development of ad-vanced materials based on immiscible polymer blends. These new materials will branch out into other structural and functional end uses, such as packaging, thermoformed automotive and appli-ance components, semipermeable membranes, and with the inclusion of nanomaterial additives, electrically and magnetically active devices.
See http://www.polywood.com
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"Green Steel"
(University of Pittsburgh)
"Green Steel" Gets the Lead Out.
Professors De Ardo and Garcia of the University of Pittsburgh figured out a way to get all 4,500 tons of lead out of the 3 million tons of machinable steel produced every year worldwide. "Machinable" steel has a smoother, less jagged surface finish than other steel and causes less wear on the tools used to shape it. The two Professors of Materials Science and Engineering examined lead-containing steel on an atomic level to determine how it improved machinability. It turns out that lead collects at the ferrite grain boundaries of the steel thus facilitating fracture between and not within individual grains. Intergranular fracture accounts for the smooth surface finish and reduced wear on cutting tools. Tin can also be added in such a way that it too collects at grain boundaries, performing the same function as the lead did. Though tin is somewhat more expensive than lead, the total cost of producing "green steel" is less than the lead-containing variety because money need not be spent protecting factory workers from lead fumes and from the lead-containing scrap produced when the steel is machined into parts. The Ford Motor Company has ordered a shipment of steering column parts made of the new lead-free steel. There is also expected to be a large market in Europe as Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen have said that they will not accept leaded steel parts beginning with the 2001 model year. Similar initiatives to produce environmentally friendly vehicles by the year 2003 in North America are being supported by Ford, GM, and Mazda. The total market for "green steel" is estimated at one billion dollars.
The work leading up to the invention started in 1995 under funding from a consortium of companies which manufacture and machine steel. The University of Pittsburgh Office of Technology Management worked with these companies to form the "Non-Leaded Free Machining Steel Consortium, LLC." U.S. patent 5,961,747 was issued in October 1999, and is exclusively licensed to the Consortium. Companies in the Consortium that produce the material pay royalties on sales to parts manufacturers and other third parties to the Consortium. Companies that machine the material share in the royalties as members of the Consortium and also earn profits via sales of finished parts to end-users. The Consortium has the right to sublicense third parties to produce the steel. The University of Pittsburgh holds shares in the Consortium and receives royalties.
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OXSILANTM
(University of Cincinnati)
OXSILANTM: Non-Toxic Corrosion Prevention
OXSILANTM, recognized by R&D Magazine as one of the 100 most technologically significant new products of 1999, is a non-toxic alternative to conventional chromate-based toxic and carcinogenic metal pretreatment systems. Metal rusts, and such rust can weaken the metal and make it unsuitable for further manufacturing processes, such as painting. Rinsing metals in a chromium-containing bath is a common way to prevent rust and promote adhesion. Unfortunately, the chromate bath is highly toxic. Metals can also be coated with a thin layer of plastic, or polymer, but this generally is a multi-step process, and then the polymer coating is often not a suitable substrate for subsequent coatings. U.S. patent 5,759,629, invented by Professor Wim van Ooij from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Cincinnati describes a "method of preventing corrosion of metal sheet using vinyl silanes." The coating is non-toxic, can be applied from a single solution, and works also as an adhesion promotion for subsequent processes. OXSILAN® gives corrosion protection against rust and other insidious forms of corrosion such as pitting, stress corrosion cracking, corrosion fatigue cracking, and hydrogen cracking. OXSILAN® works on cold-rolled steel, stainless steel, aluminum alloys, galvanized steel, brass, copper, magnesium, tin and nickel. It works with and without paint systems and improves adhesion of the metal to paints and rubber. The process is protected by more than a dozen patents. The University of Cincinnati licensed the invention to Brent International, which is currently marketing the coating for use in the automobile and aerospace industry. There are many applications now, as OXSILAN® has a range of compositions and ingredients, depending on the metal and type of corrosion that one wishes to control. Additional applications include coating microelectronics and treating the cords in steel belted radial tires.
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Permeable Preactive Barrier Wall Technologies
(University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada)
Treatment systems for contaminated groundwater have potential for immense public benefit.
The University of Waterloo, internationally known for its research in groundwater remediation, has several patented technologies that are expected to play a significant role in providing a cleaner and healthier source of drinking water for the future. The inventors, Drs. David Blowes, Carol Ptacek, William Robertson, Ryan Wilson, and Douglas Mackay, have been working for over 10 years on this technology, which addresses a growing concern for Canada. These patented various remediation technologies can reduce nitrates from farming/cattle runoff, phosphates, heavy metal contamination such as arsenic, copper, chromium and uranium from mine tailings, volatile organic compounds, and MTBE, a gasoline additive that is extremely difficult to remediate.
The Waterloo system places nutrients and other treatment substances in the ground in front of an oncoming plume of contaminated groundwater. In one system, boreholes placed across the plume contain diffusion tubes that contain a pumped remediation substance that will diffuse into the water and be carried into the aquifer. Another system involves excavating a trench into the aquifer in the path of the plume and placing reactive materials in the trench. Different reactive materials are used depending on which contaminant is present in the water. These methods simplify the task of placing treatment materials and other substances into the ground for the purpose of treating groundwater contaminants. This is a major advance over very expensive pump-and-treat technologies that involve removing large quantities of water out of the ground and putting the treated water back.
One version of this technology for removing volatile organic compounds has been licensed to a company in Waterloo, Ontario. Another version, separately patented for removing nitrates, has been licensed to a second Ontario company, and a third version has been licensed to another Canadian company on a site-license basis. Negotiations are presently underway with several large U.S. petrol-chemical companies to remediate MTBE that was found leaking into groundwater from gasoline service stations and storage holding tanks.
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Pink Beauty Potentilla
(University of Manitoba)
Luck and perseverance is what Louis Lenz credits for enabling him to develop the best-selling potentilla cultivar, "Pink Beauty"-that and the interest and curiosity of his graduate students. More than twenty years of plant breeding and proofing at the University of Manitoba went into the development of the shrub before it was licensed to Jeffries Nurseries in 1994 for commercialization. Since then, this outstanding cultivar has taken the gardening and landscaping business by storm in North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia.
In 1964, Professor Lenz, a young plant scientist specializing in trees and shrubs, arrived at the University of Manitoba. Searching for a suitable research subject, he determined that Manitoba and the prairies in general, lacked small flowering shrubs in the one- to three-foot size range. Two flowering shrubs in the province presented possibilities for development: the potentilla and the summer flowering spirea. "I didn't make the choice," Lenz says with a chuckle. "The potentilla seed was easier to handle and easier to germinate: hybridizing produced a bigger flower and the plant was easier to handle. I just never got back to spirea."
In the wild, potentilla is a circumpolar plant that grows in the north/north temperate zone. Of the many species of potentilla, only two are woody plants. The flower is basically yellow with some plants having white flowers. England has a plant called Tangerine, the orange color of the flowers determined by the growing conditions. In the early 1960s, many cultivars were plants that had been selected from the wild, i.e., domesticated wildings.
Lenz began his research with two objectives: to improve the white variety and to improve the orange variety, starting with what was available in the wild and what had been separated by others.
"Coronation Triumph," a yellow cultivar developed at the University of Manitoba in 1953 by John Walker, was and continues to be a very popular shrub. Its heavy flowering over a longer time and its petals with spaces between made it an ideal base plant. Thus, "Coronation Triumph" became the common base for all crossings with selected additional plants from Canada, England, and Holland.
