Prolifagen

University of Pennsylvania

The heart is a muscle, and like all types of muscles, it can be injured. In humans, heart muscle is not able to regenerate after injury. This can lead to heart disease which develops over time, eventually leading to an untimely death. Prolifagen is combining discoveries in gene therapy, materials science, and drug delivery to bring human tissue regeneration therapies to reality. The lead drug candidate is a proprietary microRNA embedded in a hydrogel construct to enable a single-shot therapy for heart tissue regeneration, bypassing the need for exogenous stem cells. Prolifagen is seeking seed funding for IND-enabling porcine studies and a new CEO to lead the team into their next chapter.

AgingSense

University of Pennsylvania

AgingSense is a company focused on developing technological solutions to complex problems of aging to improve quality of life of older adults. The first technological solution being developed is Heart Failure Monitoring Socks. This wearable sock technology monitors persons with heart failure for exacerbations as well as response to treatment. The socks monitor for changes related to heart failure specifically, leg edema, using stretch sensors, and fatigue using actigraphy and gyroscopes. Data is sent by blue tooth to an app which is run through an algorithm in a secure cloud that triggers a message to the individual with HF, a trusted other and/or their provider of changes in their condition. The ultimate goal is to improve heart failure management to keep persons with heart failure home and out of the hospital with a better quality of life.

Neuralert Technologies

University of Pennsylvania

Neuralert offers non-invasive, wearable wristband devices which monitor asymmetric arm movement/weakness, a tell-tale sign of stroke. Neuralert’s proprietary algorithm accurately identifies stroke symptoms and immediately alerts medical staff to assess the patient and begin treatment. Neuralert’s technology can detect stroke in under an hour, which is more than 4 times faster than manual assessment processes currently used. The Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has most recently granted Neuralert designation as a Breakthrough Device. Neuralert is searching for an advisory board member as they complete their seed round of fundraising.

SOLUtion Medical

University of Pennsylvania

SOLUtion Medical is an early-stage life science company developing user-friendly delivery systems for reconstitutable drugs. These devices improve patient outcomes through increased adherence to patient injected life-saving medication. We specifically aim to improve the administration efficacy of life-saving injectable medication with our TwistJect auto-injector for people living with adrenal insufficiency including Addison’s Disease and Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia.

LignaMed

University of Pennsylvania

LignaMed is a biotechnology company developing breakthrough treatments for asthma, organ transplant viability, and pulmonary fibrosis. Many of these conditions suffer from localized ischemia-reperfusion injury due to local hypoxia. LignaMed's lead candidate LGM2605 is a novel small molecule synthetic lignan with anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. LignaMed expects to file an Investigational New Drug application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2021 for Airway Hyperreactivity (AHR) in Th2-low asthma, a subtype of glucocorticoid resistant asthma. LignaMed is recruiting a CEO to take its breakthrough pharmaceutical and device technologies from pre-clinical studies to clinical trials and FDA approval and/or exit with a strategic pharmaceutical or device company.

Instanosis

University of Pennsylvania

Detecting and quantifying very low concentrations of disease biomarkers is important for the diagnosis and management of many disease conditions in their early phases. Technologies to detect low concentrations of biomarkers are only available in the advanced research or central clinical laboratories, due to high technology complexity and costs causing significant delay in reaching correct diagnosis. Instanosis testing platform enables ultrasensitive, low-cost and rapid quantitation of disease biomarkers. This platform has many applications in multiple instances, where rapid, convenient and ultra-sensitive biomarker detection is crucial for disease detection and treatment. The lead application is the ultrasensitive detection of SARS-CoV-2 antigen in the community setting using smartphones. Current diagnostic gold standard for SARSCoV- 2 is rRT-PCR, which requires expensive extraction instrument, thermocycler, facilities and trained operators to conduct and hours or days to turn around results.

VitalCore

University of Pennsylvania

VitalCore is a Medical Devices Integration (MDI) solution that provides an integrated platform for showing the status, error messages, and patient info stored across all devices in various hospitals. VitalCore provides a visualized form of status data for easier comprehension and viewership by using tables, bar graphs, line charts, pie charts, and donut charts that enable the users to grasp the trend of the data and generate insights efficiently to improve patient care and reduce costs. Compared to similar device connectivity monitoring providers, VitalCore is focused on medical devices and has an active pilot that provides both an HL7 viewer and mobile application for healthcare professionals on the go. VitalCore is looking to expand their leadership team as they prepare to fundraise.

CyloFlux

University of Pennsylvania

CyloFlux is is unlocking the ability to passively store the "cold” during the winter to cool homes and buildings in the summer. Powering our homes, offices, schools, hospitals, restaurants, and stores consumes a lot of energy. Residential and commercial buildings account for approximately 40% of the nation’s total energy demand – greater than that for either industry (32%) or transportation (29%) – and about 75% of all electricity use (and even more of peak power demand). The resulting annual national energy bill for buildings totals over $410 billion. CyloFlux is developing a thermal diode that will unlock improved thermal energy storage technologies for applications in building energy efficiency. CyloFlux's heat pipe-based thermal diode is a dynamically tunable thermal energy transport material that allows rapid, directional transport of thermal energy - offering a potential 60% or grater savings in installation over ground source heat pumps (GSHPs).

Radix Therapeutics

University of Pennsylvania

The labyrinth of jumbled blood vessels in the microenvironment of a solid tumor remains one of the toughest blockades for cellular therapies to penetrate and treat. For example, glioblastoma (GBM), the most common and aggressive type of brain cancer diagnosed in more than 22,000 Americans every year, is known for its prominent and abnormal vascularity and being immunologically "cold." Radix Therapeutics is developing immunotherapies to eradicate solid tumor cancers by targeting the tumor stroma, bridging the gap between current immunotherapies and drug-resistant cancers. Radix's improved immunotherapy combines chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy with selective inhibitors, enabling engineered cells to punch their way through and attack the tumor. Proof of concept has shown significantly enhanced survival in mice.

