With the recent announcement of fiscal year 2015 numbers, it's clear that more ideas and inventions are making their way out of U-M research laboratories and into the "real world" than ever before.

The increase in new inventions was aided by a partnership between FFMI and U-M Tech Transfer, and strong collaboration with the College of Engineering's Center for Entrepreneurship (CFE) on commercialization education programming.

In the fiscal year that ended in June, Medical School tech transfer activity resulted in:

• 166 new inventions, up from 133 the year before
• 51 new patent applications, up from 45
• 54 patents awarded, up from 39
• 74 new option and license agreements with industry, up from 60
• 10 new startup companies, up from 1
• $74.8 million in revenues from Medical School tech transfer license agreements. A substantial component of these revenues is from a monetization agreement connected to a previous license for a drug initially developed at U-M to help patients with Gaucher disease.

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death in the United States, with 2,200 people dying every day. Researchers are constantly looking for new therapeutics to treat these deadly diseases, and safety testing is critical as new chemical entities move forward on the path to becoming effective drug candidates. But many potentially good drugs are removed from further development and never reach patients because they are found to be potentially cardiotoxic.

 

Previously, a compound's cardiac safety was determined by either its effect on the heart's contractile activity or its likelihood of leading to life-threatening arrhythmia. The latter is usually determined via chemical testing on intact animals or animal cells. However, these tests are unreliable and often flag a potential drug as risky, removing it from further development despite its overall potential beneficial therapeutic effects.

 

University of Michigan team Todd Herron, Ph.D. and Jose Jalife, M.D. recognized a need to streamline the drug development process and promote the release of new drugs to market. As a result, they designed a platform for cardiotoxicity testing using cardiac muscle cells derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). Herron and Jalife have generated an unlimited supply of these cardiac muscle cells that can be cryopreserved, thawed, and cultured. The derived cells display all the physiologic hallmarks of cardiac muscle cells, and can accurately predict eventual cardiotoxicity in humans. These safety tests are required for any potential therapeutic compound, antibody, or other biological/chemical entity.

 

"This platform reduces the chances of advancing experimental drugs with serious cardiac safety issues, and can save the pharmaceutical industry millions of dollars and precious time," says Herron. "It will also catapult the use of human stem cell derived cardiac muscle cells into mainstream toxicity testing, resulting in a significant decrease in the amount of animal testing."

 

"MTRAC funding has been critical as we develop this technology," says Jalife. "And the MTRAC business development support is extremely helpful in guiding us towards additional funding opportunities to continue towards commercialization."

 

MTRAC is supported by the U-M Medical School, the U-M Tech Transfer Office, and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and works to "fast forward" projects with a high potential of commercial success, with the ultimate goal of positively impacting human health. The Human Heart in a Dish project is just one of 11 projects in the 2015 cohort funded by MTRAC. In 2014, the program funded 11 teams for early commercialization development.

The FFMI team is excited to announce that, once again, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is inviting U-M investigators to submit proposals for funding by the company's Discovery Partnerships with Academia (DPAc).
    
Funded DPAc projects will operate as a joint team, with GSK and U-M investigators working toward shared goals and with open sharing of information and data. GSK is looking for projects with a specific and testable drug development hypothesis that, if successful, would deliver therapeutic benefit to patients.
    
Proposals can be in any disease area and based on any treatment modality, be it small molecule or biopharmaceutical. GSK will undertake projects starting from early screening to late lead optimization, and the company is open to a wide range of possibilities that have progressed beyond the exploratory and technology platform stages.
    
Investigators are invited to submit their one-page, non-confidential proposal via UMMS Competition Space for competitive consideration by the GSK DPAc leadership team.
    
More details can be found at the RFP webpage or questions can be directed to Casey Wegner of the FFMI Business Development team.

The U-M Office of Technology Transfer recently hosted its annual "Celebrate Invention" reception. Remarks by Ken Nisbet, Associate VP Tech Transfer, and S. Jack Hu, Interim Vice President for Research, kicked off the event as attendees mingled with old and new friends from the University and from our industry, venture, and community partners.

Guests had the opportunity to see some of the exciting discoveries, products, and new ventures from across campus and celebrate the over 1,100 U-M researchers who contributed through their participation in invention, patenting, and licensing activities. U-M Medical School had 166 new inventions in FY15, up from 133 the previous year.
 
The group gathered in the Michigan League Ballroom to learn more about our latest innovative projects, including these from U-M Medical School:

• Direct Brain Interface Lab (UMDBI): Motor-Free Access Platform from Jane Huggins, Ph.D., Seth Warschausky, Ph.D., and Ramses Alcaide
• Cryoanesthesia from Cagri G. Besirli, M.D., Ph,D., Stephen Smith, Ph.D., Kevin Pipe, Ph.D., and Gun-ho Kim
• Menin-MLL Inhibitors as a Therapy for Leukemia from Jolanta Grembecka, Ph.D., Tomasz Cierpicki, Ph.D., Dmitry Borkin, Hongzhi Miao, Jonathan Pollock, Duxin Sun, Ph.D., Katarzyna Kempinska, Trupta Purohit, Szymon Klossowski, Ting Zhao, Miao He, Bo Wen, Ph.D., Jay Hess, M.D., Ph,D., M.H.S.A., and Andrew Muntean, Ph.D.