Milestone Award winners: Innovation worthy of development
UT Southwestern projects to combat kidney disease and find new cancer drugs share top prize
Two faculty members have received an award designed to help UT Southwestern researchers move new technologies to market, in this case for their investigative work involving kidney disease and cancer.
Michael Buszczak, Ph.D., Professor of Molecular Biology, and Vishal Patel, M.D., Professor of Internal Medicine, will share the $100,000 UTSW Biotech+ at Pegasus Park Commercialization Milestone Award.
Dr. Patel, a nephrologist, is researching a novel way to fight polycystic kidney disease (PKD), which carries a dominant gene mutation. People with the disease have a healthy copy of the gene, so his approach is to find a way to boost the action of this gene.
“Conceptually, it’s quite new,” he said. “We’re not correcting the mutated copy; we’re simply attempting to harness the good copy that’s already there.”
Dr. Buszczak, who is also a member of the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center, is developing a method to track the creation of ribosomes – the RNA-protein complexes that serve as protein-making factories – in cells. Drugs that inhibit ribosome creation are extremely effective against cancer cells, so a tool to monitor ribosomes would be invaluable to screen for potential anti-cancer drugs.
The method involves tagging the ribosomes with a marker to track their creation or turnover in individual cells in real-time. Anti-ribosome drugs can work differently in various cell types, “so it’s been difficult to identify ribosome-biogenesis inhibitors because a scalable experimental platform was not available,” Dr. Buszczak said.
UT Southwestern’s Office for Technology Development designed the award to provide researchers “the boost they can’t get from academic grants,” said Brad Phelan, M.B.A., Assistant Vice President of Technology Commercialization and Business Development.
“There are obviously a lot of funding opportunities across the campus, but most of these have been going to basic research,” Mr. Phelan added.
The Milestone Award is funded by Lyda Hill Philanthropies, which supports several other endeavors at and around UT Southwestern, including the Lyda Hill Department of Bioinformatics and Biotech+ at Pegasus Park, a real estate development focused on growing the life science ecosystem here in North Texas. Other fund sources include the Office for Technology Development and Jun Il Kwun, Founder and Managing Director of Actium Group. Mr. Kwun is also Chairman of the President’s Advisory Board Technology Development Committee for UT Southwestern.
Applicants are judged by a panel of entrepreneurs, investors, and industry and biotechnology representatives from outside UT Southwestern. The focus is on “de-risking” the technologies – getting them past technical or financial hurdles to make them more attractive to investors.
Winners of the inaugural Milestone Award in 2022 were Mark Henkemeyer, Ph.D., Professor of Neuroscience, and Melissa Kirkwood, M.D., Professor of Surgery and Chief of the Division of Vascular Surgery.
Dr. Henkemeyer’s work focuses on cell-surface molecules called Eph and Ephrin. When these molecules bind to each other, they help control the plasticity of neural cells. Disruption of this system is implicated in several conditions, including chronic pain and opioid dependency.
His lab has found some compounds that block Eph-Ephrin interactions in an animal model. With the grant, his team can research effective dosages given orally.
Dr. Kirkwood is working on a face shield that will better protect surgeons and interventionalists from radiation exposure during endovascular procedures. This is a particular problem for vascular surgeons, who often use X-rays during angioplasty, stent placement, and other endovascular surgeries.
The protective glasses that surgeons currently wear are not effective against radiation that strikes the lower part of the face at an angle. The face shield has been shown to exponentially decrease the harmful radiation exposure to the brain and eyes of operators during endovascular procedures. The grant will support her work as she perfects her prototype and creates a business plan for manufacturing the shields.
As part of the funding, awardees meet with investors and business advisers to provide feedback on their work and its potential, Mr. Phelan said.
“It’s a totally different world, learning how to develop a business model and working with investors,” said Dr. Kirkwood, who is currently in the process of starting a company to commercialize the face shield with Dallas-based entrepreneurial and investment partners.