Witness, Assess and Invest in ground breaking technologies in the personalized medicine space (though not limited to) from the Academic Medical Centers, universities and early stage start-ups that have been set up for this year’s poster presentation session!

During your break sesssions, please take a look at the posters displayed in the main registration and exhibition areas. Please use your MassBio Bucks to invest in one of the posters being presented.  The winner will be announced in the final event of the Annual Meeting, the Awards Luncheon on Friday March 15th.

Here’s a snapshot:

FluiDA: FluidDA is a biomedical imaging company specializing in the combination of imaging modalities (CT, MRI, etc) and advanced engineering methods such as CFD and FEA. This combination yields more sensitive imaging biomarkers to better analyze the efficiency of existing drug therapies or to accelerate drug development. FluidDA is active in a range of different fields such as respiratory and sleep therapies.

SignaBlok: New Approaches and Nanotechnologies Targeting Inflammation in Cancer and Sepsis (blood poisoning) is a serious medical condition characterized by a whole-body inflammatory state. Recent discoveries provide evidence that a specific cell receptor called TREM-1 serves as an inflammation amplifier and plays an important role in the pathogenesis of sepsis and cancer. In order to deliver SCHOOL peptides to sites of inflammation, SignaBlok developed a macrophage-targeted nanotechnology. This technology enables targeted delivery of not only SCHOOL peptides but also other therapies and/or imaging agents to macrophages, aiming to improve efficacy and reduce dose. Currently, SignaBlok is collaborating with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) on company’s novel TREM-1-targeting approach to the prevention and treatment of sepsis. Other studies aiming to establish animal proof of concept for several types of cancer, including lung, pancreatic, and colon cancers are also in progress.

Diagnostics for All: Accurate, low-cost point-of-care diagnostics for pregnant women and newborns are severely lacking in resource-limited rural settings. Undiagnosed and mismanaged cases of anemia, hyper/hypoglycemia, and hypertensive disorders (e.g., pre-eclampsia) lead to an extraordinary toll of preventable deaths and disabilities among mothers and newborns in these settings. Anemia is associated with over 700,000 maternal and perinatal deaths annually and hypertensive disorders account for over 50,000 maternal deaths each year. Diagnostics for All (DFA) is developing three paper-based microfluidic point-of-care tests for screening expecting mothers for high-risk pregnancies: (i) a test for protein in urine, which can be a sign of pre-eclampsia, (ii) a test for blood glucose as a measure of hyper or hypo-glycaemia, and (iii) a test for hemoglobin as a marker for anemia. These diagnostics will be part of a portable kit (MEDkit) that can be utilized by minimally-trained individuals in communities or clinics in rural settings to prevent unnecessary deaths during pregnancy and childbirth.

Collagen Medical: Collagen Medical is a pre-clinical stage specialty pharmaceutical company based in Boston, MA engaged in developing targeted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agents to diagnose and stage fibrotic disease and assess response to therapeutic interventions. Serious chronic diseases such as heart failure, atrial fibrillation, steatohepatitis, hepatitis C, and pulmonary fibrosis affect tens of millions of patients in the US. All of these diseases are characterized by fibrosis that is strongly linked to poor prognosis. There is a major unmet medical need for improved diagnostic techniques to identify and stratify patients, predict risk of disease progression and guide therapy. Collagen Medical’s targeted imaging technology will enable highly sensitive and specific three-dimensional mapping of fibrosis within target organs, providing clinicians with the means to diagnose and manage disease in a minimally invasive manner. Collagen Medical’s technology has also been validated for high resolution assessment of myocardial perfusion to identify coronary artery disease imaging cardiac perfusion.

Rapid Urine-based Tuberculosis Point-of Care Analyzer Optical Multi-Sensor System for Rapid and Label-free Multiparameter Analysis: An accurate TB POC single-visit with only 85% sensitivity and 97% specificity could save 392,000 lives per year if widely implemented. 2 billion people are latently infected with Tuberculosis (TB) worldwide. There are 9 million new cases and 2 million deaths per year .HIV/TB co-infected patients often have a low-burden disease (sputum smear is negative) and 20% of TB cases are extra pulmonary. In addition sputum is difficult to obtain in pediatric and geriatric populations and has a low sensitivity of only 20-50%. A low-cost, rapid, handheld, point-of-care urine-based (trDNA detection) diagnostic tool with high sensitivity and specificity is a disruptive and commercial interesting solution.