Time is the biggest challenge in plant breeding. From cross-breeding to seed collection to germination to flowering of seedlings takes about a year. Of the seedlings, less than one percent will be what is wanted. Once the seedlings are selected, the plants then have to be grown for several years to see if the new cultivar has the desired traits. Even then it may take another five years to determine if you really have something worthwhile in this new plant.
In the case of "Pink Beauty," yellows, whites, and oranges were crossed to eventually find a pink. From the original seedlings in the late 1960's, three plants stood out:
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a light yellow flower with extra petals-a new find that originated, or at least was first recorded, at the University of Manitoba, named Sundance;
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an orange that held its color better than the earlier variety, named OrangeMan; and
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a pale flower with a pink feather at the base of the petal, named Pink Feather.
OrangeMan and Pink Feather were weaker plants but the crossings continued.
By the 1980s, another group of crossings resulted in five significant cultivars: Snowbird, a robust dark green plant with large semi-double flowers; Yellow Bird, a compact plant with a deep yellow, semi-double flower; Golden Challis, a cup-shaped, dark yellow flower; Orange Whisper and Pink Whisper, with appropriately colored flowers. Again the orange and the pink strains were poor plants, but the flowers were a better orange and the first true pink.
By the early 1980s, plant researchers were taking an active role in plant breeding by looking at plant genetics. Professor Lenz and his students began to study the pigments that determine flower color: carotenoids for yellow, flavenoids for white, and anthocyanins for pink, and their response to growing conditions. Anthocyanins in particular are a heat liable pigment, meaning the color fades as the heat increases. By working with these genetic traits, research students were able to focus on how to retain the anthocyanins in various light and soil conditions.
The next series of crosses produced "Pink Beauty": a compact, drought tolerant, long blooming plant with semi-double pink flowers that grows well in a great variety of soils and light conditions.
There have been numerous well-adapted yellow, cream, and white flowered potentilla available for years, but not so for pink flowered cultivars. Professor Lenz and his research students spent more than twenty years and generated more than 1,600 plant crosses to produce an outstanding new cultivar. Named as the result of a comment about the plant by a staff person, "Pink Beauty" was licensed in 1994 to a former student now businessman and plant breeder, for commercialization.
University of Manitoba has a long history of plant breeding and development. Even this new potentilla was developed using plants from earlier University of Manitoba research. The "Pink Beauty" license was the first domestic plant variety license issued by the University of Manitoba. The commercialization process used for "Pink Beauty" has been so successful that more varietal licenses have been issued, including one for a second Lenz cultivar, "Mango Tango."
(This profile includes excerpts from an article in Manitoba Gardener, Winter 1998).
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Quad 7TM
(North Dakota State University)
All the weed control for half the price: Existing herbicides benefit significantly from novel additive: Quad 7TM.
Quad 7TM, a herbicide additive, or adjuvant, available from AGSCO, Inc. costs less than previous adjuvants, is more convenient to use, and increases the efficacy of herbicides with which it has been mixed, thereby making it possible to use less herbicide and achieve the same result. Quad 7TM is estimated to cut in half the cost of weed control for corn, soybeans, and sugar beets.
Quad 7TM marks the culmination of Professor John Nalewaja's 36-year research career in agronomy at the North Dakota State University. Professor Nalewaja's specialty was weed control, and he became interested in the use of adjuvants designed to increase the effectiveness of existing herbicides. Weed control requires that the herbicide stick to the plant. Prior methods to enhance sticking included mixing petroleum-based oils in with the herbicide. One of Professor Nalewaja's first discoveries in the field of adjuvants was that seed oils, from, for example, flax and sunflower seeds, were superior to petroleum oils when mixed with certain herbicides. He then discovered that methlyated seed oils had even better performance, and before the introduction of Quad 77TM, he and AGSCO had teamed up to produce methylated seed oil adjuvants.
The patented invention, U.S. Patent Number 5,658,855 "Adjuvants for Herbicidal Compositions," on which the product Quad 7TM is based, however, does not require the use of any oils. A non-ionic surfactant, such as an alcohol, keeps the herbicide physically on the weed, and adjusting the pH of the herbicide spray, so that it is more basic, or alkaline, which increases the solubility of the herbicide so that it is chemically more effective. An additional benefit of the alkaline pH is that the herbicide does not precipitate out of solution, a particular problem when using a nozzle to produce a fine spray. The patent, which issued in 1997, was exclusively licensed to AGSCO, Inc., which introduced Quad 7TM into the marketplace in the spring of 1998. DuPont, a major manufacturer of herbicides, approved it for use with its products.
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HEALTH
Testing for and Treating Creatine Transporter Deficiency
University of Cincinnati and The Cincinnati Children's Research Foundation
In a far-reaching collaboration, researchers at The University of Cincinnati Medical Center and The Cincinnati Children's Research Foundation, have identified a new genetic disorder, Creatine Transporter Deficiency, and have identified the X chromosome linked defect that is responsible. The disorder presents a range of symptoms including speech and language impairment in children, potentially resulting in severe mental retardation. The lifetime care issues for sufferers are massive, measured not just in fiscal terms but also in the direct impact on carriers.
Under a licensing and funding arrangement agreed to in fiscal year 2002, the researchers will collaborate with The Avicena Group Inc., building on promising results to identify a diagnostic and effective therapy. Avicena is a Massachusetts and California based biotechnology company with a long-standing interest in the role of the creatine kinase system in central nervous system disorders.
The two Cincinnati institutions are pleased with this model of collaboration on joint research and licensing efforts with industry.
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Double Transgenic Mouse for Alzheimer's
University of South Florida
Work by University of South Florida researchers, Drs. Karen Duff and John Hardy, led to a significant advance in the field of transgenic animal models of Alzheimer's Disease.
The double transgenic, presenilin (PS) and amyloid precursor protein (APP) mouse model takes significantly less time to demonstrate Alzheimer's pathology than previous models. The PS/APP mouse demonstrates progressive, age-related, impaired cognitive function that correlates with plaque deposition in the brain.
Widely non-exclusively licensed in fiscal year 2002, under U.S. Patent 5,989,094 and foreign equivalents, the mouse model is accepted by the academic research community as well as by pharmaceutical and biotechnology corporations. The PS/APP mouse provides an ideal model for research, including drug discovery for Alzheimer's, and realizes savings in time and therefore money.
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Fel-O-Vax
University of California, Davis and University of Florida
Protecting Cats Against FIV
As many as one in 12 cats tests positive for the feline immunodeficiency virus, a deadly and rapidly spreading virus that, like its human counterpart HIV, weakens the cat's immune system to the point that it can no longer fight off infection or disease. Transmitted from one cat to another primarily through bite wounds, FIV is most common among cats that are exposed to the outdoors or live in multiple-cat households.
In 2002, a vaccine to protect against feline AIDS was approved for commercial production and veterinary use by the U.S.D.A., culminating 15 years of work starting with two UC Davis researchers, Janet Yamamoto and Niels Pedersen, who co-discovered FIV. Their work led to a vaccine jointly patented at UC Davis and University of Florida, where Yamamoto is now a professor. Licensee Fort Dodge Animal Health, a division of Wyeth, now offers the vaccine to licensed veterinarians under the name Fel-O-Vax.
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Oragenics Completes Initial Public Offering
University of Florida
Oragenics Inc. is developing two technologies licensed from the University of Florida. The first, developed by Professor Jeffrey Hillman, is a replacement therapy for the prevention of tooth decay, consisting of a simple and painless mouth rinse administered by a dentist to protect against cavities for a lifetime. Replacement therapy may be the most significant advance in dental care and cavity prevention since the introduction of fluoride more than a half-century ago.
