With up to $55,000 in prizes to give away, the angelHack Hackathon is a great opportunity for any Boston-area entrepreneurs looking to build a start-up.  Contestants come from all over the east coast to participate in the Hackathon, which kicks off on March 3^rd with a networking event.  There, attendees can talk with other likeminded entrepreneurs and pitch their ideas to investors.

The top Boston University team will win free airfare and lodging at TheGlint Mansion in San Francisco, as well as guided tours to meet some of Silicon Valley’s top start-ups.

The first 20 BU students to sign up can get their ticket fees waived by entering the code “BU.”  After that, enter the code “collegehack” for a 50%-off discount!

Sign up for angelHack’s Hackathon here!

Prizes Include:

Top teams: Meals with investors and startup documents

1^st Place College: Flights to San Francisco and lodging at TheGlint Mansion

1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd Boston Teams: Advancement to 2nd round of MassChallenge (live demo)

1^st Place Gaming: Acceptance into Yetizen Gaming Accelerator (avg. graduate raises $500k)

1^st Place Social Impact: Advanced Acceptance to Hub Ventures and funding (conditions apply)

(Coming soon): Tickets and Airfare to Startup Workaway Thailand

(Coming soon): Large $$$ prize to top collegiate teams and a lot more to come.

Lung cancer is diagnosed in over 220,000 patients in the U.S. every year, and results in more cancer deaths than breast, colorectal, and prostate cancers combined.   If detected at an early-stage, lung cancer can be treated using standard of care surgery.   Most of these patients treated with surgery have reduced lung function and surgeons would prefer to remove less lung tissue from around the margins of the tumor rather than compromising the patient’s lung function further. However, the smaller the margin removed from around the tumor, the higher the risk of recurrent disease.  Systemic chemotherapy and radiation therapies are not effective for early stage patients and have significant negative side effects.   Unfortunately, even with the best available treatment, about half of the 50,000 early stage patients treated annually with surgery, will develop a fatal recurrence.  Clinician and patients are desirous of new and more effective localized, low toxicity treatment options which can prevent cancer recurrence.

Founded in 2008, AcuityBio started as a collaborative effort by Boston University’s Dr. Mark Grinstaff (Professor of Chemistry) and Brigham and Women’s Hospital Dr. Yolanda Colson (Cardiothoracic oncology Surgeon and Scientist) to improve the current standard of care for lung cancer patients and address the major clinical problem of tumor recurrence.  Their goal was to create a unique and simple-to-use drug-loaded implant that could reduce cancer recurrence by locally delivering therapeutic levels of drug to residual tumor cells for extended periods of time.  Utilizing Colson’s experience in surgical oncology and Grinstaff’s knowledge in polymer chemistry and engineering, the team developed the ABC Mesh^TM.  Together with Jesse Wolinsky, a post-doctoral researcher in Grinstaff’s lab, the team published several papers on the technology in March of 2010.  A few months later, First Founders Ltd. introduced Dr. Jay Schwartz to the inventor team to act as the new company’s CEO.  AcuityBio’s biocompatible and biodegradable ABC Mesh^TM will be stapled in at the edge of the resection during normal tumor removal surgery and deliver chemotherapeutic drug locally to the tissue over 50 days and then be absorbed by the body.  By localizing the administration of chemotherapeutic agent, the optimal dose of drug can be delivered over a time span where it will be most effective and result in little to no side effects.  The ABC Mesh^TM technology has come a long way from its inception and will be headed to the clinic within two years.

“The technology we developed allows us to deliver drug right to the resection site,” says Mark Grinstaff, “Currently, there is no such standard of care that exists today.  It all comes down to whether you can prevent the cancer from recurring.  If you can reduce recurrence then you can increase survival, and that’s what we’re working towards.”

The National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health recently awarded AcuityBio with a prestigious Phase II SBIR grant worth $1.4M, which will fund the rest of the preclinical work required to apply to the FDA for an IND, a prerequisite for entering clinical trials.  AcuityBio is now raising a $3.5M series ‘A’ round which will further help accelerate their technical development and commercialization plans.

"The value of this grant goes way beyond the monetary value in two ways" says Jay Schwartz, CEO. “This grant money will help us accelerate our ABC Mesh^TM development plans and simultaneously validates the novelty of our technical approach to localized drug delivery.  We are pleased that we are continuing to progress rapidly toward helping cancer patients live better quality and longer lives. “

AcuityBio, Inc. is headquartered in the Greater Boston area.

Please see the company website www.acuitybio.com, or contact Jay Schwartz CEO (jay@acuitybio.com) for further information.

BU’s Photonics Center was chosen by the National Science Foundation earlier this year to set up an industry-university cooperative research center called the Center for Biopohotonic Sensors and Systems (CBSS).  CBSS is a partnership between BU’s Photonics Center and the Center for Biophotonics Science and Technology at UC Davis.  CBSS is tasked with developing portable, inexpensive tools that advance personalized medicine while lowering healthcare costs.  The center fosters an environment of collaboration where industry and university researchers can exchange ideas and foster high quality fundamental research that is relevant to industry.  Industry representatives come from a wide array of companies developing diagnostic, analytical, and monitoring devices used in the clinical setting and provide direct input into the direction of research at the center.

