The event, hosted by the UofL , honored faculty and staff from five schools and colleges for accomplishments in developing new technologies, working with industry and launching research-backed startups.

“We like to say UofL’s ‘igniting innovation’ — and that’s absolutely true,” said president Kim Schatzel, giving opening remarks at the event. “Since joining the UofL community, I’ve seen that our campus is full-to-bursting with creativity and ideas, some with the power to transform the way we live and work. If UofL is igniting innovation, our innovators are the spark, and the work they do has a lasting and positive impact here on our campus and well beyond.”

Six major awards were also presented, including Innovator of the Year. This year, that honor went to School of Medicine researcher Nobuyuki Matoba, recognized for his work to tackle devastating diseases, inflammatory bowel disease and cancer, through groundbreaking new vaccines, immunotherapeutics and treatments that leverage protein engineering and plant-based biotechnology.����

In addition to Matoba, major awards were also presented to:��

• • Dan Popa, of the J.B. Speed School of Engineering, who won the Catalyst Award for his work to build an environment that encourages innovation at the Louisville Automation and Robotics Research Institute (LARRI);
  • Geoff Clark, Joe Burlison and Kenneth Palmer, of the School of Medicine, who won the Industry Partnership Award for their longstanding commercialization relationship with Qualigen Therapeutics;��
  • Cheri Levinson and Christina Ralph-Nearman, of the College of Arts and Sciences, who won a Trailblazer Award for their work to develop novel virtual reality and personalized treatment tools for eating disorders and launch a startup, Awaken Digital Health Solutions, to drive them to market;
  • Kunal Kate, of the J.B. Speed School of Engineering, who won a Trailblazer Award in part for his work with the Kentucky MBDA Advanced Manufacturing Center to help minority-owned businesses leverage cutting-edge technology;��
  • Noppadon Sathitsuksanoh, of the J.B. Speed School of Engineering, who won the night’s final Trailblazer Award for his work to develop new ways of producing sustainable fuels and chemicals from waste materials;

Over the past two years, 57 of the honorees earned new patents, 28 had their technology optioned or licensed to a company and 68 were awarded innovation grants, such as or , aimed at driving technologies to market. In the past fiscal year, the work of these innovators led to one new startup, 319 agreements, 49 new patents and $15.6 million in innovation-related income.

UofL Executive Vice President for Research and Innovation Kevin Gardner, whose office organizes the event, said those numbers represent real-world impact — and more, impact that can save and improve lives.��

“The innovations our researchers are developing have the potential to diagnose, treat and cure disease and overall make the way we live and work better,” he said. “What we celebrate reflects what we value as an institution — and with awards like these, we show that we value entrepreneurship and innovation.”

Researchers at the University of Louisville are developing a new vaccine for lung cancer that’s stable and scalable, in addition proving as much as 80 to 100% effective at preventing certain tumor growth in mouse models.

Prevention is key because, while conventional treatments and therapies may kill most of the cancer, a small percentage of cells are resistant. Those are cancer stem��cells, which have the ability to reproduce and sustain the cancer.

“Those cells sit there, and they have the capability of regrowing the entire tumor by themselves,” said co-inventor and assistant professor of medicine, Dr. Kavitha Yaddanapudi.

A vaccine sidesteps those cells by helping the body build immunity to cancer before it develops. So far,��the UofL vaccine has been tested against lung cancer and melanoma in mice, and 80 to 100% of the vaccinated mice used in each animal trial were cancer free when compared to the non-vaccinated control group.

The research team hopes to develop the vaccine to be effective against all cancer types and is now working toward human trials. They’re working with the UofL to protect and commercialize the intellectual property.

The vaccine contains vesicles isolated from embryonic stem cells, an idea inspired by�� who have had multiple children seem to be less likely to develop cancer.

“That brought up the idea that cancer cells and embryonic cells were pretty similar,” said co-inventor Dr. John Eaton, a professor emeritus in medicine, pharmacology and toxicology at UofL. “And it turns out that’s true.”

Through development, the team was able to streamline the vaccine, giving it a longer shelf life, more stability, and making it easy to make in large quantities.

“We tried to simplify, simplify, simplify,” said co-inventor and an associate professor of medicine, Dr. Chi Li.

