Category Archives: AZBio News

BioAccel Solutions Challenge 2015

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Our Needs + Your Solutions = $100,000

BioAccel’s Solutions Challenge 2015 is a contest to identify solutions to challenges faced by BioAccel’s  clinical partners.

Apply and compete for up to $100,000 to develop your product and company with full prototyping, legal, business, technical, and regulatory support from BioAccel, an experienced medical technology investor and accelerator. Below, please find the description of this year’s challenge categories, and visit www.bioaccel.org/solutionschallenge for additional details and access to the application form.

All submissions are due by February 1st 2015!

2015 Challenge Categories

Challenge Category # 1: Digital, Wearable and Mobile Health The Nexus of Hardware, Software and Behavior

Patient Behavior Modifying Systems:  Predictive, preventative, and telehealth interventions are increasingly central to the future of affordable, timely care, with nearly 60% of physicians and insurers believing that widespread adoption of mobile health applications in the near future is inevitable. “Primary care technicians” supported by wireless technology may dramatically expand the efficiency and reach of physicians, enabling a combination of digital, wearable, behavioral technologies that ensure patient compliance and predict and prevent costly adverse events. The ability to seamlessly and remotely monitor blood oxygen saturation, blood glucose, and cardiac function are just a few ideas that could save payers and providers billions of dollars in unnecessary complications and hospital readmissions each year.   Clinical Behavior Modifying Systems: Pilots utilize autopilot and early warning systems and checklists because lives depend on them. We have an emerging opportunity to master this kind of human / technology interaction in the medical theater. We need cost effective error reducing, efficiency enhancing, behavior optimizing, and project implementation tracking clinical systems and software in that save lives, improve the quality of care, and reduce costs. Automated surgical assistants and psychological assessments for bedside manner are examples that could save the healthcare system between 84 and 151 billion dollars per year.  Keystroke logs for efficient utilization of EMR software could save up to an estimated $32,409 per physician per implementation and free physicians to concentrate on patients.

Challenge Category #2: Regenerative Wound and Aesthetic Therapy

Traditionally dominated by sealants and products focused on keeping the wound bed clean, dry, and moist, novel treatments must also consider tissue oxygenation, nutrition, regeneration, and cosmetic effects. This is especially critical as compromised populations (e.g. obese, diabetic, elderly) may require  6 months to a year for proper wound closure, costing an additional $10,000 to $52,000 per patient in dressings and home health visits.  Innovative technologies that increase the rate of healing can significantly reduce these costs and improve patient quality of life.

Challenge Category #3:  Simplified Access to Care Identified and Sponsored by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona

The National Center for Health Statistics released a study citing 79.7% of adults visited the emergency room (ER) due to lack of access to other providers, 48% because the doctors’ office was closed and 45% because it was close to their homes.  Treatment at an ER is significantly more expensive than in an urgent care center or doctors’ office.  To change behavior and avoid unnecessary costs, finding a facility, making an appointment, and getting there must be easy, convenient, and provide choice. A well designed technology solution that removes barriers to preventive care in a way that works for peoples’ lifestyles will affect engagement and satisfaction. The solution should consider all care settings where primary care can be scheduled or delivered, including the home.  We want to make it pleasant and convenient for all patients to proactively utilize preventative primary care to reduce unnecessary and costly ER visits.  This is especially critical for the underserved populations who are have recently entered the healthcare market.

Challenge Category #4:  A New Approach to Eliminating Type 2 Endoleaks Identified and Sponsored by W.L Gore

Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm is a potentially fatal condition especially prevalent in men over the age of 65.  Whereas previous interventions were costly, risky and traumatic for elderly patients, minimally invasive endo-vascular stent grafting has become the gold standard of care.  This technique enables the relining of diseased segments of the abdominal aorta using catheter-based devices and eliminates the need for open surgery in a majority of patients.  Despite the success and wide adoption of this technology, there remain limitations that at times require further endovascular or surgical intervention.  One such limitations is the occurrence of Type 2 endoleaks.  These occur when small arteries branching from the aneurysm sac continue to allow blood to flow in and pressurize the aneurysm.  The prevention of this complication through novel, innovative and minimally invasive approaches and solutions could significantly improve the clinical outcomes and economics of aneurysm repair.

Challenge Category #5: Wildcard for Student Entrepreneurs Sponsored by Molded Devices

Developing the next generation of biomedical entrepreneurs is critical to the sustainability and success of the biomedical industry. We’ve opened this category to any and all minimally and non-invasive medical device technologies originating from current or recently graduated student teams.

