Events Calendar

Tech Transfer Experiences in Medical Devices

The USC National Organization for Business & Engineering presents to you its new monthly series: Pitches with Professors! We will be holding chats with Professors at USC who have commercialized their research into their own startups or managed to partner up with corporate companies to bring the applications of their research to the general public! Come with questions! This will especially be helpful to many of you who are considering their own startups!

====================================

SPEAKER: Gerald E. Loeb, M.D., Professor of Biomedical
Engineering, USC; CEO, SynTouch Inc.; Chief Scientist, General Stim Inc.

To apply, head to this link: bit.ly/nobepitch

Attendance is limited to 10 students.

===================================

Dr. Loeb was born in New Brunswick , NJ , received his B.A. ('69) and M.D. ('72) from Johns Hopkins University , and trained in surgery at the University of Arizona . He spent 15 years in the Laboratory of Neural Control at the National Institutes of Health and 12 years at Queen's University where he was Professor of Physiology and Director of the Bio-Medical Engineering Unit. He served as Chief Scientist (consulting) for Advanced Bionics Corp. of Sylmar , California , from 1994-1999. Dr. Loeb joined USC in September, 1999. He has published over 250 journal articles and chapters, a book on electromyography, and holds 58 patents.

===================================

ABSTRACT:

After lifelong involvement in the translation of fundamental physiology into commercial products, I must conclude that there are useful experiences but no general rules. So I will give brief demonstrations of three current technologies from my research that are in various stages of tech transfer and then open the floor to questions and discussion:

- Our biomimetic tactile sensing technology was developed to meet the needs of advanced prosthetic hands, a market too small to be viable. A group of my graduate students started SynTouch to adapt it to robotic hands, but that market depends on many other technologies that we don't control. The killer app seems to be objective characterization of materials for the consumer products industry, which we didn't even know existed when we started.

- We started working on injectable neuromuscular stimulators in 1988 and had a series of very successful clinical trials at USC circa 2000-2008. Commercialization efforts then failed for various reasons. A new and simpler version called the NuStim is being commercialized as a joint venture with a medical device company based in China and will start a clinical trial there this year.

- Using technology related to the NuStim, we have developed and completed preclinical testing of a micropacemaker that can be injected into the chest of a fetus with complete heart block in the womb, a rare and usually fatal condition. We anticipate a first-in-human application as a custom device soon, which seems likely to inform decisions about its commercialization.

===================================

The National Organization for Business and Engineering (NOBE), is a national society uniting business, management and engineering organizations from universities coast to coast. NOBE strives to produce and refine leadership internally and develop professional skills in our members that can be translated into success in the business world.

More Information: Loeb.jpg

Location: Ronald Tutor Campus Center (TCC) - 301

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: USC NOBE