The second novel technology is a broad-spectrum antibiotic (mutacin 1140), which holds the promise of offering protection against a wide variety of disease-causing bacteria. Preliminary laboratory studies of this novel antibiotic show no evidence of pathogen resistance, which has become a major problem with the six leading classes of antibiotics in use today.
Oragenics, a Florida-based biotechnology company, announced the successful completion of its $3 million initial public offering on June 24, 2003
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Partners for a Healthy Baby Curriculum
Florida State University
During the past five years, the Florida State University Center for Prevention and Early Intervention Policy, under the leadership of Dr. Mimi Graham, has developed, copyrighted and widely distributed "The Partners for a Healthy Baby" curricular series.
These research-based guides were developed to help home visitors conduct visits to help expectant families have and cope with a new baby to ensure a happy, healthy child. Critical topics are designed for each trimester/month of pregnancy through the baby's first birthday. Magazine style handouts reflecting ethnically diverse families are given to parents in English and Spanish. (see http://www.cpeip.fsu.edu/).
These curricula, unique in addressing both family and child health and development, are enthusiastically used by Early Head Start and Healthy Start Healthy Families programs as well as hospitals and school boards throughout the nation.
In fiscal year 2002, cumulative sales surpassed $3 million. New "Fatherhood" and "Self-Esteem" curricula are ready for printing.
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LevulanTM Photodynamic Therapy
Queen's University/Royal Military College
LevulanTM is a novel form of photodynamic therapy (PDT) discovered by Dr. James Kennedy of Queen's University and Dr. Roy Pottier of Royal Military College, in Kingston, Ontario.
Drs. Kennedy and Pottier became intrigued with the idea of treating cancers by selectively mimicking porphyria in tumour cells. Porphyria is a condition in which affected tissues are light-sensitive and tissue damage can result with light exposure. Their research led to the development of Levulan™ PDT for the treatment of actinic keratosis, the red, scaly precancerous skin lesions of the face and scalp common to fair-skinned individuals. The treatment has proven effective and easy to use, with no known negative side effects.
In 1991 PARTEQ Innovations licensed the technology to Deprenyl Research Ltd., which spun out DUSA Pharmaceuticals to commercialize Levulan™. The product was approved for use in the U.S. in 1999 and in Canada in late 2001.
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SpeechEasy®
East Carolina University
Traditional therapy for the 60 million stutterers worldwide consists of years of behavioral modification and provides limited long-term efficacy. Drs. Joseph Kalinowski, Andrew Stuart and Michael Rastatter, in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at East Carolina University have developed a patented (U.S. Patent 5,961,443) prosthetic device, SpeechEasy®, which provides stutterers with the first mobile, inconspicuous wireless device that virtually eliminates stuttering through the use of delayed auditory and frequency altered feedback.
In July 2001, ECU start-up company Janus Development Group exclusively licensed the rights to SpeechEasy® and sold the first device in August 2001. More than 1,000 people have benefited from SpeechEasy® with dramatic results. Users report entire lifestyle changes in daily living and their ability to set long-term goals. In addition to scholarly publications, SpeechEasy® has been featured numerous times in the press including on ABC's Good Morning America, which received an Emmy award for its moving story. (www.speecheasy.com)
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University of Alberta 'Shares' Diseases Through Innovative Teaching Tool
University of Alberta
University of Alberta 'Shares' Diseases Through Innovative Teaching Tool University students across North America are sharing a handful of vicious micro-organisms, including West Nile virus, Ebola and Anthrax, all originating from the University of Alberta. But university authorities appear pleased with the national media attention to the "outbreak" of about 100 diseases.
That's because doctors, medical students and instructors are sharing trading cards depicting the diseases and symptoms, not the actual microbes. The novel educational tool employs the sports trading cards format to teach medical microbiology to university students. Dr. Mark Peppler, associate professor in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Alberta, developed the tool based on his childhood passion for sports cards.
The American Society for Microbiology Press liked the idea so much they created 5,000 boxes of MicrobeCards in 2002 (half sold before shipping to suppliers). Retailers range from university bookstores to Amazon.com. A sequel is in the works (see http://homepage.mac.com/markpeppler/microbe.html or Amazon.com).
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QLT's Visudyne® Therapy
University of British Columbia
In 1981, four scientists from the University of British Columbia founded Quadra Logic Technologies Inc., now a global biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the discovery, development and commercialization of innovative therapies to treat cancer, eye diseases and immune disorders.
In 1987, QLT entered into research and license agreements with UBC to support Dr. David Dolphin's research of porphyrin chemistry aimed at making stable molecules capable of absorbing long wavelength visible/IR light. The resulting collaboration resulted in the introduction of Visudyne® (verteporfin) for the treatment of wet age-related macular degeneration, or AMD, the leading cause of blindness in men and women over the age of 50. More than 13 million U.S. residents over the age of 40 exhibit signs of AMD.
In fiscal year 2002, Visudyne® sales exceeded U.S. $287 million. Visudyne® therapy could be the most successful product ever in ophthalmology and could be the first ophthalmic product to reach U.S. $1 billion annual sales (see http://www.qltinc.com).
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Caltrate Colon Health
(Dartmouth College Technology Transfer Office)
A Gram A Day Keeps The Doctor Away
Animal studies and human epidemiological studies have led many scientists, including Dr. John Baron, a Professor of Medicine at Dartmouth Medical School, to believe that calcium supplements in the diet help prevent the formation of adenomas in the colon, which can progress to colorectal cancer. This malignancy is the second leading cause of cancer death in the U.S., killing 58,000 Americans in 1998.
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) agreed to test the hypothesis through a multi-center randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial which lasted over four years and involved 930 patients with a previous history of polyps at six pre-eminent medical schools led by Dartmouth. The patients received 1,200 mg daily of elemental calcium as calcium carbonate through Wyeth Healthcare's Caltrate supplement.
The patients underwent two colonoscopies to look at the effect of the supplement on the large bowel. Overall, those receiving the supplement showed a 19% decrease in the incidence of recurrence of any adenoma and a 24% decrease in the number of adenomas overall.
Dartmouth applied for and received a patent on the basis of the study. Wyeth took a license to the patent and launched Caltrate Colon Health in the summer of 2002.
Dartmouth College Technology Transfer Office: http://www.dartmouth.edu/admin/tto/
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CALM system (Computer-Assisted Labor Monitoring)
(McGill University Office of Technology Transfer)
LMS Medical Systems
Emily Hamilton is taking some of the guesswork out of delivering babies. The McGill obstetrics and gynecology professor was teaching at Montreal's Jewish General Hospital when it occurred to her that doctors and nurses could better evaluate the progress of delivery if they knew how their patients compared to others. "Students were asking simple questions like, 'How do you know when labour is slow? What is the average?'" says Dr. Hamilton. Incredibly, doctors were still relying on a small study of women done in the 1950s for information about delivering babies. Yet a number of medical developments, such as epidurals, greatly influence the average length of labour. When Dr. Hamilton looked at the big picture, she saw that the power of computing, combined with large-scale studies, could tell physicians and nurses what comprises a normal labour for different women.
Her revelation happened in the early 1990s. Today, the CALM system (Computer-Assisted Labor Monitoring) is installed in almost every Montreal hospital that does obstetrics. It is poised for expansion both in Canada and the U.S., having recently secured approval from the Food and Drug Administration. An eight-person team with years of perinatal experience is based in Maryland, demonstrating CALM to obstetrics teams in hospitals across the country. The challenge for Dr. Hamilton and the company she has formed, LMS Medical Systems Ltd., is to market a unique tool. Revolutionary products are more difficult to describe than familiar ones that have evolved over time. But her zeal is up to the challenge. "I can have an impact on the lives of the four million women who deliver in America - it's way beyond the scope of what researchers normally see," says Dr. Hamilton. "It's daunting, and thrilling."
