BME Grad Student Team Wins VentureWell Foundation Award

For biotechnology and other science-based enterprises to flourish, they need trained professionals with rigorous training in science. They also need people who understand the business of commercializing a technology into a product. Addressing this need, Stony Brook's Life Sciences Innovation and Entrepreneurship (LiSIE) Program combines both to help build the biotechnology workforce of tomorrow.

As part of the program, an interdisciplinary team of graduate students in the BME 511 (Biotechnology Enterprises) course has won a $5,000 award from the VentureWell Foundation, a non-profit organization that funds, trains and mentors early-stage science and technology innovators, with a project called OptiMargin.

OptiMargin is an advanced imaging system designed to help surgeons detect tiny hidden cancer deposits during minimally invasive abdominal surgery using real-time optical scanning technology. The team includes: Aaron Park, MBA candidate; Ava Nederlander, Computer Engineering PhD candidate; and Biomedical Engineering PhD candidates Elias Kluiszo, Nicholas Barry and Zac Harris.

"When an individual has late-stage ovarian cancer, cancer cells can spread in very small nodules that traditional modalities like CT/MRI can miss," said Kluiszo, who was the team lead and generated most of the images used in the grant. "Physicians use laparoscopic imaging to detect these cells within the abdominal cavity, but they are often difficult to notice or are obscured by other tissue. Our device applies an additional imaging mode that can highlight cancer cells specifically and also detect cancer cells hidden beneath these tissue layers. We're using Spatial Frequency Domain Imaging (SFDI) adapted to endoscopy to accomplish that."

Kluiszo said the grant will allow the team to explore how to advance this technology as a start-up venture, as well as future improvements to the imaging system.

"In terms of technical next steps, we are looking to apply augmented reality (AR) to our device," he said. "The ΑR aspects of the project are spearheaded by Ava Nederlander, where cancer location data acquired from laparoscopic imaging can be used like an anatomical 'blueprint' overlaid onto the tissue in a recession surgery, allowing doctors to visualize hidden tumors."

"OptiMargin grew out of our team's complementary research backgrounds in imaging, visualization and intraoperative guidance," added Nederlander. "Through this work, we became interested in how advanced imaging technologies can help clinicians make better decisions in real time."

Nederlander said that one challenge that kept standing out was the difficulty surgeons face in determining whether all cancerous tissue has been removed during an operation. Even with modern tools, margin assessment remains a persistent source of uncertainty.

"My own PhD research develops augmented reality visualization systems that transform complex medical imaging into interactive 3D information surgeons can explore and act on in real time," she said. "Combining this with the SFDI technology developed by members of our team, which provides quantitative information about tissue composition and physiology, created an exciting opportunity to enhance intraoperative margin assessment.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​"

As part of the award, the team was also accepted into VentureWell's Pioneer E-team entrepreneurship program. The program, part of the VentureWell Accelerator, supports student ventures as they embark on the entrepreneurial path. It offers grant funding, entrepreneurship training, mentorship and networking with peers and industry experts. Each year the program awards non-dilutive grants to early-stage innovator teams that develop scalable innovations that aim to solve a large social, health or environmental challenge.

Louis Peña, now a program director in the School for Professional Development, originally created BUS 510 and BME 511 as complementary courses for the Life Science Innovation & Entrepreneurship Program. The courses have no specific prerequisites and are open to all graduate students interested in learning about technology ventures.

"The first course focuses on finance and operations, and the second, which focuses on products and markets, is intended to be experiential with student teams developing real products that serve actual market needs," said Peña. "To make it real-world and not just an exercise, I paired it with VentureWell's national E-Team competition, and in this case, VentureWell awarded one of our BME 511 teams the $5,000 Pioneer award."

In July, OptiMargin Team members Aaron Park and Zac Harris will be attending a VentureWell workshop in Seattle, where they will receive entrepreneurship mentoring and discuss the next steps for the project. With the win, the team is eligible for the follow-up $20,000 Propel award.

In addition to OptiMargin, a second team submitted a proposal for a device called CounterTrax that received a formal invitation to resubmit for the winter competition. The CounterTrax Pelvic Stabilizer is a medical device designed to help orthopedic surgeons reposition dislocated hips more quickly and safely by replacing manual stabilization with an automated pressure-controlled support system. The CounterTrax team includes: Ashley Manor, Maryam Karim and Nicole Chan, all BE/MS candidates in Biomedical Engineering.

- Robert Emproto