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Parallel Comparison Analyses Confirm That Insys Therapeutics’ Synthetic CBD Is Identical in Chemical Structure to Plant-Derived CBD

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Independent comparison analyses have found that cannabidiol (CBD) synthetically produced by Insys Therapeutics, Inc. is chemically identical to plant-derived CBD. Analyses were conducted independently by Insys and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health.Continue reading→

HealthTell Announces Receipt of an NIH/NCI Grant to Detect the Presence of Brain Cancer

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 Immune-based brain cancer diagnostic for rapid, accurate disease classification.

NIH/NCI Grant to Detect the Presence of Brain Cancer

Image Source:  HealthTell

 

HealthTell™, an early stage Life Sciences company, today announced it has been awarded a $225,000 SBIR grant (1R43CA183360-01) from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to evaluate the performance of the company’s proprietary Immunosignature™ Technology in accurately diagnosing brain cancer. This will include the specific diagnosis of glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), the most common and aggressive malignant brain tumor. The project, conducted in collaboration with the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University (ASU) and Barrow Neurological Institute at Dignity Health St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center, is regarded as highly significant as it addresses an unmet need for early, accurate, and non- invasive diagnosis and monitoring of brain cancers.

Currently, the detection of brain cancer requires imaging-based technologies, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), followed by invasive needle or surgical biopsies for accurate diagnosis. Unfortunately, this method is very expensive, and not practical as an approach for brain cancer surveillance. HealthTell’s Immunosignature Technology has demonstrated the ability to measure a person’s immune response to brain cancer in an accurate and simple test. This test requires only a drop of blood from a patient. Once collected, the blood is placed onto proprietary peptide arrays where antibody binding patterns create specific disease signatures. The signatures offer highly accurate information about an individual’s state of health and have been used to detect more than 30 different infectious or chronic diseases.

“Applying the Immunosignature Technology to detect brain cancer has the potential to transform patient treatment and survival prognosis,” said Bill Colston, PhD, CEO of HealthTell. “ Today, the average lifespan of a patient pathologically diagnosed with malignant glioma is approximately one year. A simple test which monitors changes in a patient’s immune activity will provide clinicians with a needed tool which will enable more accurate disease classification, simple monitoring of treatment and possible determination of disease recurrence. The goal of HealthTell is in alignment with the triple aim healthcare initiatives: to improve patient outcomes, experience, and health economics.”

The grant includes the opportunity for HealthTell to demonstrate the Immunosignature technology’s ability to:

  • Detect brain cancer and distinguish it from other cancers. This distinction is important as the brain is often not the primary site of a brain tumor, but rather metastatic cancer from other sites such as the lung, breast, colon, or skin (melanoma). The American Brain Tumor Association estimates that up to 170,000 metastatic brain cancers are detected annually and this rate will increase as the population ages.
  • Differentiate brain cancer subtypes and identify grades of malignant gliomas, including the fatal GBMs. Subtyping and grading tumors is an important step in treatment. Some tumors, such as GBMs, do not respond well to radiation and can actually have adverse reactions, according to some research, whereas other gliomas respond well to radiation.

“HealthTell’s technology is very powerful and we are demonstrating that it can provide information from a small blood sample,” says Adrienne C. Scheck, PhD, brain tumor researcher at Barrow, and co-investigator on the project. “It is likely to play an important role in the way brain tumors will be diagnosed in the future.”

“Barrow Neurological Institute treats more brain tumor patients than any other place in the US, which will strongly facilitate us moving successfully into clinical validation and commercialization,” said Dr. Kathryn Sykes, PhD, VP of Research at HealthTell, and principal investigator of this grant. “The opportunity to demonstrate the power of HealthTell’s Immunosignature technology platform for application to brain cancer detection and monitoring will further validate its broad application to different diseases.”

 

 

About HealthTell

HealthTell is an early stage Life Sciences company that utilizes an Immunosignature™ Technology for accurate and timely detection and monitoring of more than 30 progressive diseases. Based on robust, proprietary technology, the company is developing the first and only diagnostic platform capable of assessing an individual’s immune system response to specific diseases. This disruptive technology enables physicians to detect the presence or absence of a disease in its earliest stage, improving patient outcomes and reducing healthcare expenditures. Applicable to a broad range of therapeutic areas, HealthTell is empowering physicians and patients to proactively manage one’s health and make more informed decisions. For more information, please visit: http://www.healthtell.com/.

 

About Barrow

Barrow Neurological Institute at Dignity Health St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center is an internationally renowned medical center that offers care for people from throughout the world with brain and spine diseases, disorders and injuries. U.S. News & World Reportroutinely lists St. Joseph’s as one of the top 10 best hospitals in the nation for neurological and neurosurgical care.