Dr. Hamilton has completed enough studies to know that her invention can reduce Cesarean sections from about 19.5 percent to 16.5 percent. Fewer Cesareans mean less pain and a shorter recuperation time for women, less time required by surgeons, and a much-improved bottom line for hospitals. With an average of 3,000 deliveries per hospital each year, the numbers are staggering: CALM could result in about 14,000 fewer C-sections in Canada; 130,000 in the U.S. "Slow progress is the number one cause of C-sections," says Dr. Hamilton. "If doctors have no consistent way of seeing the progress of labour, they can't always be certain that a C-section is necessary. And there's no easy, reliable way to evaluate it after the fact, either. It's a set-up that leads to overuse of C-sections."
The CALM system reassures medical personnel that a labour appearing fearfully long may, in fact, be progressing normally. After inputting some basic information about the patient, including whether or not it is her first baby and the frequency of contractions, a simple-to-read graph appears on screen. The graph shows three lines: the woman's progression of labour; and the high and low parameters of hundreds of others with her identical statistical profile. The touch-sensitive screen is quickly and easily updated. All CALM systems are wired to LMS's head office on de Maisonneuve Boulevard in Montreal. Software problems can be fixed at on site at LMS, in seconds.
CALM became a reality after Dr. Hamilton completed a couple of studies in 1991 that reinforced her idea, which came to the attention of Martinex, which was set-up to disburse $99 million raised in a public offering to help launch businesses linked to McGill research. With $2 million in hand, Dr. Hamilton and her eight-person team of mathematicians and computer scientists developed models that became the company's foundation. "I was very, very naïve," she said. "I'd never even read a business plan," yet she ended up helping to write three. At the same time, she developed the CALM prototype. Once a final plan was complete, she sought funding and managed to get $3.1 million of venture capital within a year from provincial and national sources. Simultaneously, she began large-scale clinical trials using CALM, as well as redeveloping the system in preparation for approval from Health Canada and the United States' Food and Drug Administration.
Establishing itself in Montreal has been a boon to the business, reaping the company-significant research and development tax credits. Dr. Hamilton has also mined both McGill and Université de Montréal for talent. Young engineering and computer science graduates help populate a large suite of offices overseen by LMS president Diane Côté. "The company has a lot of growth ahead," says Côté. "Emily doesn't stop thinking, and she is already developing our next product. We're becoming the standard of obstetrics care." While Dr. Hamilton agrees, she has a slightly different perspective: "We're putting research on the line. When you can solve this major problem, and no one else has, it's not just your reputation or ego at stake. It's investors' money. We know we can do it, and we will continue to do it with other products."
McGill University Office of Technology Transfer: http://www.mcgill.ca/ott/
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GlucoWatch®
(University of California, San Francisco Office of Technology Management)
Advances in Diabetes Management
Diabetics depend critically on frequent monitoring of their blood sugar levels. Doctors advise a blood sugar check, typically with a finger prick, four to seven times daily, but most draw blood only once a day. A new wristwatch-like device based on technology pioneered at University of California, San Francisco offers millions of people who suffer with diabetes a non-invasive method for tracking their blood sugar and improving the quality of their lives.
The wristband device measures sugar levels every 10 minutes for up to 13 hours. Glucose levels are not taken from the blood, but from interstitial fluid - a clear fluid in the skin cells. A plastic sensor is placed underneath the watch when the patient puts it on and glucose levels are then measured by sending imperceptible electric currents through the skin. The device creates an electronic record, keeping track of up to 8,500 glucose values that can be accessed with the touch of a button. It's also possible to upload the patient's blood sugar level history into a software program. An alarm sounds if sugar levels are too high or too low or if the readings rapidly decline. The device is available on prescription and is initially intended to supplement the finger stick and provide diabetics and their doctors with more information than ever before. It can help them make better-informed decisions about diet, medication, and physical activities and, thus, have the best possible control over their disease.
Cygnus, of Redwood City, California, licensed the innovative University of California technology in 1995. It began to market the GlucoWatch® Biographer in Europe in 2001. The GlucoWatch® received FDA approval in 2001 and as of September 2002, an improved, second-generation model is now available in the U.S.
UCSF Office of Technology Management: http://www.otm.ucsf.edu/
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Guglielmi Detachable Coil (GDC)
(University of California, Los Angeles Office of Intellectual Property)
Effective Aneurysm Treatment
Cerebral aneurysms occur when the wall of a brain artery gets weak and forms a balloon-like protrusion. If that weak wall ruptures, the consequences can be disastrous-blood leaks onto the brain or into the spinal fluid surrounding the brain, often causing coma, paralysis or death. Fifty percent of ruptured aneurysms end in fatalities. It is estimated that up to 5% of Americans will develop an intracranial aneurysm and 12,000 to 28,000 people suffer annually from ruptured cerebral aneurysms.
The Guglielmi Detachable Coil (GDC) developed at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and licensed to Boston Scientific/Target offers a treatment that is much less invasive and far more effective than the alternatives. A micro-catheter is used to pass the soft platinum alloy coil through blood vessels to the aneurysm. Once the surgeon sees that the coil is at the site, low-voltage electric current is applied, causing the coil to detach. The coil, in effect, plugs the aneurysm so that it is completely isolated from blood circulation and unable to rupture.
A study of more than 2,500 unruptured aneurysms at 60 university hospitals compared the more common method of treating aneurysms-surgical clipping-with endovascular coiling. The findings indicated that GDC surgery had an in-hospital death rate that was five times less than surgical clipping and was associated with 80% fewer incidents of adverse events.
More than 150 centers in the US and 1,000 centers worldwide now perform the procedure and over 85,000 patients have received the treatment.
The next generation of coil, also pioneered at UCLA accelerates the formation of connective tissue at the neck of the aneurysm, possibly allowing for a true healing of the defect.
UCLA Office of Intellectual Property: http://www.research.ucla.edu/oipa/
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PawPaw Lice Remover Shampoo
(Purdue Research Foundation Office of Technology Commercialization)
PawPaw Research Results in New Product
It is estimated that as many as 25 million people in the US, 10 million of these children, become infested with Pediculus humanus capitas. Although pre-school and elementary-age children seem most at risk, teenagers and adults can become infected as well. Symptoms include persistent itching, particularly around the ears, back of the neck and crown, and associated loss of sleep. Repeat infestations can intensify skin irritation, increase excessive scratching, and bring about secondary bacterial infections. However, the greatest harm associated with head lice may result from the well-meaning but unwise use of toxic shampoos to eliminate the lice. In September of 2000, California banned the use of Lindane, an organo-chlorinated pesticide in the same chemical family as DDT, which is used in the treatment of head lice. Among other side effects, Lindane, is thought to cause seizures. Other products on the marketplace used to treat head lice also have come under recent scrutiny. Studies indicate that head lice have become resistant to many existing products including pyrethrin-based pesticides.
During his more than 25 years of research at Purdue University, Dr. Jerry McLaughlin identified certain compounds found in the bark of the pawpaw tree, called annonaceous acetogenins (Patents 4,721,727 and 4,855,319). These compounds are particularly effective for pesticide-resistant pests. After the compounds are extracted through a process designed to isolate and concentrate, they are standardized using a bioassay that Dr. McLaughlin developed during his years at Purdue as professor of pharmacognosy. This process ensures that the product has a consistent concentration of annonaceous acetogenins. Dr. McLaughlin encountered a struggle in his pursuit to use this research in product development because there are no commercial sources of these compounds. In addition, samples can only be collected during the month of May. Extensive research revealed that the compounds are capable of controlling a variety of insects and pests and in 2001, they were taken from the lab to the marketplace in the form of a new product called PawPaw Lice Remover Shampoo manufactured by Nature's Sunshine Products Inc. (NSP).
