The U-M Tech Transfer

The University of Michigan Tech Transfer is responsible for the transfer of U-M technology to the marketplace. They provide responsive, professional service to inventors and industry partners. This department has spawned more than 50 new biotech companies in the past few years, and these are a few of the success stories.

Polytorx
A Better Concrete Reinforcement Material

Concrete has been used to build roads, bridges and other structures for over 2,000 years. But because concrete is brittle and prone to fail catastrophically under tensile loading, reinforcing materials are added to make concrete perform more like steel.

In the early 1990s, U-M Civil Engineering Professor Antoine E. Naaman began experimenting with new shapes of fibers for concrete reinforcement. By 1997, when civil engineering graduate student Luke Pinkerton joined Naaman's lab as part of a work-study assignment, the research team had developed a screw-like steel form with better anchoring properties than traditional reinforcement materials. Ultimately, Naaman and his team devised Helix™-a toothpick-sized, triangular-shaped, twisted steel fiber proven to increase the tensile strength of concrete by a factor of five.

In 2002, a few years after the Helix™ technology was awarded a first patent, Pinkerton enrolled in an MBA program at Georgia Tech with the idea of helping his faculty mentor build a business around the new technology. During the year that followed, Pinkerton's business plan won two major competitions.

In the summer of 2003, the engineer-turned-businessman found himself back in Ann Arbor with a scholarship to the Ann Arbor IT Zone Boot Camp program. There, he met investor Bill Orabone, who worked closely with Naaman, Pinkerton and the Tech Transfer staff to launch a company known as Polytorx in June of 2003. Interns from UM Tech Transfer's TechStart program provided business research expertise to help the start-up through its first, formative months.

Sales of Helix™ are climbing rapidly. "Numerous pilot programs are underway to test Helix™ in municipal and commercial applications," Pinkerton says. "Also, a phase-II, $600,000 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the federal government will enable us to work with University of Michigan scientists to develop new, highly targeted applications."

Cardiogene Therapeutics
Making an Impact on Heart Disease

As a University of Michigan research scientist, physician Elizabeth G. Nabel specialized in vascular biology. Her husband and medical colleague Dr. Gary J. Nabel focused on virology and immunology. As Elizabeth recalls, "In the mid-1980s, it occurred to us that we could merge these two technologies in our research." They did. And it wasn't long before the Nabels had combined catheter technology and gene delivery technology into a unique protocol for treating heart disorders such as atherosclerosis, arrhythmia, heart failure, and instent restenosis-the scarring and subsequent blocking of blood vessels following stenting and angioplasty.

Their subsequent experiments offered proof of concept that recombinant genes could be delivered directly to the walls of blood vessels using existing angioplasty catheters and stents, the devices used to prop open coronary arteries.

By the 1990s, the Nabels were collaborating with Harvard physician and scientist Dr. Jeffrey M. Leiden, a former UM colleague. In 1994, working closely with UM Tech Transfer, the three researchers founded CardioGene. Ultimately, the company's technology platform grew to include proprietary delivery systems, devices and vectors-biological transport mechanisms for local delivery of therapeutic genes. In June, 1998, CardioGene was acquired by Boston Scientific Corporation (BSC), a leader in the medical device industry.

In 1999, the Nabels left Ann Arbor for appointments with the NIH in Bethesda, Maryland. Both of them look back on their work with UM Tech Transfer as a "remarkable experience" in which they learned to bridge the gap between lab and clinic.

Neural Intervention Technologies, Inc.
Making an Impact on Neurovascular Disease

Each year, millions of people suffer strokes that result in debility or death. Approximately 80 percent are ischemic strokes, caused by lack of blood flow to the brain. But as many as 150,000 additional cases annually involve hemorrhaging stroke, in which neurovascular lesions and other defects lead to a rupture of blood vessels. The fatality rate for hemorrhaging stroke is extraordinarily high-and millions of people are at risk.

In the past, treatments for "the other stroke" have involved dangerous surgical procedures or toxic substances for repairing lesions. But that could change with the introduction of a non-toxic, biocompatible product called ALGEL™ which blocks the flow of blood to vessel defects and promotes healing of dangerous lesions. The ALGEL™ technology was initially developed at Arizona State University and further refined at the University of Michigan by biomedical engineers Tim Becker and Daryl Kipke. In 2001, with the assistance of UM Tech Transfer, Drs. Becker and Kipke joined forces to found Neural Intervention Technologies (NIT), Inc.

According to serial entrepreneur and NIT President and CEO Thomas A. Collet, the organization has been built on collaboration. "There's ALGEL™ itself," he explains, "and the fact that we're bundling technology from Arizona State and the University of Michigan. But there's also the strong support we've received from UM Tech Transfer in everything from licensing to assistance with reimbursement and regulatory planning."
Recently, NIT and UM received a joint $2.2 million award for clinical development from the Michigan Life Sciences Corridor. The company has also received two Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants.

NanoBio Corporation
Revolutionizing the Future of Health Care

Dr. James R. Baker Jr. worked closely with UM Tech Transfer specialists to patent hundreds of different formulations for his invention. In 2000, the lure of this amazing technology was powerful enough to draw Ann Arbor businessman and financier Mike Nold out of retirement and into the post of CFO at NanoBio Corporation, a start-up company that holds exclusive rights for licensing the nanoemulsion technology from the University of Michigan.

Currently, the company has eight pharmaceuticals in the pipeline. Two rounds of angel funding were oversubscribed, and the first round of venture funding is expected to generate as much as $20 million.

