UChicagoTech

According to the American Heart Association, Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the number one killer of Americans leading to 864,000 deaths each year. Approximately 80 million US residents suffer from at least one type of CVD, which drains more than $160 billion a year from the national economy. Greater than 70% of Americans over 60 have CVD. Atherosclerosis or “hardening of the arteries” is a major risk factor in CVD.

A promising new line of engineered protein biologics developed by Dr. Godfrey Getz and colleagues at the University of Chicago, has the potential of changing the treatments available for patients suffering from such arterial disease. These human APOA-1 variants preferentially tilt the ratio of “good” HDL cholesterol to “bad” LDL cholesterol in the body in a favorable direction. Currently, there are no pharmacologic options to reversing arterial occlusion caused by atherosclerosis. Most drugs are targeted at preventing the disease, not curing the lesions. Therefore, this drug candidate represents a new and exciting option to undoing the damage caused by atherosclerosis.

UChicagoTech is collaborating with the Getz laboratory to enable proof-of-concept animal validation studies which will enhance the value of the technology and facilitate commercialization of the therapeutic. For more information, please contact Wade Williams.

Professor Laurens Mets has demonstrated scientific proof of concept for a new technology that uses a biological catalyst to produce methane from water, CO2 emissions and electric power. Several promising applications include energy storage to improve wind farm efficiency and load-leveling for existing fossil fuel energy plants. UChicagoTech is modeling the economics of several applications to determine the threshold efficiency at which the process will be financially viable, and in parallel, external engineering resources are being sought to advise on the designs for scale-up. For more information please contact Matthew Martin.

Alcohol dependence remains an area of significant unmet medical need. Although there are several pharmacological treatments currently available, all of them suffer from low patient compliance, tendency to relapse, and misuse of the medication itself. Dr. Murray Propes has developed a novel, proprietary co-formulation of three FDA-approved, off-patent drugs to address these issues and reach a much larger portion of the target population. The combination consists of the alcohol aversive agent disulfiram that deters intake by causing unpleasant symptoms when mixed with alcohol, a benzodiazepine which mitigates relapse and treats anxiety and withdrawal symptoms, and a subclinical amount of atropine to deter abuse of the drug itself. To advance a proof-of-concept study for this novel medical therapy, the University of Chicago has formed a virtual drug development team composed of external experts in drug development and registration and the team held a pre-IND meeting with the FDA to get feedback on the study plan. The FDA received the University’s Phase I protocol favorably. Before embarking on a large, multi-center clinical trial a smaller feasibility study is being planned. For more information, please contact Heather Walsh.

Barrett’s esophagus is a condition commonly found in people with gastroesophageal reflux disease in which the cells lining the esophagus are replaced with intestinal-type cells. Barrett's esophagus is estimated to affect about 1% of adults in the U.S. and the presence of Barrett’s esophagus substantially increases the risk of developing a deadly type of cancer of the esophagus. Esophageal cancer accounts for 10,000 to 11,000 deaths per year in the U.S. alone. Treatment outcomes could be substantially improved by early detection of esophageal cancer although at present no such diagnostic test is commercially available. However, Dr. Ralph Weichselbaum, Chairman of the Department of Radiation and Cellular Oncology, has identified a genetic test for assessing the risk of progression of Barrett’s esophagus to esophageal cancer. UChicagoTech is facilitating discussions with potential commercial partners and helping to define a follow-up study to monitor a cohort of Barrett’s esophagus patients over time. This will be required to extend validation of the genetic test, in order to further commercial partnership discussions. For more information, please contact Ben Dibling.