There are three stages of head lice infestation. Nits, or eggs, attach to human hair shafts in the first stage. After seven to 10 days, the nits hatch and nymph lice become visible. In stage three, the mature lice feed on the scalp and begin laying eggs. Dr. McLaughlin, now vice president of research, development and quality assurance, and chief scientific officer for NSP, reports that the pawpaw product works by targeting the nymphs and adults and also by loosening the nits on the hair shaft so the nits comb out easily before they have a chance to hatch.
The product is both safe and successful. Clinical studies proved that it was effective in removing head lice. In studies conducted with more than 20 people, the shampoo has proven to be 100 percent effective in eliminating head lice. Additional tests have proved the shampoo to be effective in removing lice and their nits when used according to label instructions. A final clinical trial, using the optimum shampoo formulation in 16 participants, demonstrated 100% effectiveness at removing head lice and nits.
NSP's PawPaw Lice Remover Shampoo was introduced to the US marketplace in 2001 and is now available online at : (www.naturessunshine.com). The product is based on three technologies that Purdue Research Foundation's Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC) successfully licensed to NSP. NSP was founded in 1972 and is based in Provo, Utah.
Purdue Office of Technology Commercialization: http://www.otc.purdue.edu
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Restore® Orthobiologic Implant - A Revolutionary Rotator Cuff Repair Alternative
(Purdue University)
More than 300,000 rotator cuff surgeries are performed each year in the United States. Shoulder injuries caused by sudden shock or by consistent wear and tear often require surgery to repair a partial or complete tear in the rotator cuff. As a part of the shoulder joint, a rotator cuff is made up of the tendons of four muscles, which are attached to the humerus, or upper arm bone. During rotator cuff surgery, the torn edge of the rotator cuff is reattached to the humerus. To strengthen lost or damaged tendons, surgeons traditionally have relied on autografts or allografts-tissue grafts from a patient's own body or a donor's body.
In 1991, an innovative project spearheaded by Dr. Stephen Badylak from Purdue University caught the attention of Richard R. Tarr of DePuy Orthopaedics Inc. The product created as a result of the license agreement and collaboration between Purdue University and DePuy now provides surgeons with a better choice: a biopatch made from pigs' small intestines, or porcine small intestine submucosa (SIS). Restore® Orthobiologic Implant offers a way for the rotator cuff tendon to regenerate by providing a strong, resorbable framework. The Restore® implant serves as a scaffold and gradually disappears as new tissue grows (U.S. Patent Nos. 4,902,508; 4,956,178; 5,372,821; 5,955,110).
In the early 1990s, DePuy Orthopaedics Inc, now a Johnson & Johnson company, and Purdue University entered into a license agreement, which granted DePuy all rights on applications for SIS for musculoskeletal tissues. During the next few years, Dr. Badylak, a senior research scientist, and his team at Purdue worked with DePuy to develop, among other items, an SIS reinforcement patch. In 1998, the Food and Drug Administration cleared the device through a 510(k) Pre-market Notification that allowed DePuy to commercialize this product. In 2000, DePuy received FDA product clearance for use of the Restore® product in rotator cuff repair, limited to the supraspinatus.
Future applications for Restore® are expected to include ligament and tendon repair in other locations of the body (www.jnjgateway.com).
Future applications for Restore® are expected to include ligament and tendon repair in other locations of the body (www.jnjgateway.com).
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Tact®
(Wake Forest University School of Medicine)
Breakthrough 3-Dimensional X-ray Device Increases Comfort and Accuracy of Mammogram
The application of a revolutionary method of 3-dimensional imaging has resulted in a quicker, more comfortable and more accurate mammogram. The methodology, known as TACT® (tuned-aperture computer technology), developed by Dr. Richard Webber of the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, permits 3-dimensional breast images to be constructed from 2-dimensional images taken at random angles and distances. By reducing the need for each image to be taken from precisely the same position, a patient's position no longer needs to be reassessed and adjusted between each image. The need for less repositioning and less breast compression decreases the number of retakes, makes the procedure quicker and provides the patient with a more comfortable experience. The TACT® technology allows physicians to view breast tissue in single layers, avoiding obstructions caused by dense breast tissue and implants and resulting in images with a superior resolution compared with those produced by traditional breast imaging. By separating the tissue into individual layers, TACT® allows for an easier assessment of biopsy depth.
Fifteen years ago, Webber began his research, which led to the development of the first TACT® algorithms in 1990. Relying on the algorithms, Webber was able to construct a reference system to decipher the projection geometry of images taken from arbitrary and random positions. Application of the TACT® technology for the purposes of mammography begins with taking digital images of the breast from several different angles and storing these images in a computer. The reference system then is used to reconstruct the projection geometry that produced the images. Relying on the projection geometry, the computer reconstructs the position of each detail of the breast by slicing all of the 2-dimensional images together, resulting in a series of 3-dimensional images of the breast.
In 1997, certain medical applications of the TACT® technology and trademark, which are covered in part by U.S. Patents 5,359,637, 5668,844 and 6,081,577, were licensed to Instrumentarium Corporation of Helsinki, Finland. Instrumentarium, an internationally recognized leader in breast imaging devices and diagnostic breast care instruments, incorporated the TACT® technology into its Delta 16 TACT® and Delta 32 TACT® imaging machines.
See http://www.wfumc.edu
See http://www.instrumentarium.com
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TPMT
(St. Jude Children's Research Hospital)
Diagnostic Test Developed to Determine Correct Dosage of Chemotherapeutic
In 1998, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital (St. Jude) announced results of a study tracking the treatment of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), which revealed a five-year event-free survival rate in 80 percent of patients. Inspired by these results, St. Jude drafted a protocol setting a goal of a 100 percent survival rate. In taking a substantial step toward achieving this goal, St. Jude has announced development of a new diagnostic test to determine the appropriate dosage of thiopurines, a family of chemotherapeutics used to treat ALL, as well as arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease, and as an immunosuppressant following organ transplant. One of the first clinical applications of pharmacogenomics (the science of using genetic testing to predict the safety, toxicity and/or efficacy of drugs in individualized patients or groups of patients), the test is based on research begun in 1995 by Dr. William Evans, deputy director and chair of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at St. Jude.
Dr. Evans' research focused on a mutation identified in the thiopurine S-methyltransferase gene and the impact this mutation had on the functioning of the TPMT enzyme, which controls an individual's ability to absorb, metabolize and eliminate thiopurines. Three TPMT mutant alleles, TPMT2, TPMT3A and TPMT3C, were discovered to be responsible for 80 percent to 95 percent of decreased or deficient TPMT enzyme activity. Patients with diminished enzyme activity caused by these inherited mutations have a decreased ability to metabolize thiopurine and experience severe toxicity when accepted dosages of the therapeutic are administered. In the one of 300 patients who are TPMT deficient and lack all ability to metabolize the drug, the toxicity can be fatal. Testing will enable clinicians to identify patients with TPMT mutations and tailor dosages of thiopurines to the patient's individual genetic needs. Additional research conducted by Dr. Evans has established that patients with decreased and deficient TPMT activity receive substantially the same benefit from reduced dosages of thiopurines without experiencing the hematopoietic side effects associated with toxicity to the drug.
