Fellows are selected for their “spirit of innovation” in university research, helping to generate groundbreaking inventions that have a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development and the welfare of society.

Trent is the only 2020 fellow from the state of Kentucky and the seventh from UofL. The 2020 Fellow class of 175 inventors represents 115 research universities and governmental and non-profit research institutes worldwide.

“It’s certainly an honor and I think it’s a testament to the drug discovery program we’ve built at the Brown Cancer Center and UofL through many collaborations and partnerships,” said Trent, a professor of medicine and the Wendell Cherry Endowed Chair in Cancer Translational Research. “The benefits of UofL are the support we’ve had for taking creative activities through intellectual property protection to the commercialization grant programs.”

As deputy director of basic and translational research at the , Trent’s Molecular Modeling Facility uses computer predictions to understand and virtually test how drug and disease molecules might interact before real-world testing in the lab.

Trent also runs the UofL partnership with , a company that created a grid that uses the processing power of thousands of computers in schools across Kentucky that Trent uses to screen potential drugs and compounds against and, most recently, . The DataseamGrid has the capability to screen millions of potential compounds against molecular targets in only a few days.

Trent holds more than 50 patents, 24 of which are U.S., and numerous licenses and option agreements with potential commercial partners. Among other accolades, he received the Apple Science Innovator Award and the 2019 , the latter awarded through the UofL Commercialization EPI-Center.

“We’re very proud of John, and all his work to create innovations that have the power to advance our health,” said Kevin Gardner, UofL’s executive vice president for research and innovation. “The fact that John and other UofL researchers before him have received this honor, the highest for academic inventors, shows our university’s commitment and leadership in research, invention and developing technologies that change and improve the way we work and live.”

Previous Fellows from UofL include Suzanne Ildstad and Kevin Walsh (2014), William Pierce (2015), Paula Bates (2016), Robert S. Keynton (2017) and Ayman El Baz (2019).

Trent’s induction, paired with Bates’ four years earlier, also makes the two of them one of only a handful of married couples to be named fellows. The duo also frequently works together, including developing the aptamer that would become the basis for innovative technologies since applied to fight and novel .

The 2020 NAI Fellow class collectively holds more than 4,700 issued U.S. patents.

Among the class are 24 recipients of National AcademiesĚýof Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine honors, six recipients of American Academy of Arts & Sciences honors and two Nobel Laureates, as well as other honors and distinctions. The complete list of 2020 NAI Fellows is available .

Keynton is a professor and the Lutz Endowed Chair of Biomechanical Devices of the Department of Bioengineering at the J.B. Speed School of Engineering. Keynton was founding chair of the bioengineering department, which under his tenure grew into the most productive basic and translational research department in the Speed School. He is also the director of research initiatives in the office of the executive vice president for research and innovation.

“I am humbled by the nomination and support from my colleagues at UofL and I am truly honored to have been selected to be a member of the National Academy of Inventors and to be associated with such a prestigious group,” Keynton said. Ěý

Keynton’s research focuses on Lab-on-a-Chip devices, microsensors, biomedical devices and biomaterials. He joined UofL in 1999 and has co-founded three companies with UofL colleagues. His career has centered on multidisciplinary research, which includes more than $51 million of funding from agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, Wallace H. Coulter Foundation and the Veterans Administration.

“Professor Robert S. Keynton is a leader in research and innovation at UofL and the nation and around the world,” said William Pierce, UofL executive vice president for research and innovation, who was named an NAI Fellow in 2015. “As founder of our department of bioengineering, he hasĚýbuilt a talented faculty as he built his own research efforts.ĚýHe has brought in many millions of researchĚýdollars in research funding individually and has led or helped lead development of our Nanotechnology Center, our Coulter Project initiative, our REACH (NIH) for proof-of-concept centers, and our NSF I-Corps Centers to provide opportunity for so many.ĚýCurrently he leads efforts that will provide opportunities for untold numbers of students, fellows and future alumni.ĚýWe are proud to have Rob as one of our leading innovators, inventors and scientists.”

Keynton is the fifth UofL researcher to be named an NAI Fellow. In addition to Pierce in 2015, honorees have been Suzanne T. Ildstad, MD, and Kevin M. Walsh in 2014 and Paula J. Bates in 2016.