The research to now has been primarily backed by $325,000 in grant funding from the National Institutes of Health. They’re now looking for funding to support additional research and development.

Check out more about the trials in the video below:��

Listen to the team’s.

The EIRs, under the UofL (EVPRI), will provide guidance on product development, business planning and other activities to accelerate the commercialization of university inventions. UofL’s EIRs are:

• Josh Nickols, PhD, MBA, a seasoned biotechnology entrepreneur and venture adviser with experience in commercializing technologies born at higher education institutions;
• Jeff Cummins, MBA, a finance and business development executive with experience in start-up and fast-growth companies;
• Charley Miller, MPS, a technology startup founder, product manager and game designer with a focus on systems and user journey.

UofL ranks as one of only 120 U.S. “Research 1” universities with “very high research activity,” according to the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher ����ֱ��. The EIRs will amplify UofL’s existing efforts aimed at getting technologies born from that research to market, which include a “superfecta” of .

“UofL research has produced groundbreaking innovations that have impacted a great number of industries and could impact so many more,” said UofL President��Neeli Bendapudi. “By pairing those innovations with seasoned, tested entrepreneurs, we can accelerate their journey from idea to the marketplace, generating new products and companies and making the world a better place.”

Each EIR will serve a six-month term, beginning in April, and will work with the and researchers. More information on the EIRs is available .��

“UofL is full of potential game-changing technologies,” Nickols said. “I’m excited to work with faculty and staff at UofL to drive those innovations toward market.”

Funding for the EIRs comes from the , a public-private partnership, led by UofL and backed by the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development, to grow Louisville’s entrepreneurship ecosystem.

The technology, dubbed “ALAN” (for Aptamer-Linked Au Nanoparticles), has shown promise as an agent for radio-sensitizing and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast, as well as for the treatment of many forms of cancer.��

In exchange for the technology, UofL will receive cash payments on the achievement of certain milestones and royalties on future sales, as well as potential equity in the company. Qualigen also has a sponsored research agreement with UofL for further development.��

“We have very high hopes that working together, with the strengths that we have at Qualigen and what UofL has here with the research center, that we can do something good going forward,” said Michael Poirier, the company’s president and CEO.

UofL’s Dr. Paula Bates, who developed the base technology, said this drug is more targeted than many currently available cancer treatments. Those treatments may also harm healthy, non-cancerous tissue.

“The key is that the ALAN technology can kill cancer cells, but not normal cells,” said Bates, a professor of medicine.

The aptamer itself has been previously tested in more than 100 patients and has had no evidence of severe side effects. At least seven of those patients either saw their cancers disappear or shrink substantially.��

In the new ALAN technology, the aptamer is attached to gold, which should make it more durable and active than the original formulation. The new ALAN formulation is expected to enter clinical trials by 2020.

Bates worked with a team of researchers from the UofL School of Medicine and J.B. Speed School of Engineering on development. That team included Drs. Kyung Kang, Tariq Malik and Marty O’Toole.

“Together, we came up with a technology that has a lot of promise,” said O’Toole, an assistant professor of bioengineering. “It’s rewarding to know our work could really help people.”

The technology was developed with support from the university’s robust innovation programs, including the and , a National Institutes of Health Research Evaluation and Commercialization Hub (REACH), as well as a Kentucky Commercialization Fund grant.��

The UofL protected the intellectual property and helped develop the commercial partnership with Qualigen.

“We are excited to work with Qualigen on the product development of our nanoparticle-based drug to fight cancer,” said Dr. Allen Morris, the office’s director. “This is more than just a license — it’s a collaboration.”

The team took down four other teams in the 5 Across finals, each with five minutes to pitch their big idea. That earned Pascal , plus the $500 earned for winning a preliminary round in February.

Pascal Tags is led by engineering student Brandon Young, and recent grad Haley Pfeiffer. The company is based on a that can help track inventory, which Young invented with UofL’s Dr. Thad Druffel.

“This prize money will help us get our pilot programs started faster and really accelerate our growth,” Pfeiffer said. “The competition also allowed us to gain some great connections and tell more people about our innovation.”��

She said Pascal hopes to begin its first pilot programs within the next three to six months. The team also is working to better understand their customers, and continuing its research and development.