St. Jude exclusively licensed the patented TPMT technology to PPGx Inc., which was acquired by DNA Sciences Inc., of Freemont, California, and now is known as DNA Sciences Laboratories. DNA Sciences Laboratories has sublicensed the technology to Prometheus and both companies are now offering a clinical test based upon Dr. Evans' TPMT research.
See http://www.stjude.org
See http://www.instrumentarium.com
(June 18, 2001, Press Release, "DNA Sciences Integrates Pharmogenetics Testing and Clinical Business Services")
See http://www.ppdi.com
See http://www.prometheus-labs.com
One of the first clinical applications of pharmacogenomics (the science of using genetic testing to predict the safety, toxicity and/or efficacy of drugs in individualized patients or groups of patients) has been pioneered by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital (St. Jude). St. Jude announced the development of a new diagnostic test to determine the appropriate dosage of thiopurines, a family of chemotherapeutics used to treat childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) as well as arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease, and as an immunosuppressant following organ transplant. The test, based on research begun in 1995 by Dr. William Evans, deputy director and chair of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at St. Jude, focuses on a mutation identified in the thiopurine S-methyltransferase gene, which impacts an individual's ability to metabolize thiopurines. Patients with these inherited mutations experience severe toxicity when administered accepted dosages of the therapeutic. In one of 300 patients who lack all ability to metabolize thiopurine, the toxicity can be fatal. Testing will enable clinicians to identify patients with TPMT mutations and tailor dosages of thiopurines to the patients' needs. TPMT technology was exclusively licensed to DNA Sciences Inc. of Freemont, California, and sublicensed to Prometheus.
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UprimaTM
(Queen's University)
Uprima TM - A new treatment for male impotence
A century-old drug used to purge the body of poison gave three Queen's researchers the key to a new treatment for male impotence.
Used for many years as an emetic and to treat Parkinson's disease, apomorphine mimics the neurotransmitter dopamine, enhancing the signals transmitted from the brain. In the late 1980s Queen's urologist Dr. Alvaro Morales, a leading researcher in his field, and colleagues Drs. Jeremy Heaton and Michael Adams, began investigating the use of apomorphine to treat male erectile dysfunction, a disorder that affects more than 150 million men worldwide.
Aware that the drug caused an erectile response in rats, and recognizing its fast-acting effects on the central nervous system, the researchers reasoned that the key to the drug's effectiveness lay in its method of delivery and the speed at which it was absorbed. They began investigating drug-delivery methods and dosage levels that would produce an erectile response in men while avoiding the drug's primary effects of nausea and vomiting.
Clinical tests over several years showed the researchers that the drug could be absorbed through the membranes of the mouth when dissolved under the tongue. Because it bypassed the digestive tract, the drug was faster acting than orally administered drugs, usually taking effect in less than 20 minutes. Test results also showed that the drug proved most effective, with no significant side effects, when absorbed slowly, in pill form.
PARTEQ Innovations, the technology transfer arm of Queen's University, licensed the intellectual property to Pentech Pharmaceuticals, which worked with the researchers to produce a commercially viable form of apomorphine for the treatment of impotence. Pentech sublicensed development and marketing rights to TAP Holdings, a joint venture between Abbott Laboratories of Europe and Takeda Chemical Industries of Japan.
The U.S. patent for "Dosage forms and method for ameliorating male erectile dysfunction" was issued in 1998. In May 2001, Uprima TM became the first centrally acting therapy for erectile dysfunction to be approved by the European Commission. Currently on sale in more than 20 countries worldwide, UprimaTM is expected to become a serious competitor for Viagra TM, the first FDA-approved oral treatment for erectile dysfunction.
See http://www.parteq.queensu.ca
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Cohn Cardiac StabilizerTM
(Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center)
Beating-Heart, Open-Heart Surgery
The Cohn Cardiac StabilizerTM is a device that assists surgeons performing beating-heart, open-heart surgery, a procedure that is less stressful on patients than conventional heart surgery. In conventional heart surgery, the heart is stopped and a machine is used to circulate the patient's blood while the surgeon performs the bypass. In beating heart, or "off pump" heart surgery, the type that is done with the Cohn Cardiac StabilizerTM, a frame is used to stabilize or significantly reduce the motion of the portion of the beating heart on which the surgeon is performing the bypass. Surgeons can make a smaller incision and the operation can proceed more quickly, as time is not spent attaching and then detaching the patient from the cardiopulmonary bypass pump. Complications that may arise as a result of stopping the heart and placing the person on a pump are mitigated, and the convalescence period is also shorter than for conventional surgery.
The inventor, Dr. William Cohn, is a heart surgeon at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and rock guitarist in his free time. He built the first prototype out of soup spoons in his basement metal workshop and tested it at the hospital's animal laboratory, returning often to his basement to modify the design as he gained experience. A patient agreed to be operated on using the homemade device in December 1996. The operation was a success. His invention is described in U.S. Patent 6,033,362, which was licensed to Genzyme Surgical Products in 1997. Genzyme Surgical reports that sales of the device grew 226 percent in first quarter 2000 compared with a year ago. Over 300 surgeons have been trained to use it, and over 8,000 operations have been performed using this state-of-the-art device.
http://www.oberlin.edu/%7Ealummag/oamcurrent/oam_winter99/hearts.html
(winter 1999 issue of the Oberlin College Alumni Magazine)
See http://www.jcardioanesthesia.com/abs13_6/v13n6p764.html
(Journal of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Anesthesia, Case 6-1999 "Off Pump Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery" by Andrew Maslow, MD; Solomon Aronson, MD; Eric Jacobsohn, MD; William E. Cohn, MD; and Robert G. Johnson, MD.)
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FibreKor®
(University of Connecticut)
FibreKor®, strong, low cost, easy-to-use dental material.
Ideally, materials used to make dental crowns and bridges should be strong, look natural, last a long time, and be easy for the dentist or dental laboratory to mold and fit. Metal is strong and lasts a long time, but it is not the color of teeth and needs to be processed to the desired shape by a dental laboratory. Polymer devices are more natural looking, but in the past they have been weaker and less durable. Dr. Jon Goldberg and Dr. Charles Burstone, a materials scientist and orthodontist, respectively, of the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington, CT, collaborated to invent a fiber-reinforced composite material that can be used to build the substructure for a new bridge or crown. This base is then coated with an existing plastic restorative material to complete the artificial tooth that is strong and natural looking. The new UConn material has glass fibers embedded inside a polymer matrix and can also be used by dentists to make some dental devices right in their offices "while-you-wait." The first of two U.S. Patents issued in January 1988.
Jeneric/Pentron, Inc., a small company in Wallingford, CT, and one of the world's prominent makers of dental materials, signed the first of two exclusive licenses in August 1996, and introduced the first fiber-reinforced composite materials to the dental market in early 1997.
The first product, FibreKor®, is a replacement for metals in the fabrication of dental appliances, including crowns and bridges. The second product, Splint-It®, introduced in the fall of 1997, is used to hold groups of teeth together to compensate for a lack of gum or bone support. The third product, the FibreKor® Post, introduced in October 1998, is an alternative to the traditional metal posts that are put in place after root canal procedures to support subsequent construction of a crown. These dental composite products are sold in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. In the first three years of the licenses, FibreKor® was used in about one million dental procedures to fabricate orthodontic retainers, bridges, crowns, space maintainers, or splints.
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MG98
(McGill University)
MG98, a novel cancer therapeutic, begins Phase I clinical trials.
