ThinkLive

University of Chicago

Founded in 2018 at the Georgia Institute of Technology, ThinkLive! is a vibrant blend of education and music, offering STEM education through the medium of turntabling. This unique platform is built by a collective of passionate educators, STEM professionals, and music enthusiasts, aiming to foster intellectual curiosity, socioemotional functioning, and an enduring love for STEM among students. By leveraging youth culture and music, ThinkLive! creates interactive teaching strategies that resonate with diverse learners.

AgileMD

University of Chicago

Industry-leading analytic for predicting all hospital-caused deterioration and sepsis. eCART continually monitors patients using real-time data and drives clinical workflows for front-line staff and rapid response teams to prevent failure to rescue. AgileMD eCART is dedicated to improving patient outcomes by leveraging the way data is used. They are part of a revolutionary change in the delivery of healthcare that is being driven by the rapid uptake in technologies related to the capture, storage, and analysis of data. They empower electronic health records to deliver standardized clinical pathways that recommend orders, document decision-making, and save time.

BiomeSense

University of Chicago

[Update (8.2023): The company raised $6 million through a combination of Seed 3, and Seed 4 funding on February 14, 2023] Integrating proprietary technologies, the GutLab, “smart bathroom” technology for continuous patient microbiome tracking & MetaBiome, a cloud-based bioinformatics platform. Novel tools to continuously track, analyze, and store individual microbiome profiles, providing vastly more data than, and at a fraction of the cost of, current practice. Creating the GutLab, a novel “smart bathroom” technology for continuous, at-home microbiome tracking & MetaBiome, a cloud-based bioinformatics platform. This platform is a generational leap over existing measurement tools: (1) much cheaper and more scalable, (2) produces & analyze dense time-series data, unlocking an entire dimension of never-before-accessible biomarkers, and (3) has far higher accuracy & precision, ensuring all data generated can be stored in a single, standardized database – a first for the microbiome field.

Qlarity Imaging

University of Chicago

AI software that gives radiologists information they do not have access to today. Qlarity Imaging utilizes the QuantX MRI image analysis technology and reference database to aid in initial diagnosis and evaluation of extent of known disease of breast cancer patients. The software dramatically improves biopsy precision and treatment outcomes by identifying exactly where a malignancy is, how and where the needle should be inserted, and how deep the needle should go, effectively guiding the radiologists performing biopsy procedures. The technology was designed with physicians in mind, resulting in easy implementation and adoption in research and community hospitals demonstrating that not only does the technology work in theory, it also works in practice resulting in material improvement to patient outcomes.

AddGraft Therapeutics

University of Chicago

There are over 900k cocaine addicts in the USA alone while worldwide cocaine usage rates have been growing at over 2% a year over the last decade. In the USA this results in over 15k deaths, 505k ER visits and $21B lost annually. Despite all of this, there is currently no FDA approved treatment for cocaine abuse disorder. AddGraft Therapeutics aims to be the first FDA approved treatment for cocaine abuse disorder utilizing our revolutionary gene delivery platform. Our treatment promises to be long lasting, minimally invasive and highly effective at treating the challenging aspects of addiction. AddGraft's technology is a novel skin-based gene delivery platform for treating cocaine abuse. Patients receive an autologous skin graft of genetically modified skin-stem cells which produces a dual molecule solution to effectively break down cocaine, preventing lethal overdose, and to behaviorally prevent frequent use, relapse, and developing of new addictive behaviors.

Phlaxis

University of Chicago

(UPDATE: Phlaxis received nearly $280,000 in investment, including the Moonshot Prize, a $40,000 award that recognizes unique technologies to solve global challenges. Phlaxis also participated in the second cohort of the Compass deep tech accelerator.) Between 2007 and 2017, there has been a 377% increase in the treatment of diagnosed anaphylactic reactions to food. The current standard of care is not enough to stem the tide of patients suffering the healthcare costs of food allergies. Phlaxis is an innovative immune tolerance company focused on providing a new approach to treating food allergies. Phalxis' allergen tolerance platform features proteins, or antigens, that are engineered to deliver precise, targeted allergy therapy, without the side effects of broad immunosuppression. Phalxis’ allergen-specific platform can be translated to virtually any food allergy, including the Big 8 of milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, crustacean shellfish, wheat, and soy.

UV-C N95 Sterilization

University of Chicago

Currently there are several solutions under consideration for disinfecting N95 respirators for re-use, with UV-C as the preferred solution because of ease of deployment and widespread applicability. Problematically, present UV-C disinfection solutions are limited by shadowing, which prevents exposure of the masks to the required effective dose of UV irradiation. The inventors utilized UV-C light field modeling and extensive test measurements to develop a proprietary arrangement of lamps for disinfecting. The configuration eliminates shadowing, allowing for full irradiation and disinfecting of the contaminated N95 respirator surface in the shortest amount of time.

Parallel Works

University of Chicago

[Update (8.2023): SBIR/STTR funding total - $572k] Parallel Works is a web-based platform that simplifies and automates the complex workflow of parallel computing. They speed up simulation and analytics campaigns across industries by making parallel computers from hybrid clouds and clusters easier to use. Their platform is built on the Parsl and Swift parallel scripting technologies developed over the last decade by Argonne National Laboratory, and is designed to run simulation and analytics on the world's largest computing resources. (Sept. 2021 -Argonne and Parallel Works won the Federal Laboratory Consortium’s (FLC) Midwest Regional Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer for bringing Argonne’s Machine Learning–Genetic Algorithm (ML-GA) design optimization software to commercialization.)

ClostraBio

University of Chicago

(Sept. 22 Update) ClostraBio, Inc., a late-preclinical stage biopharma company developing therapeutics to transform intestinal health, today announced a $4 million close of its Series A-1 financing. The round was led by Portal Innovations and funds will be used to complete remaining preclinical studies to advance CLB-004 towards first-in-human clinical studies treating mild-to-moderate ulcerative colitis. ClostraBio is a preclinical-stage pharmaceutical company creating medicines to treat diseases resulting from intestinal barrier dysfunction, especially those caused by shifts to the microbiome. The first indications are in the treatment and prevention of food allergy, initially peanut allergy, and ClostraBio recently began a program in colitis. ClostraBio has licensed a proprietary drug delivery platform and are using this platform for oral delivery of small molecules and metabolites derived from the microbiome to the GI tract.

Tharzen

University of Chicago

Relying on developers to do web app maintenance is expensive and time-consuming. Many content management system (CMS) operators like Wordpress claim you can 'do it yourself' visually, but after 20-50 plugins, visual interfaces fall short as many dependencies fail. Tharzen offers a visual editing interface for any live website under any CMS, even hard-coded and dynamic web apps.