Professor Omar M. Yaghi
Meeting the Challenge of Fuel Cell Technology

Hydrogen in sufficient quantities for use in vehicles or electronic devices requires either dangerously high pressures or extremely low temperatures. That particular challenge made hydrogen especially appealing to UM Professor of Chemistry Omar M. Yaghi.

For the past 14 years, Yaghi has been producing structures from molecular building blocks-essentially stitching together highly porous molecules of organic and inorganic materials to create containers on a nanometer scale. The resulting new materials are known as metal organic frameworks, or MOFs.

"These crystal-based 'nanovessels' can trap and store small and large molecules or cause them to react within the pores of the structure," Yaghi explains. "By custom-designing the walls of these storage vessels to attract hydrogen, we're able to stack molecules and make it practical to store the element in large volumes." He notes that one key factor has been the ability to develop strategies for creating greater surface area of materials. "Using the metaphor of a parking structure," he says, "we've created more parking spaces for molecules. One gram of MOF contains the surface area of 17 tennis courts, or approximately 5,000 square meters."

With the assistance of UM Tech Transfer, Yaghi and his research team have patented designs and production protocols for hundreds of materials. Currently, BASF is producing MOFs in kilogram quantities. Other license agreements are being forged with automotive companies. And while much of the research is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, major corporations are also stepping forward to provide financial support.

GoKnow, Inc
Leading a Revolution in Education

There's a quiet revolution taking place in classrooms from New York to Norway.

Thousands of K-12 students are trading in their textbooks for handheld computers loaded with software programs that are both powerful and fun to use. Thanks in large part to these new educational tools, students are not only enjoying the learning process as never before but also excelling in national standardized tests. In fact, scores in math and science are jumping by as much as 15 percent.

Surprising? Not to U-M computer scientist and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor Elliot Soloway, who helped set the revolution in motion and-along with his students-developed the software that's powering the handheld movement.

The Evolution of an Educator
Computer scientist. Inventor. Mentor. Consultant. Software designer. Businessman. Elliot Soloway is all of these things. But the role he relishes most-the one that defines him and inspires him-is that of educator.

It hasn't always been that way. Back in the 1980s, as a junior faculty member at Yale University, Soloway devoted himself to research in artificial intelligence (AI). But in 1988, the year he was recruited to the University of Michigan, everything changed. "As a new faculty person and a new parent, it suddenly dawned on me that instead of making machines smarter, I should be using my time to make kids smarter. So I stopped doing AI and started working in schools, trying to make technology an effective tool in the classroom. Then I discovered that schools don't want technology. They want curriculum."

That rude awakening led Soloway to UM School of Education Professor Phyllis Blumenfeld, who became his collaborator in creating educational tools to promote inquiry-based learning in middle school science. By 1990, Soloway and Blumenfeld were working with Professors Joseph Krajcik, a specialist in science education, and Ronald Marx, an educational psychologist. Following a spate of National Science Foundation grants and the launch of successful software programs, the four core faculty established HI-CE, the Center for Highly Interactive Computing in Education, a research collaborative that continues to attract faculty from around the University.

Reaching Out to the Digital Generation:
"Kids today are digital-age kids," says Soloway. "Technology is an integral part of their lives. And we have astonishing data from 28 middle schools in Detroit proving that technology is the hook, the way to engage digital-age kids in science." To make learning more appealing, Soloway and his colleagues began promoting handheld computers as the most task-appropriate classroom learning tools, based on their size, cost and power. With generous funding from NSF, Microsoft, Intel, and Apple, they developed nearly two dozen educational software programs.

In 2000, guided by UM Tech Transfer, the HI-CE faculty formed a start-up called GoKnow, Inc. for the purpose of licensing its software and introducing its technology to as many schools as possible. As Soloway explains, "No one understands our products better than we do. So, with the help of UM Tech Transfer, we decided to create our own business and our own distribution channels."

Helping Students Learn How to Fly
Soloway's goal, always, has been to give students the tools and freedom they need to make their own discoveries. As third-grade teacher Janine Kopera emphasizes, "He understands how students learn, and he places that knowledge at the core of his work."
It's a pedagogical model that Soloway uses in his own university courses as well, preferring to let his students "learn how to fly."

Beginning in the summer of 2001, Soloway – who holds appointments in the School of Education, the College of Engineering and the School of Information – enlisted undergraduates in the task of creating software for grades K-12. One of those students, Adam Wieczorek, observes that Soloway has "a rare gift for understanding how technology can be applied in the real world." This freewheeling approach has led to the development of an entire suite of productivity tools for handheld computers.

Of course, the point of all this immense creativity has been to move technology out of academic research settings and into real-world classrooms. "I'm grateful for the opportunity we've had to launch our own business," says Soloway. "We now have customers in England, Norway, Canada, and Mexico as well as the U.S."

A Teacher – First, Last and Always
Despite his successful venture into the business world, Elliot Soloway's real love is education, and it shows. Two years ago, he won the University's Golden Apple Award for Teaching, and this year he was named Teacher of the Year by the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Honor Society. "I've found my calling," he declares. Ph.D. student Katy Luchini Colbry couldn't agree more, describing Soloway as "an outstanding teacher at the forefront of ed-tech research, who offers a combination of computer science, education and classroom work that's simply not available elsewhere."

And what will Elliot Soloway be doing in the near future? "I want to give something back," he says, "in gratitude for my own excellent public school education. A lot of my work will continue to be focused in Detroit schools. That's both a privilege and a painful experience. The kids in Detroit don't have a lot of hope. But when you see them dancing with the technology, you see that there is hope. And where there's hope, there's life. And where there's life, there's opportunity. For me, technology is a vehicle for building hope and opportunity."