From a Valley Fever vaccine to eyesight-enhancement for the legally blind, invention pushes the bounds of what’s possible at I-Squared

On September 25, 2024, Tech Launch Arizona will host its 2024 I-Squared Awards and Expo. Held at the Health Sciences Innovation Building at the University of Arizona, the annual event honors the university’s top inventors and startups, along with those people and organizations throughout the innovation ecosystem that support the commercialization of U of A inventions.  

"The University of Arizona is a place where we embrace grand challenges while driving social, cultural, and economic impact," said Interim Senior Vice President for Research Elliott Cheu. "I want to extend my gratitude to these entrepreneurial faculty, students, and partners whose innovation and entrepreneurship serve as shining examples of what we can achieve together." 

During the 12 years that TLA has been operating at the university, it has worked with over 3,000 invention disclosures, executed over 600 licenses for companies to bring university inventions to market, and launched over 140 startups.  

Along with awards presentations to the honorees below, the event will also include a strolling expo of over a dozen inventive, entrepreneurial faculty and student teams showcasing their impactful innovations and startups.  

“I-Squared is our biggest event of the year,” said TLA Associate Vice President Doug Hockstad. “While the year has brought its challenges, we’re so grateful to see so much engagement from faculty, researchers and students alike. Our honorees have all made great achievements and we’re excited to honor them. At the same time, we’re posed to grow our impact in the coming year, especially as we ramp up our Startup Wildcats team and our catalog of services to help cultivate undergraduate student entrepreneurs.” 

Inventor of the Year: Hong Hua, James C. Waynt College of Optical Sciences 

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The Inventor of the Year award honors a U of A innovator who has demonstrated a significant commitment to commercialization throughout their career, with a focus on activity in the past year. This year, Hong Hua, a professor at the James C. Wyant College of Optical Sciences, received a great honor at the national level, as she was featured in the Bayh-Dole Coalition's 2024 "Faces of American Innovation" report and recognized along with four other innovators from across the nation at a special ceremony in Washington, D.C. on September 18, 2024. 

Hua's initial research into virtual and augmented reality, funded by a National Science Foundation grant, led to her creation of a compact, wearable eye-tracking device for late-stage ALS patients. The U of A patented the innovation, and that work attracted the attention of eSight Corporation. Building on her foundational work, Hua partnered with eSight to develop a device that allows people with central vision loss greatly improved eyesight and independence. Since launching the product in 2017, eSight has helped thousands of people with central vision loss to see. 

“This award really means a great deal to me,” Hua said. “And to me, it's not only an award for what I have done in the past … But it's more an inspiration for me to reflect and think about more about what I can do for people around me, for the community, and for society and develop technology that can help people.” 

Startup of the Year: Anivive Lifesciences 

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The Startup of the Year award is given to the startup that has, in the past year, had the most impact or significant activity. In 2021, a U of A College of Medicine – Tucson-led study  showed that two doses of a vaccine candidate developed at the college provided dogs with a high level of protection against Coccidioides posadasii, a fungus that causes Valley fever. Marc Orbach, plant sciences professor at the College of Agriculture, Environmental and Life Sciences, along with Lisa Shubitz, a researcher and veterinarian at the Valley Fever Center for Excellence founded by John Galgiani, MD, led the development of the vaccine. The study was a collaboration between the University of Arizona, Colorado State University, and U of A startup Anivive Life Sciences.  

This past fiscal year, Anivive was awarded a contract by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a division of the NIH, with first-year funding of $4.8 million and additional funding of up to $33 million to adapt the canine vaccine candidate for humans. The funding, some of which will be earmarked for the University of Arizona to support research and consulting services, will address the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s manufacturing, formulation, and safety testing requirements and support a Phase 1 human clinical trial.  

“In Arizona it’s estimated that pet owners spend about $60 million a year and treating Valley fever for their dogs,” Orbach said. “And if we can provide a vaccine for those dogs, there will be none of that treatment required.” 

The impact becomes amplified in the case of humans, many patients can need life-long care costin millions of dollars per person. “So a vaccine that prevents – even if it just prevented the worst effects – of Valley fever still accounts for maybe a half a billion to almost $1 billion in cost savings to the medical care system.” 

“We're approaching something that's commercializable and also something that really improves the health of humans and animals,” said Shubitz. “It shows the strength of collaboration between the departments within a university and also between the university and enterprises within the community.” 

Student Innovator of the Year: Sara Sheikhlary 

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The Student Innovator of the Year award is reserved for the student who over the last year has shown excellence in commercialization and intellectual property, with a focus on entrepreneurship. This year’s honoree, Sara Sheikhlary, is a Ph.D. student in biomedical engineering with minor in pharmaceutical science.  

While current radiation thereapies can be effective for treating cancer, they also have many negative side effects, one of which is actually – and ironically – causing cancer. Shekhlary developed an herbal-based, extended-release drug called Herbostroiodine that protects the body against cancer-causing radioactive elements. She worked with TLA to evaluate the market potential for the invention and file a patent for the drug. She has also been working with the TLA Student Ventures team to develop and perfect her product pitch with the aim of bringing the drug to market. 

