Turning research into products and profits

What’s even better than racking up lots of research funding and patents? Turning that knowledge into commercial products and technology.

The Indiana University School of Medicine is trying to do more of that by opening a biomedical incubator on March 15.

Already, the incubator, called the Indiana Center for Biomedical Innovation, has eight tenants signed up, some of them medical school researchers, who are trying to develop new therapies and devices in such areas as cancer, brain diseases and stem cells.

The IU School of Medicine is no slouch at attracting research funding. It received $302.3 million for the year ending June 30. That was up about 16 percent from the previous year.

But the school wants to turn more of its research into innovative products.

“We felt we had to create something to help our investigators with their discoveries,” said Dr. Anantha Shekhar, the medical school’s executive associate dean for research affairs. “We are very happy to see this come to fruition.”

The incubator is housed in the old Methodist Research Institute on the fifth floor of the Noyes Building on North Capitol Avenue. It contains wet and dry lab space, with a millions of dollars’ worth of equipment.

The center is the first fully functional incubator for biomedical research ever created in the state, he said.

The medical school was able to repurpose much of the equipment in the old institute, so it required just a “few million dollars to get the whole infrastructure down and the facilities maintained,” he said.

The tenants are:

•    Anagin LLC, developing therapy for post traumatic distress syndrome.
•    Emphymab Biotech LLC, developing biotherapeutics for the treatment of emphysema.
•    NeuroFx LLC, developing biotherapy for stroke using therapeutic factors from adult adipose stem cells.
•    Arrhythmotech LLC, developing a medical device for the simultaneous records of sympathetic nerve activity and electrocardiogram using electrodes on the skin.
•    Plexanome LLC, developing therapeutics for cancer patients, using precision medicine. The therapy targets somatic mutated DNA.
•    CookRegentec LLC, developing research and clinical tools to advance regenerative medicine therapies.
•    ImmunoRes Therapeutics LLC, developing cell and device-based therapy for stroke.
•    Indiana Clot Busting Technology, developing a therapy for pulmonary embolism.

The incubator was created with the support of the Indiana University School of Medicine, the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute and IU Health.