With the election of the 2017 class there are 912 representing more than 250 research universities and governmental and non-profit research institutes. The 2017 Fellows are named inventors on nearly 6,000 issued U.S. patents, bringing the collective patents held by all NAI Fellows to more than 32,000 issued U.S. patents.

The new NAI Fellows will be inducted April 5 as part of the of the National Academy of Inventors at the Mayflower Hotel, Autograph Collection inĚýWashington, DC.

Shown with her are NAIĚýPresident Paul R. Sanberg, PhD, DSc, left, and Andrew H. Hirschfeld, Commissioner for Patents for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.Ěý

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is among the 175 Fellows elected this week by the NAI. To qualify for election, NAI Fellows must be academic inventors named on U.S. patents and nominated by their peers for outstanding contributions to innovation in areas such as patents and licensing, innovative discovery and technology, significant impact on society and support and enhancement of innovation.

The 2016 Fellows are named inventors on 5,437 issued U.S. patents. Bates herself holds more than 50 national and foreign patents.

Those named this year bring the total number of NAI Fellows to 757, representing more than 150 research universities and governmental and non-profit research institutions. UofL is the only institution in Kentucky represented among the Fellows. Previously named Fellows from UofL are William M. Pierce Jr., PhD, executive vice president for research and innovation; Suzanne T. Ildstad, PhD, director of the Institute for Cellular Therapeutics; and Kevin M. Walsh, PhD, director of the Micro/Nano Technology Center.

Election to NAI Fellowship is considered the highest professional distinction accorded solely to academic inventors. According to the 2016 NAI Activities Report, NAI Fellows have generated more than 8,500 licensed technologies and companies and created more than 1.1 million jobs. More than $100 billion in revenue has been generated based on their discoveries.

About Paula Bates

Bates is an associate professor in the Department of Medicine with associate appointments in the departments of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Pediatrics. She also is an associate scientist with the James Graham Brown Cancer Center and a member of UofL’s Institute for Molecular Diversity and Drug Design. She joined the UofL faculty in 1999.

One of her major research interests is a class of anticancer agents known as “G-rich oligonucleotides” or “GROs,” which she discovered in collaboration with fellow cancer center researchers John Trent, PhD, and Donald Miller, MD, PhD These inhibit the growth of many different types of cancer cells, but have no effect on normal cells, and are also being widely used throughout the world as tumor-targeting ligands.

Bates, Trent and Miller founded a Louisville-based biotechnology company named Aptamera to develop GROs, which culminated in one of the GROs — AGRO100, later renamed AS1411 and then ACT-GRO-777 — becoming the first in its class to enter human clinical trials.

Bates’ current research focuses on mechanistic aspects of GRO activities and in collaboration with UofL researchers M. Tariq Malik, PhD, and Martin O’Toole, PhD, she is developing GRO-linked nanoparticles for use in cancer therapy, imaging and drug delivery. In collaboration with UofL’s G.B. Hammond, PhD, Bates also is studying anticancer compounds derived from Amazonian plants and a novel synthetic agent that selectively kills cancer cells.

In 2015, UofL was awarded $3 million from the National Institutes of Health and combined it with $3.1 million in matching funds as one of three Research Evaluation and Commercialization Hubs in the United States. Bates is principal investigator on the grant which created UofL’s “ExCITE Hub” — reflecting its function to “Expedite Commercialization, Innovation, Translation and Entrepreneurship” in increasing the success rate and speed at which biomedical research is translated into products in the health care marketplace.

Bates earned a BA in Chemistry from the University of Oxford in England and a PhD in biophysics from the University of London. She then completed a three-year postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

UofL ranked in a five-way tie for No. 97 with 25 patents in fiscal year 2015.

“Belonging to this elite list is yet another affirmation that UofL has made great strides in the innovation arena in the last several years,” said Eugene Krentsel, associate vice president for research and innovation.

The ranking comes from a report published by the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) and Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO). It utilizes data acquired from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to highlight the important role patents play in university research and innovation.

The NAI and IPO have published the report annually since 2013. The rankings are compiled by calculating the number of utility patents granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in which the university is the first assignee on the printed patent.

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