Wireless intermediate-range scheme for energy and signal transmission (WISEST) by magnetic coupling: This scheme is especially suitable for deep-seated or locomotive implantable devices, such as capsule endoscope. The proposed scheme uses novel coil segmentation and distributive resonance techniques to substantially reduce the coil excitation requirement. The required excitation for the transmitting coil to achieve a power of 350mW at the receiver output is 1A, 6.68V, which is much lower than that required in the most up-to-date method (5A, 3.5kV). Such a reduced coil voltage represents a means for reducing the overall manufacturing cost, and improving the device’s safety while increasing the power transfer capability. Thus, a practically portable and battery-operated external device can now be made possible.This method can be used to eliminate the embedded batteries in many implantable devices, which represent a large percentage of the manufacturing cost and causes potential safety issues in the patient's body. The required transmitting coil keeps at low voltage even the operating frequency is high, therefore the operating frequency can be increased until the magnetic energy absorbed by body tissue is noticeable (~10MHz).

Axios Biosciences: Axios Biosciences is revolutionizing cancer drug development by understanding both the genetic drivers of disease as well as the role of the tumor microenvironment, an important component of tumor biology where tumors interact with non-malignant tissue, affecting drug activity. The Axios drug screening platform, originally developed at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School and published in Nature Medicine, is being used to identify novel compounds with the goal of improving the success rate in clinical trials and lower the average development cost associated with each FDA approval. manner never done before.

CONTINUUS pharma: CONTINUUS Pharmaceuticals will change the pharmaceutical manufacturing paradigm by providing an advanced, integrated, continuous manufacturing solution for the industry. Product Offering CONTINUUS Pharmaceuticals is an early stage pharmaceutical manufacturing company that will produce medicines at significantly reduced costs (from 15% to 60%), with reduced lead times (99% reduction from industry standard), and of better quality, utilizing an integrated continuous manufacturing (ICM) technology. More specifically, the company will apply new state-of-the-art small-scale process technologies that can be integrated into a seamless manufacturing process. In this way, raw materials can be continuously transformed into finished tablets without interruption (24hrs/day) in just two days, using a single facility with a footprint of 1/10 compared to existing batch plants. Also, the company will improve product quality with exact in-line monitoring and automated control of the entire process (Quality by Design); this will ensure that medicines are within pharmaceutical specifications during the entire production cycle, allowing for real-time release. Target Market CONTINUUS aims to enter the small-molecule manufacturing market by working with pharmaceutical companies to develop and manufacture high-quality drugs in a timely, cost-effective fashion. This opportunity to collaborate will help save the pharmaceutical industry billions of dollars every year.

Calista: Calista Therapeutics has discovered a first-in-class, proprietary lead drug, procaftor (AT010), that is being developed as an inhaled daily therapy for cystic fibrosis (CF). CF is a deadly inherited genetic disorder that disrupts chloride channel function, resulting in the buildup of sticky mucus in patient’s lungs and other organs. CF patients in the USA have a life expectancy of 37 years and need intensive therapeutic interventions for chronic co-morbidities and symptoms. Critically, there are no approved disease-modifying treatments for 96% of CF patients, resulting in a very high unmet clinical need. Preliminary AT010 results already show proof of efficacy in the restoration of the chloride channel in human CF bronchial epithelium from deltaF508 human transplant patients. In addition, AT010 can be delivered through CF mucus following topical apical dosing and has a duration of effect of at least 25 hours. PDZ1-2 is a well-validated therapeutic target in CF that influences both the CF chloride channels trafficking and anchoring at the cell membrane, and its activation. The high level of restoration we have already observed with AT010 is predictive of clinical efficacy. The novel and distinct PDZ1-2 mechanism of action in CF also suggests it will have a beneficial additive effect with other CF drugs approved and in development.

Early Detection, Diagnosis, Prognosis, Treatment and Monitoring of Chronic Disease

with Clinical Vismemes over Visual Neural Networks for Precision Personalized Medicine: Applications of Visual neural networking (VNN) connecting tools and collaboration technology support multi-sensory communications, collaboration, teamwork and training for faster, smarter, better, development of drugs, devices and care delivery.

VNN technology enables visual integration of multi-scalar images and video, signals and spectra for more precise, predictive detection, diagnosis, prognosis, treatment and monitoring of disease. Visual system integration at point of cognition facilitates fusion, analysis and correlation of both phenotypic and genomic information through integrative visual bio informatics.