How is a tumor cell different than a normal cell? One important difference is that the DNA in tumor cells has many more methyl, or CH3 groups, attached to its DNA than does the DNA of normal cells. A drug that reduces the hypermethylation found in cancer cells can be an important tool in the fight against cancer, particularly refractory solid tumors, such as tumors of the head and neck, kidney, and prostate. How do the methyl groups get attached to DNA? It turns out that the aptly named enzyme methyltransferase places them there. Dr. Moshe Szyf, an Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmacology & Therapeutics at McGill University (Montreal Canada), a leader in the study of DNA methylation having published nearly forty peer-reviewed papers, including four review articles, on the topic over the last eighteen years, pioneered the use of DNA anti-sense oligonucleotides (see sidebar) to reduce production of methyltransferase, thereby reducing methylation of DNA, and thus attacking tumors. Dr. Szyf has demonstrated inhibition of tumorigenesis in mammals using anti-sense oligonucleotides. There are four issued U.S. patents related to these discoveries and many related international patents.
In 1996, MethylGene Inc. (Montreal, Canada) was formed to commercially develop these discoveries under license from McGill University. The company now employs over 40 people, including 33 involved in research and development. In 1999, MethylGene announced it had begun Phase I clinical trials in Canada and the United States of the novel cancer therapeutic, MG98, a second generation anti-sense oligonucleotide that attacks tumors by reducing hypermethylation of DNA.
What are anti-sense oligonucleotides?
Imagine two strings of beads that are themselves bound together by a connection between every two facing beads. The strings are the strands of DNA. The beads are four different molecules, Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine, and Guanine, and are called nucleotides. Adenine and Thymine connect only to each other, and Cytosine and Guanine connect only to each other. Thus, if the order of nucleotides in one strand is known, the order of complementary nucleotides needed to stick to it in a second strand is also known. When the two strands are connected to each other, DNA just stores information in our cells, it is not directing the cells to do particular things, e.g., like make the enzyme methyltransferase. In order for DNA to be in the instruction-giving mode, the two strands separate so that other molecules can start reading information off of a single strand of nucleotides to make a single strand of complementary messenger RNA. The messenger RNA carries the DNA's instructions outside the nucleus for translation into protein, in this case the enzyme DNA methyltransferase. It is possible to stop the single strand of messenger RNA from instructing the cell to make methyltransferase by introducing a complementary strand to bind the messenger RNA and prevent its being read by the cell's protein building molecules. This complementary strand of nucleotides that binds to the messenger RNA to prevent production of the protein is an anti-sense oligonucleotide
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NaturaTM
(Brigham Young University)
Digital hearing aid that tunes out the lawnmower.
Professors Doug Chabries and Richard Christiansen of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Brigham Young University have developed a new digital hearing aid that can be customized to the needs of each customer and can also suppress background noise. One woman reports being able to tune out the noise of a neighbor's lawnmower while chatting with her family in her backyard.
The hearing aid utilizes advanced digital signal processing algorithms that incorporate mathematical models of human physiological hearing mechanisms. This unique digital hearing aid, marketed by Salt Lake City-based Sonic Innovations as the "Natura™," allows sound to be broken into nine frequency bands. A healthcare professional can customize the frequency bands to compensate for the customer's specific impairment. This custom fit allows a more natural, lifelike hearing experience. The Natura™ focuses on the consonant sounds that begin words, which helps the ear distinguish similar sounding words like "sat" from "fat" or "kit" from "hit." The latest version of the product, released this year, contains a new computer chip that actively suppresses background noise, such as road noise on the freeway or the noise in a crowded restaurant, to allow the user to focus on important sounds like the human voice.
The BYU professors teamed with Thomas Stockham, formerly from the University of Utah, and Carver Mead, a Professor at the California Institute of Technology, to create a tiny computer chip to run the algorithm. Thomas Stockham is listed in the World Book Encyclopedia as the father of digital sound and has received numerous awards from the entertainment industry, including an Emmy and a Grammy Award, for his pioneering work. He has collaborated with Richard Christiansen since he was a graduate student, and one of the inspirations for Natura™. Carver Mead is an expert in integrated circuit design, and was instrumental in miniaturizing the size of the circuit.
Sonic Innovations licensed Professors Chabries' and Christiansen's work in 1994, and since September of 1998 has sold more than 200,000 devices. Sonic Innovations presently employs 200 people. Chabries and Christiansen are continuing research to further improve hearing aid technology.
See http://www.sonici.com for more information.
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Periostat®
(SUNY at Stony Brook)
Periostat® saves teeth without creating antibiotic resistant bacteria.
Over 67 million adults in the United States alone have periodontal disease-the second largest health care problem after the common cold. When bacteria build up around the teeth causing plaque, the body's immune response produces enzymes to fight the bacteria. Unfortunately, these enzymes are also responsible for the actual breakdown of the gums and bone supporting the teeth, leading to periodontal disease and eventual tooth loss.
Drs. Lorne Golub, Thomas McNamara, and Nungavarum Ramamurthy of the Oral Biology and Pathology Department in Stony Brook's Dental School, have been working on understanding and inhibiting enzymes that attack collagen, connective tissue vital for dental health, since the early 1980s. The Research Foundation of SUNY has 27 patents related to this technology. The researchers observed that low, non-antibiotic doses of tetracyclines, particularly doxycycline, and chemically modified tetracyclines, inhibit the enzymes that damage tissue surrounding teeth without creating drug resistant bacteria.
This technology has been licensed to CollaGenex Pharmaceuticals, of Newtown, Pennsylvania. CollaGenex has been selling Periostat® (doxycycline hyclate, 20mg capsules) to the dental market since its FDA approval in September 1998. It is the only FDA-approved systemic treatment for suppressing the activity of collagen-destroying enzymes. A key feature of Periostat® therapy is that the drug is delivered to all tissues supporting the teeth, whereas other therapies are effective only at specific tooth sites. Since product launch, CollaGenex Pharmaceuticals has booked approximately $31 million in net sales with 750,000 prescriptions written by dentists and periodontists.
Research has shown that the enzyme suppressing technology underlying Periostat® may also be applicable to other diseases involving destruction of the body's connective tissues, including cancer metastases and a broad range of inflammatory diseases. CollaGenex is developing a series of novel, proprietary compounds known as IMPACS® (Inhibitors of Multiple Proteases and Cytokines) to address these applications.
See http://www.collagenex.com and http://www.periostat.com
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Panretin®
(Salk Institute)
Panretin®, a topical treatment for AIDS-related Kaposi's sarcoma, receives FDA approval in 1998.
Panretin®, a topical treatment for AIDS-related Kaposi's sarcoma, works by binding to and then activitating receptors inside a cell, known interchangeably as intracellular or nuclear receptors. Research leading to the development of Panretinâ started in the mid 1980s, when Dr. Ronald Evans, a Howard Hughes investigator and world renowned expert on nuclear receptors from the Salk Institute, cloned the first nuclear receptors including the retnoic acid receptors. He went on to find a number of previously unknown receptors, and to identify and characterize a new hormone for the retinoid X receptors, 9-cis retinoic acid, the first non-peptide hormone identified in over 25 years.
In 1988, Ligand Therapeutics Incorporated (originally known as Progenx), a start-up biotech company, obtained an exclusive license to Dr. Evans work on retinoid receptors, and also on his work on other nuclear receptors. As is usual with discoveries in basic biology, significant additional work, time and funding was required to prove the clinical utility of Dr. Evans discoveries, including the retinoid receptors and the substances that bind to them.
