Ten winners of a worldwide competition have been selected to help bring emerging breast cancer research technologies to market. Along with the other winners, two multidisciplinary winning teams of students from Tulane were announced by the Avon Foundation for Women, in partnership with the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Center for Advancing Innovation (CAI). The Challenge is comprised of ten research technologies that were judged to show great promise to advance breast cancer research. Winners receive $5,000 each and will be invited to launch a start-up, negotiate licensing agreements, and raise seed funding to further develop these inventions.
One team of students from Tulane was selected to develop a platform for new bioactive breast tissue reconstructive options that rebuilds healthy tissue and prevents such tumor recurrence. Frank Glaser (M.D./M.B.A. Candidate, Tulane School of Medicine and Columbia Business School), Brian Hasselfeld (M.D. Candidate, Tulane School of Medicine), and Parastoo Khoshakhlagh (Ph.D. Candidate, Tulane School of Science and Engineering) developed the winning business plan and pitch to take over development of this technology.
A second team from Tulane’s School of Medicine, comprised of Ph.D. postdoctoral fellow Murali Anbalagan and M.D. candidates Brian Yu and Richard Tang, also won the opportunity to commercialize a novel breast cancer technology. The diagnostic kit they will work to develop can predict clinical outcomes from taxane-based chemotherapy. This can help avoid subjecting patients that will not benefit from the drug to severe, unnecessary side effects and potentially prevent subjecting patients to multiple rounds of chemotherapy.
March 5, 2014 – Read more in The New Orleans Advocate