Biomedical Entrepreneurial Thinking

A program to create a culture and environment of entrepreneurial thinking among graduate students and postdoctoral associates, as well as resources and connections with industry professionals to spin out companies from Weill Cornell Medicine, graduated its latest cohort with a signature pitch finale.

The Accelerating BioVenture Innovation (ABI) program graduated 54 participants on Dec. 5. The ABI course is one of the anchor programs developed by Weill Cornell Medicine Enterprise Innovation’s BioVenture eLab, which mentors and trains the institution’s researchers on innovation, commercialization and entrepreneurship.

Participants included not only Tri-I and Cornell Tech graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, but also MBA and eMBA students from Cornell University’s SC Johnson College of Business. Lecturers represented pharmaceutical, medical device and digital health executives; service providers; manufacturing groups, regulatory specialists and translation science professionals. Each ABI team had one or more intellectual property attorneys and life sciences experts to aid them in developing a commercialization strategy.

The three prize-winning teams addressed diseases that affect large populations. Tornado Therapeutics, whose name stands for twister optimized RNA for durable overexpression, won first place for a delivery platform technology that generates circular mRNAs and expresses them in virus-like particles (VLPs). With this platform technology, the team proposed developing a norovirus vaccine targeting the VP1 and VP2 viral proteins for generating protective immunity.

Pulmargeutics was the runner-up for a new therapeutic target against chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Preclinical data shows that blocking epithelial membrane protein 2 (EMP2) with a small molecule drug can prevent the entry and excessive accumulation of immune cells. The team believes their patented agents for targeting EMP2 have the advantage of attacking the root cause of COPD over current market players.

The third-place prize went to VisionPro, which is developing a portable, quantitative imaging machine that enables accurate diagnosis and management of myopia (nearsightedness). VisionPro’s point-of-care device uses high-frequency ultrasound to track the changes in a patient’s sclera caused by myopia and performs real-time data analysis.

“You’ve been exposed to skills that you will use if you decide to be a founder of a company or an entrepreneur starting companies,” Dr. Lisa Placanica (Ph.D. ’09), senior managing director of the Center for Technology Licensing at Weill Cornell Medicine, told the participants. “A lot of these same skills can be transferred to other career paths, which include working in venture capital or investment banking, management consulting and working on business development, whether that’s in pharmaceutical, biotech or on the academic side.”

A version of this story previously ran in the Weill Cornell Medicine online newsroom.