Over the years Ligand entered into many strategic partnerships with major pharmaceutical companies directed toward development and testing of various types of substances that bind to nuclear receptors, including partnerships with Allergan, Pfizer, Glaxo, Wyeth-Ayerst, Eli Lilly, Warner Lambert and others. The strategic partnership with Allergan led to the development of Panretinâ. Clinical trials for Panretinâ were started in the mid-90s, Ligand requested FDA approval in May 1998, and received it later that year. Another drug that interacts with retinoid X receptors, Targretinâ, a treatment for CTCL, a type of lymphoma, is presently the subject of an expedited new drug application, and is expected to be reviewed by the FDA by the end of this year.
What is a nuclear receptor, and why are they important?
Some hormones, such as insulin, interact with cells by binding to a receptor on the surface of the cell. Some hormones, such as estrogen, interact with cells by diffusing all the way through the cell to its nucleus, and binding to a nuclear receptor there. Nuclear receptors are important because in addition to estrogen, many other important hormones, progesterone, androgen, thyroid, to name a few, work by binding to nuclear receptors, and a very important class of pharmaceuticals are the substances which also bind to these receptors. An example of a well know pharmaceutical which works by binding to (nuclear) estrogen receptors is Tamoxifen.
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Taxol
(Florida State University)
Taxol® receives two approvals for first line cancer therapy in 1998.
Taxol® (paclitaxel), which the National Cancer Institute has described as the most important cancer drug in 15 years, received approval from the FDA for use to treat several new indications in 1998, including two indications for first-line cancer therapy: Taxolâ in combination with cisplatin was approved for first use in treating ovarian cancer, and Taxolâ in combination with Herceptinâ was approved for first use in treating metastatic breast cancer. Previous approved indications for Taxolâ were for use only after failure of other first-line treatments. In particular, it had already been approved for treatment of refractory ovarian cancer; as a second-line treatment of AIDS-related Kaposi's sarcoma; and in treatment of breast cancer after failure of combination chemotherapy for metastatic disease or relapse within six months of adjuvant chemotherapy.
The active compound was first discovered during the 1970s in the Pacific Yew tree. The bark from one and a half trees of this endangered species was required to produce the typical treatment course. Removing the bark killed the trees. In 1991, Professor Robert Holton, a Florida State University chemist, found a way to synthesize paclitaxel using starting material from the needles and twigs of the more common English Yew, which could be harvested without killing the tree. Two years later, with continued NIH funding, he achieved total synthesis. The work was licensed to Bristol-Myers Squibb, which began production in 1992. It is now the company's leading anti-cancer drug, with 1998 worldwide sales in excess of $1 billion.
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INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
qVisionTM - Visualized Security Management
(University of New Brunswick Centre for Research & Development Services)
Managing Potential Network Threats
A desire to reduce hostile attacks on the University of New Brunswick's (UNB) computer network led to the development of qVisionTM by Chris Newton, a Technical Specialist with UNB's Department of Integrated Technology Services. Newton, who has over ten years of experience in network monitoring and visualization, intrusion detection, and data mining, spent two years designing a system that visually represents a network of any size, for monitoring and managing potential internal and external threats and misuse.
The system enables users to immediately identify malicious activities, such as Distributed Denials of Service, establish all aspects of the attack, and instantly take corrective action to contain the threat before significant damage can occur. A key feature of the technology is its ability to track the small, yet highly destructive, percentage of malicious code that eludes current anti-virus programs, firewalls, and Internet Detection Systems. Its data mining and drill down attributes also allow managers to quickly identify the machines and remote addresses involved in attacks.
In the fall of 2000, the Centre for Research and Development Services (CRDS), which houses UNB's technology transfer office, invited Mr. Newton to present his invention at a technology commercialization event that it was hosting. Here, Newton met a local entrepreneur interested in commercializing the technology. In February 2001, the entrepreneur and his partners founded Q1 Labs Inc., a privately funded Delaware Corporation with offices in California and New Brunswick, Canada.
In April 2001, CRDS transferred the technology to Q1 Labs through the negotiation of Software License, Software Purchase, and Stock Subscription Agreements. This represented the first equity deal completed by the university's technology transfer office, which was formed in 1999. Q1 Labs established R&D facilities in New Brunswick and formed an alliance with UNB whereby seventeen live networks are available for product testing and research. In early 2002, the company launched qVisionC Corporate 1.1, a network monitoring solution for security and network management, and then in August 2002 it released qVisionC Corporate 1.2, which includes an integration with Intrusion Detection Systems.
Q1 Labs currently employs nine people in New Brunswick, including Chris Newton as Chief Architect, and has offices in San Jose, Boston, Atlanta, and Toronto. Its customers include global leaders in communications and information technology, and a number of high profile financial institutions and insurance companies. The company recently received a loan guarantee from the Province of New Brunswick, which it will use to expand its workforce and develop state-of-the-art facilities. Q1 Labs has successfully negotiated over $500,000 in licensing fees to date, and the company is currently valued at over $6.5 million CDN. The company forecasts that VC investment will close before the end of 2002.
University of New Brunswick Centre for Research & Development Services:
http://www.unb.ca/centres/crds/tech.html
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CyberMark Smart Card®
(Florida State University)
From FSUCard to CyberMark Smart Card®
Leave most of your wallet at home.
What better place than a city-sized university to develop the combination of a student ID, a library card, a secure access card (swipe it to enter your dorm room or to view confidential university academic and financial records), a bank card (debit and ATM), a phone card (separate PIN), and cash equivalent card (embedded chip to which up to $100 can be added) for use in everyday small purchases? In 1985, Florida State University (FSU), a community of 29,000 students, began adding these functions to its student ID. Thanks to the innovative hard work begun in the mid 1980s of Bill Norwood and his colleagues in the FSU Finance and Administration section, FSU created the multipurpose FSUCard used by 45,000 staff and students.
Meanwhile, CyberMark, an Ohio company, was also interested in developing multifunction administrative and financial cards. In 1995, Cybermark filed a patent on an intelligent card reader that could "translate" information stored on computer chips (embedded, in the card) so that it could be easily understood by devices that were built to understand information encoded in magnetic strips. In 1996, realizing that universities were ideal test sites for smart cards, CyberMark started a pilot smart card project at Ohio Dominican College with more than 2,000 cardholders. In 1997, having identified and appreciated FSU's substantial expertise in the design and use of multifunction cards, particularly those with both embedded computer chips and magnetic strips, Cybermark licensed the FSU technology.
Bill Norwood and eight colleagues left FSU in 1997 to jumpstart Cybermark's expanded business. Sixty people (45 of them in Talahassee, Florida) process transactions on the 700,000 issued cards. In May 1999, First USA, the world's largest credit card issuer, purchased shares in Cybermark and has added a credit card option to the card. Cybermark has continued marketing and issuing the cards to educational institutions-for example, Villannova, Guilford College, University of Toronto, and Cleveland State University students all have campus cards based on the FSUCard-and is also marketing to corporations and for use at sporting events. Corporations are interested in it for many of the same reasons as universities-secure access to buildings or records, banking functions, and cash equivalent for small purchases. Sporting events are interested in the card primarily as a cash equivalent and after-the-event souvenir. Cybermark has orders to supply 400,000 more cards and has long-term data management contracts with 35 organizations.
See http://www.fsucard.fsu.edu/
(Information on the Florida State University FSUCard)
See http://www.cybermark.com/press-releases.html
(Certain press releases reference universities which decided to use Smart Cards)
http://www.cybermark.com/press-articles_archive_97.html
(More university-related history on the development of Smart Card)
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Google, Inc.
(Stanford University)
Google, Inc., an Internet search engine, based on pag |
