on October 09, 2015 

Eight years ago, the half-built digital medical center on U.S. 280 appeared to be as dead as a body cooling in the hospital morgue.

Launched in 2001 as a state-of-the-art digital hospital for orthopedic surgery and rehabilitation, the project basically stopped two years and $200 million later, in the midst of a fraud investigation at parent company HealthSouth.

It sat empty for years, and then sold to Daniel Corp., a real estate company. That company then sold the hospital shell to Trinity for the bargain price of $43.5 million.

In January 2014, the Auburn University's Office of Innovation Advancement and Commercialization (IAC), formerly the Office of Technology Transfer, contacted Alabama Launchpad to request a commercial assessment report on an invention disclosure from Dr. Joonyul Kim, an assistant research professor in the university's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

 Alabama Launchpad, a program of the Economic Development Partnership of Alabama, partners with the offices of tech transfer across the state to provide services designed to help researchers understand the market potential for their discoveries.  Auburn was enthusiastic about the potential of Dr. Kim's work and wanted to validate internal findings with a third party assessment.

Alabama Launchpad provided an assessment from TreMonti Consulting through its Alabama Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR) Support Program.  The TreMonti report noted that Dr. Kim's work with aptamer pairs had market potential and recommended further development efforts and continuation of prosecution of intellectual property protection.