The Michigan Translational Research and Commercialization Innovation Hub for Life Sciences, the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation Partnerships recently awarded more than $1.8 million to eight biomedical research projects that intend to address significant gaps within the health care system and improve overall well-being.
In the past 10 years, the MTRAC Innovation Hub for Life Sciences, jointly supported by Innovation Partnerships, Fast Forward Medical Innovation and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, has allocated more than $20 million in funding to bolster the innovative projects of Michigan-based researchers.
In an email to The Michigan Daily, Meghan Cuddihy, the commercialization program director of the MTRAC Innovation Hub for Life Sciences, wrote that the joint effort aims to facilitate statewide advances in research.
“(The) support from the MTRAC Life Sciences Innovation Hub, in combination with support from the MEDC and the U-M Office of the Vice President for Research, allows innovators to more easily develop and commercialize their research, thereby helping to foster research and economic development throughout the state of Michigan,” Cuddihy wrote.
According to Cuddihy, this partnership can be beneficial to investigators looking to gain insight into how investors evaluate new technological advancements in the biomedical field.
The eight awarded projects were selected out of 20 competitive proposals and are spearheaded by researchers from a variety of Michigan-based research institutions, including the University of Michigan, Wayne State University, Oakland University and Corewell Health.
A project led by Robert Gregg, associate professor at the U-M College of Engineering for robotics, computer science, electrical engineering and mechanical engineering, was one of the awardees. Gregg’s team is working on the creation of a powered energy-assist ankle brace that will help patients with pain management, joint flexibility and mobility compared to traditional ankle braces. This brace may be a new, nonsurgical approach to treating ankle arthritis.
Gregg, in an email to The Daily, said the awarded funding will allow his team to achieve key goals that will advance the project’s progression.
“This funding will allow us to refine the energy-assist powered orthosis prototype and conduct pre-clinical trials to investigate our hypothesis for reducing pain and enhancing mobility in individuals with ankle arthritis,” Gregg wrote. “These results are necessary to secure a commercial partner to bring this technology to market and/or pursue additional funding for clinical trials.”
In an interview with The Daily, LSA sophomore Esha Brar, an undergraduate research assistant at the University of Michigan’s Cognitive Neuroimaging Lab, said funding is crucial to recruiting participants, tracking specific demographics and acquiring expensive devices that are essential for research projects, such as the F-MRI scanners or eye tracking devices used in the lab.
“Any funding can go a long way, but for really expensive psych tracking devices, the funding could really benefit and help run a lot more experiments,” Brar said. “I could uncover a lot of new things.”
According to Cuddihy, successful MTRAC Life Sciences funding applications provide comprehensive proposals that meet currently unfulfilled medical needs, outline technology development milestones and commit to mitigating the risks and challenges associated with commercialization. Prospective awardees seeking funding for their projects should focus on developing their technological communication skills and leveraging their resources.
“I would encourage researchers looking for funding support to focus on how to communicate the value of their technology and address key developmental milestones for said technology,” Cuddihy said. “I would also encourage researchers at the University of Michigan to work closely with Innovation Partnerships, who can provide a licensing manager and mentor-in-residence to support plans for securing intellectual property, as well as help strategize customer discovery and milestone development.”
Daily News Contributor Akshara Karthik can be reached at karthika@umich.edu.