Sheikhlary envisions the drug not only being used for cancer patients going through radiation treatment, but also for other situations where people can be exposed to radioactive elements, such as those who work in industries like nuclear medicine and nuclear power production.  

“This award means a lot to me because it motivates me to research more, to be a better scientist, to invent and become a better inventor,” she said. 

Campus Collaboration: TIMESTEP 
 

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The Campus Collaboration award honors a person or entity within the U of A whose contributions to commercialization have demonstrated great impact, with emphasis on the last year. This year’s honoree is TIMESTEP, a multifaceted program that helps often socio-economically disadvantaged students graduate from STEM disciplines, primarily physics and astronomy. 

In recent years, TLA has worked with TIMESTEP to develop and support the TLA Summer Startup Experience, a program that matches students with U of A startups for paid summer internships. The startups benefit from getting additional help to advance their early-stage development, and the students gain experience working in and contributing to a real-world entrepreneurial environment.  

Ecosystem Impact: Thomas R. Brown Foundations 

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This award is reserved for a person or entity outside UArizona whose contributions have generated maximum success for university inventions and startups over the last year and over time. This year’s recipient is the Thomas R. Brown Foundations, led by President Sara Smallhouse. The foundation is a legacy of Burr-Brown Corporation, an electronics manufacturer that was started in Tucson, Arizona and grew to a worldwide precision electronics cmpany. 

This year, the Brown Foundations made a gift of $500,000 to the Wildcat Philanthropic Seed Fund. In addition, as more contributions to the fund are received, the Foundation committed to match those new gifts up to another $500,000, representing a potential $1.5 million impact.  

Created in January 2024, the fund was seeded a $1 million gift from an anonymous donor who wanted to support ecosystem growth, early-stage university startups and student engagement. Contributions to fund are tax-deductible, and proceeds from positive events such as acquisitions will be reinvested so the fund can continue to make future investments. The goal is to grow the fund beyond $5 million. 

“Early, early in the history of Burr-Brown, it was the University of Arizona researchers and engineers that really helped organize the company and design the first products and the first marketing plans,” said Smallhouse, noting that as a family, they are indebted to the University of Arizona. “It's a success story we hope can be repeated in the future, and we think investing in research and technology and innovation and people who are at the university is a good way to make that a more probable thing.” 

David N. Allen Award for Leadership & Vision: Thomas Grogan 

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The David N. Allen (DNA) Award for Leadership & Vision is given to an individual who has exhibited a lifetime of contribution and dedication to UArizona commercialization and improving the innovation ecosystem in Tucson. Professor Emeritus Thomas Grogan, MD, recipient of this year’s DNA Award.  

Dr. Grogan began teaching at the U of A College of Medicine in 1979, specializing in hematopathology. Leveraging his expertise in cancer and diagnostics, he developed and patented automated processes for tissue staining techniques for cancer diagnosis. In Grogan’s words, “the instrumentation takes essentially elaborate by-hand chemistry and turns it into an automatic hands-off process.” 

He founded Ventana Medical Systems to commercialize the invention in 1985. Roche subsequently purchased the company in 2008 for $3.4 billion, and Grogan continued to serve as the chairman of Ventana from 1985 to 1995.   

“I can look back now to when this process started. And at the time, there wasn't much appreciation of taking this risk and, being daring,” he recalls. “It's now a company with 1200 employees. It now produces instruments that travel all over the world and affect the lives of millions of people. And, I feel like it's because I was at the University of Arizona. It was because I had the colleagues and the alliances that I did that this thing has made it as a global company.” 

The innovation is now in more than 110 countries and helps diagnose and direct treatment for over 30 million people each year. 

“There were cancers, which 40 years ago you had no chance,” he said. “And today are eminently curable because of this technology. And honestly, from my point of view, we're only a 10th of the way to what we are capable of doing.” 

#MADEITHAPPEN: James E. Rogers College of Law 

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The #MadeItHappen award is a special honor that TLA gives to highlight and acknowledge special achievements made by an individual or company. This year, the #MadeItHappen award went to the James E. Rogers College of Law for its work expanding the impact of the JD Next program. Dean Marc Miller and program principal investigator Jess Findley accepted the award for the college.   

The Law School developed the JD-Next course to empower students with the skills and knowledge to excel in law school. Along with the course, the program includes a test which assesses how successful students might be in their law school education, evaluating their future potential, not judging their past.  

Today, the testing standard for getting into law schools has been the LSAT, and more recently the GRE. While representing a standard measure, the LSAT has been shown to have some implicit biases that impact student performance on the test. Alternatively, JD-Next has been shown to resolve those issues and provide a more equitable measure of potential success. 

This past June, the American Bar Association approved JD-Next as an alternative measure to use in admissions processes. Through TLA, the U of A has licensed JD-Next to Aspen Publishing, which is taking it forward to expand its use and impact. As of now, it has been implemented in about 40 law schools around the country and has benefited over 2000 students. 

The I-Squared Expo & Awards event will take place from 5:00 pm until 7:00 pm on September 25, 2024 at the Health Sciences Innovation Building. If you are interested in attending, please RSVP below. Registration is required for admittance and space is limited.  

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