The team worked with UofL to protect and commercialize the technology, and participated in UofL’s entrepreneurship training and the��NSF ��(I-Corps) site program��for translational research.��

Since then, they’ve gone on to and Young competed .��

Pfeiffer also has recently been accepted into the����at UofL, aimed at helping women and underrepresented entrepreneurs submit more competitive applications for SBIR and STTR grant funding.

“We are so excited to see the community supporting and believing in Pascal Tags,” Pfeiffer said. “We can’t wait to see what the future holds.”��

To solve that problem, researchers at the University of Louisville have for loading preservative compounds into red blood cells.��This technology may aid in��extending blood’s window of use by enabling the dehydration and dry storage of red blood cells at room temperature.

Now, via a $750,000��from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and a cooperative agreement with Indianapolis-based Cook Regentec, the team is working on further developing the technology and getting it to market.

“The goal is that this kind of system could be commercialized,” said Dr. Jonathan Kopechek, an assistant professor of bioengineering. “There’s a whole lot of opportunity. It’s exciting.”

Drs. Kopechek and Michael Menze, and graduate student Brett Janis, invented the technology and developed the prototype – a small, chamber with fluid channels inside. They are working with the to commercialize and protect the intellectual property.

“The researchers have proven it works and they have the prototype,” said Dr. Paula Bates, a UofL professor of medicine, who teamed up with the inventors to secure this grant as principal investigator.

By creating temporary breaks in the cell walls with tiny bubbles and ultrasound, the team can inject a preservative that protects the cell membranes. Once loaded with that preservative, the cells are ready for dehydration. Then, the blood can be rehydrated on-demand — even months later.

The process is sort of like dehydrating sea monkeys, then watching them spring back to life when they’re submerged in an aquarium.

“The dehydrated red blood cells can be reconstituted by gently mixing with water,” said Menze, an associate professor of biology and assistant chair. “It’s that simple: ’just add water’.”

Much of the initial proof-of-concept work and prototype development for the technology was funded by a grant from UofL’s translational research program, which is part of the National Institutes of Health REACH network. The researchers also are products of entrepreneurial training and NSF’s (I-Corps) site translational research program, both��at UofL.

By , the UofL team hopes to accelerate the technology’s path to market and explore other potential uses. While it’s initially being used for blood, this is a platform technology and could have multiple applications, including for storing or transforming other cell types.

The hub is backed by a federal grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is potentially valued at a total of $3.5 million over three years, with nearly $500,000 in funding the first year.��

“At the University of Louisville, we firmly believe that we can solve the problems that plague our region through collaboration,” said UofL President, Dr. Neeli Bendapudi. “This partnership with the private sector and an impressive consortium of area academic institutions will help speed groundbreaking advances in health care technology to the market, resulting in healthier citizens and a stronger economy.”

Leading the grant is , a Louisville-based healthcare technology accelerator that focuses on startups and commercialization. The hub also joins 24 academic institutions led by UofL, the University of Kentucky and West Virginia University.

Together, they will create an “accelerator hub” — one of four funded by NIGMS — for biomedical technologies in the Southeast Institutional Development Award (IDeA) region, which includes Kentucky, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Puerto Rico, South Carolina and West Virginia.��

As part of the hub, the grant partners will create online education, resources and tools for commercialization that all the participating institutions can use. There will also be focused�� support to assist where those services are not currently available.

“We are grateful to the NIH to have entrusted our team with this grant so that we can move scientific discoveries out of the lab and into commercial products, ultimately improving patient care and enhancing human health,” said Jackie Willmot, co-founder and CEO of XLerateHealth.��“Our hub will provide researchers and innovators with entrepreneurial knowledge and skills that will enable them to create and commercialize successful, sustainable businesses.”

According to Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM)’s 2016 Annual Survey, academic institutions in the Southeast IDeA region performed more than $1.5 billion in federally-funded research and generated 38 startup companies.��The institutions participating in this grant made up 66 percent of that research and 82 percent of the region’s newly licensed startup companies.

UofL, for example, has developed a robust translational research, commercialization and entrepreneurship infrastructure. It is��the only research university in the country to receive four prestigious translational research programs:�� and through the National Science Foundation, through NIH, and the .