Evergreen Therapeutics

University of Pennsylvania

Neurodegenerative diseases are a large group of progressive and eventually fatal diseases of the central nervous system (CNS). These diseases – including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s diseases, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease), and Huntington’s disease – are taking an increasingly heavy toll on individuals and the society as the human population ages, yet they remain incurable. Evergreen seeks to develop novel therapies for several neurodegenerative diseases based on AAV-mediated gene transduction.

Intervir

University of Pennsylvania

Our ultimate goal is to develop novel small molecule, broad-spectrum therapeutics against viral infections caused by filoviruses, arenaviruses, rhabdoviruses, and others that depend on the PPxY L-domain motif for virus egress and spread of infection. Some of these viruses, including Ebola (EBOV), Marburg (MARV), and Lassa fever (LAFV) viruses, are highly pathogenic and classified as Category A, bioterror pathogens. Importantly, we have identified an analog capable of blocking in vivo activity in a Marburg virus challenged mouse model, providing essential proof of concept for this novel class of anti-viral therapeutics. We predict that the novel class of anti-viral products targeting EBOV, MARV, and LAFV will be used for treatment of infected individuals as well as in prophylactic treatment of soldiers, healthcare workers, or others at high risk. Emergency administration of such an antiviral therapeutic during an outbreak could potentially inhibit virus dissemination in infected individuals.

TAIRIS

University of Pennsylvania

There are 230 million surgeries performed per year worldwide. Surgical experience is the primary factor dictating outcome of each operation. However, surgical experience is not quantifiable, not accessible as a data source, and not easily distributable between users. This leads to variability in outcomes, complications, inefficiency, and high costs in surgical care delivery. What if an artificial intelligence (AI) platform could be designed that would quantify and learn from surgical experience, then customize and distribute tailored information back to all surgeons in real-time?

Vellum Biosciences

University of Pennsylvania

Little is known about how engineered CAR-T cells move through the body and proliferate after they are first removed, altered, expanded in number and, finally, returned to a patient's body. Vellum Biosciences has developed a way to genetically tag CAR T cells that enables them to be imaged via positron emission tomography (PET) scan in combination with a radiotracer specific to that tag.

TSLP Therapeutics

University of Pennsylvania

Inflammatory diseases are often treated with immunomodulatory drugs which can result in severe side effects due to their systemic administration. This technology is a vitamin D analog which can be administered topically, therefore reducing systemic side effects. The drug works by triggering release of a regulatory cytokine from the skin and decreasing T cell activation which is involved in many inflammatory disorders.

MGV Therapeutics

University of Pennsylvania

Myasthenia Gravis (MG) causes weakness and rapid fatigue of muscles under voluntary control and is caused by an antibody-mediated autoimmune response. Current treatment options include acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (with modest efficacy at improving neurotransmission). The prevalence in the U.S. is estimated at 20 cases per 100,000 people. The vaccine utilizes cytoplasmic domains of human AChR subunits and incomplete Freund’s adjuvant.

Mechano Therapeutics

University of Pennsylvania

Musculoskeletal injuries, such as cartilage damage and ligament or meniscal tears, lead to debilitating joint pain and the need for surgical intervention to provide relief and restore function. Mechano Therapeutics is developing a tunable drug delivery platform that responds to mechanical forces within the human body to deliver therapeutics. Their mechanically-activated microcapsules (MAMCs) can be programmed to release biofactors ‘on-demand’ in order to optimize and accelerate the repair and regeneration of musculoskeletal tissues.

Innervace

University of Pennsylvania

Parkinson's disease (PD) is characterized by uncontrolled tremors and issues with movement and balance. It affects 1-2% of people over 65, costing the US over $35 billion a year. Current treatments for PD, such as L-DOPA and deep brain stimulation (DBS), only treat the motor symptoms but are not able to fix the underlying cause of the deficits: loss of the nigrostriatal pathway. To address this gap in clinical care, the first “tissue engineered nigrostriatal pathway” was developed outside the body and precisely microinjected as a unit to “wire in” and physically replace the missing pathway, “reversing the clock” on the neurodegenerative progression of PD. Preliminary results in animal models show success recreating the pathway which delivers the dopamine signals that are lost in PD patients. Full pitch deck available upon request.

SNTF Diagnostics

University of Pennsylvania

SNTF Diagnostics is a diagnostic for predicting brain damage and long-term dysfunction after a concussion. Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) is a common neurological injury, affecting over 1.5 million people in the US annually, as well as thousands of military personnel. Currently, there are no proven therapies for mitigating brain damage and improving the long-term outcome of mTBI. Dr. Siman discovered that the blood level of SNTF peptide identifies mTBI patients that are likely to have white matter structural damage and persistent brain dysfunction.

FindOA

University of Pennsylvania

Osteoporosis affects 50 million Americans and over 200M people worldwide. 50% of hip fracture sufferers lose ability to walk and 20% of suffers dye from it. Over 2M fractures and 300,000 hip fractures occur annually in the U.S. resulting in $20 billion and $12B in annual healthcare expenses, respectively. Currently, greater than 50% of the individuals with osteoporosis are not detected by bone density testing, the standard-of-care diagnostic test. This technology is a high-resolution MRI & CT analysis tool evaluating 3D bone structure and allowing for accurate assessment of (i) bone strength and health, (ii) osteoporosis development risk, and (iii) hip fracture risk. This imaging-based early diagnostic and prognostic for osteoporosis and hip fracture risk has data from over 1000 patients.