Two biosensor technologies being developed at CBSS aim to deliver on the promise of low cost, personalized medicine.  The Interferometric Reflectance Imaging Sensor (called IRIS) was developed by Selim Ünlü (Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering) and his group, in collaboration with Bennett Goldberg (Professor, Physics) and MITRE Corp.  IRIS is a highly sensitive device that can identify single viral particles, as well as other pathogens and even antibodies, bound on the surface of a silicon dioxide-coated microarray.  IRIS detects these particles in an accurate, fast, label-free, and low-cost manner.  The device’s multi-wavelength LEDs serially probe bound nanoparticles on the microarray surface.  The presence of bound nanoparticles “interferes” with the reflectance of light from the surface.  The device detects this change in light reflectance, which is used to calculate particle size.  IRIS has a small footprint (think shoe box), and is battery operated.  IRIS can count and estimate the size of up to one million nanoparticles bound to the surface of a single microarray chip.  To date, IRIS has detected the vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) and H1N1, and can distinguish between immunoglobulins IgG and IgE.  Immunoglobulin detection with IRIS could be developed into a highly specific point-of-care diagnostic test of the specific molecules causing allergies in a patient.

Hatice Altug (Assistant Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering) and researchers in her lab have discovered a high-throughput, low-cost method of producing ultra-smooth surfaces on microarray chips that exhibit exquisite optical properties.  The ultra-smooth surfaces allow the investigators to exploit surface plasmon resonances (SPR), in which light waves propagate parallel to the metal-dielectric interface.  Nanohole arrays are arranged in multiple square patterns of 90 microns x 90 microns each on the smooth microarray surface.  Specific binding agents on the microarray surface extract viruses or antibodies from solution.  When these large biomolecules are bound, the plasmon resonance of a particular square nanohole array is extinguished.   Surprisingly, the binding of specific viruses or antibodies onto a square nanohole array can be directly visualized with the naked eye, without the assistance of cameras or other devices.  Altug’s biosensor is able to rapidly detect live viruses from biological samples with minimal sample prep.  Collaborating with John Connor, the group was the first to detect live viruses (VSV in this case) using plasmonic nanohole arrays.  She was recently awarded a 5-year, $5M grant to develop a prototype that is ready for clinical testing.  This technology can be used as an ultrasensitive, low cost, and label-free point-of-care diagnostic for biodefense, airport security, and in resource-limited settings.

For more information about the Center for Biophotonic Sensors & Systems, please visit: http://www.bu.edu/cbss/

Dear Reader,

A year has passed and we are about to have our second annual Tech, Drugs and Rock 'n Roll conference on July 19. The event is all about making meaningful collisions between the Boston area startup and industrial ecosystem and the diverse faculty and graduate student research projects we have at BU. Last year we had about 500 attendees and this year we expect over 600. The format this year has been refined to make it even easier to find technologies of interest.

This year's keynote speaker Provost Jean Morrison will present the BU Innovator of the Year award to one of our fantastic research faculty.

Of course we will also have great music led by our own Victor Coelho of the music department and blues legend Lou Pride coming all the way from Chicago. We will also have a nice barbecue and a game room.

Looking forward to meeting many of you in a couple of weeks.

Sincerely,

Vinit Nijhawan, OTD Managing Director

The key to staying well-connected is through effective networking—making that initial connection is important and but staying in touch with others helps keep one's extant network dynamic and growing.  As a networking event, Tech, Drugs and Rock & Roll's main purpose is to facilitate the creation of new connections (or the improvement of old ones) between its participants.  In addition to simply assembling a large group of interested individuals in one location, this year's TDRR will implement a number of optional “Networking Experiments” for its attendees to partake in.

One of the problems that this year's TDRR seeks to solve is how to efficiently facilitate connections between parties that most want to be connected.  Even though large networking events gather a group of interested individuals, attendees are still left with a random, shotgun approach for making new connections. There is no easy way to tell whose interests best align with theirs.  To mediate this difficulty, TDRR2011 will implement color-coded nametags to help its attendees find other individuals they are most interested in connecting with.  Are you a scientist looking for an investor?  Look for someone with a green sticker on their nametag.  Are you an entrepreneur who wants to talk to an industry representative?  Look for someone with a red sticker and strike up a conversation.  In addition to color-coded nametags, TDRR has partnered with Coloci for another Networking Experiment.

Staying in touch with one's connections after initially meeting them is another problem that impedes effective networking.  Coloci is a service that mediates that issue by helping people meet up and connect in the white spaces of their agenda.  By reporting where you will be in the future rather than where you are in the present, Coloci allows its users to find nearby friends to reconnect face-to-face.  “Your network is an asset,” says Anurag Wakhlu, the company's founder, “Coloci’s mission is to make your network stronger, by enabling and enriching in-person interactions.”

At the event itself, Coloci will help its users network more effectively by connecting them to other individuals with shared interests.  By registering for Coloci using a smartphone, TDRR attendees can see which participants at the event they'd benefit most from connecting to.  Participation in this networking experiment is purely optional, and users can easily control how much information they display on their profile and who they share it with.

Register for Coloci's TDRR app here (best viewed on a mobile phone).