Since the fall of 2017, teams of Auburn faculty and students have been developing research projects in the hope of receiving grant money from Auburn’s LAUNCH program.
11 projects were submitted this year, and after the first stage of judging in November, the competition was narrowed down to five teams who gave their final presentation the first week of April as part of the Harbert College of Business’s Entrepreneurship Summit.
“The goal of LAUNCH really is that we’re trying to bring Auburn research to the marketplace, so in a lot of instances you’ve got situations where some very compelling research is being done, but maybe they’ve run out of funding or they don’t have a special funding for commercialization,” said Cary Chandler, director of Business Development and Startups. “It’s really for that last mile of funding they need to improve commercial viability.”
LAUNCH was started in 2016 by the Office of Vice President of Research and Economic Development and has since awarded seven projects almost $323,000 in funding. This year, three projects were awarded a total of $98,000, and now each of these projects is beginning the path to full commercialization.
“What we’re looking to do is bring these innovations to the marketplace, number one it brings revenue back to the inventor, to the college, and to their lab, and also to our commercialization center here so that we can help patent protect more innovations,” Chandler said. “Also, in so many cases, we are putting things out in the marketplace that will do good things for mankind.”
Chandler said the amount of money teams receive is based off how much they estimate they will need to continue developing and commercializing their projects.
“Clot-in-a-Can” received $35,700 this year for continuing research and commercialization. The Clot-in-a-Can research team is headed by Peter Panizzi, an associate professor in the department of drug discovery and development at the Harrison School of Pharmacy. Will Colthorpe, senior in biochemistry, has been working with Panizzi on the project.
“Basically, it’s a hemostatic agent for controlling severe bleeds,” Panizzi said. “So basically, the idea was that we come up with a way to prevent extreme blood loss by using an agent that was produced by bacteria.”
Panizzi said the special protein he is hoping to utilize for blood clotting has been known for some time, but no one has tried to use it yet for healing purposes. Panizzi said he hopes Clot-in-a-Can can eventually be used to treat battlefield wounds.
“I’ve worked on this particular protein for what must be almost twenty years,” Panizzi said. “The idea had been around, and we had toyed with the idea before, but it really gained steam when we submitted the application and got the market survey, and it determined that there really is a big need for it because what’s currently out there is extremely expensive to use.”
Panizzi said it has been exciting to watch his research project gain momentum and is eager to see what the future holds for Clot-in-a-Can.
Recent doctoral graduates from the department of chemical engineering Barry Yeh and Tareq Anani along with Professor Allan David received $56,116 to fund their project to create “Gadolinium free MRI and MRA contrast agents.”
Yeh said the research project began as his Ph.D. dissertation, and after seeing the potential commercial value, he decided to continue working on the project by applying for LAUNCH.
“We thought we had a very good presentation, and it seemed like we had a good chance of winning,” Anani said. “We were definitely very happy to get the award.”
Contrast agents are often injected into patients before they receive an MRI scan because it helps clarify the image and allows doctors to more easily spot inflammation and tumors.
“The current contrast agent can only be given to patients who have healthy kidneys,” Anani said. “So if you have bad kidneys, you are unable to take that MRI medium and the doctor will have to give you [a contrast agent] that’s not as effective, so there is like a hole in the market and we believe that our product can be given to all patients whether you have a good or bad kidney, any patient can take our product without having to worry about safety or toxicity.”
Anani said they will now use the grant money to begin animal testing and expects this to take around 9 to 12 months.
“The main goal is to push this product for getting FDA approval,” Yeh said. “To do that we’ll need support from funding, and to get there is where the LAUNCH money comes in, we need to accumulate enough initial data to have a proposal that will fund the majority of our studies, and that’s where we are at right now.”
Graduate research assistant Michael Knotts received $6,420 for the development of his induction heating 3D printer.
“This is a new method that we’re exploring of printing metals, primarily non-aluminum right now, in an extremely cheap and quick and efficient way,” Knotts said. “Right now what we’ve built is about desktop size, and we’re looking at the possibility of scaling that up to something larger like an industrial application.”
Knotts said the project started when Lewis Payton, director of design and manufacturing laboratory, recommended for him study the work ofmRuel Overfelt, director of the Center for Industrialized Additive Manufacturing.
“I explored initially what they discussed,” Knotts said. “I started seeing other possibilities that were out there that hadn’t been fully explored and started working off of that.”
Knotts and his team will use the money received from LAUNCH to continue to improve and debug the desktop model.
“There are other companies working right now on developing desktop models, but nothing has been too certain or definite,” Knotts said. “The biggest thing is nothing has been too cost efficient, with the low low cost we’ve had when developing this right now, it’s something that just about anyone can purchase and own.”
Do you like this story? The Plainsman doesn't accept money from tuition or student fees, and we don't charge a subscription fee. But you can donate to support The Plainsman.