“The partners on this grant have had great success with commercialization, providing startup support and implementing other programs for ,” said Dr. Robert S. Keynton, UofL’s Interim Executive Vice President for Research and Innovation and a principal investigator on the grant. “By expanding multi-state, multi-institutional access to those resources, we believe we can have a big national impact.”

Check out video from today’s press conference announcing the Regional Biomedical Technology Accelerator Hub:��

The milk exosome-drug delivery tool, invented by UofL’s Dr. Ramesh Gupta and his team members – Dr. Radha Munagala, Dr. Farrukh Aqil and Jeyaprakash Jeyabalan –��could improve how humans absorb drugs meant to treat disease and relieve pain. Now, two companies – PureTech Health and Roche – are working to advance the technology and get it to market.

“This field is emerging, it’s so new,” said Gupta, a professor of pharmacology and toxicology��and endowed chair of oncological research at the UofL School of Medicine, James Graham Brown Cancer Center. “We want to take this to tens of millions of people.”

Gupta said many drugs are taken orally, but they may not be fully absorbed once they get to the stomach.

This technology could improve the absorption rate by loading the drugs into milk-derived nanoparticles tiny enough to easily move through tissue and cross the blood-brain barrier. Gupta ensures drugs are delivered to the right part of the body (or the right “zipcode,” as he puts it) by “decorating” the nanoparticles with antibodies or folic acid or some other ligand.

This is a platform technology, Gupta said, meaning it could have numerous applications. Just as a computer can run many programs, the milk exosomes can be used to deliver many drugs and treat many diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s or cancer.

“This technology has the potential to help a lot of people,” said Dr. Holly Clark, deputy director of UofL’s Office of Technology Transfer (OTT). “That’s our goal — we want to get the groundbreaking research happening in our labs to market, where it can help people.”

Gupta initially founded a startup company, 3P Biotechnologies, and licensed the technology from the OTT. The office worked closely with��3P Biotechnologies on a commercialization strategy involving a sublicense to clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, PureTech Health, in Boston.

Now, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd and Hoffmann-La Roche Inc., a Swiss pharmaceutical giant,��has signed an agreement with PureTech to use the technology for the oral administration of Roche’s antisense oligonucleotide platform.

PureTech is working with Gupta to develop drug delivery applications of the exosome technology, and 3P Biotechnologies is exploring additional applications as far ranging as veterinary medicines, nutraceuticals and cosmeceuticals, as well as bulk production of exosomes.

“Universities are doing a lot of great work. They’re the birthplace of a lot of these ideas, and move them forward,” said PureTech senior associate, Dr. Rishab Shyam. “We look forward to building this relationship and taking this technology forward.”

That was the subject of��the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s 2018��China IP Road Show, a recent day-long conference held��at the University of Louisville.��

The event featured speakers from specialized backgrounds — law, academia, industry, government — who��walked attendees through the process of securing,defending and commercializing intellectual property in China.

“Each program seeks to impart information to U.S. innovators and entrepreneurs on protecting their intellectual property while also maximizing its commercial value,” said Conrad Wong,��Attorney-Advisor for the��China Team at the USPTO’s��Office of Policy and International Affairs.��

The USPTO worked with with ��(OTT) to organize the event, which was held in the downtown Clinical and Translational Research Building. OTT helps��protect and commercialize the research done in labs all over campus.

“UofL has a rich history of innovation, commercialization and entrepreneurship,” said��the office’s director, Dr. Allen Morris, who also spoke at the event. “We are continuing to grow in these efforts.”

UofL has a support system and training turning research into commercializable intellectual property. And, Morris said, UofL is the only university to have a “Superfecta” of , which aim to get innovations developed on-campus to market.

The USPTO has been running its China IP Road Show since 2001 in cities around the U.S. This fiscal year, the office plans to hit 10 cities, both large and small markets.

Wong said they chose to bring the road show to Louisville��because of��the area’s commercial ties it has to China and the number of successful enterprises here. The city, for example, is home to GE Appliances, which has been part of of .����

“The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is very grateful to the University of Louisville for helping make this China IP Road Show one of our most successful this year,” Wong said. “The University’s personnel were extremely helpful in planning and supporting the program.”