UCI researchers pitch inventions

Jeff Benson

Researchers from the university’s biomedical engineering department

unveiled seven cutting-edge inventions to a group of venture

capitalists and other business people Tuesday as they attempted to

secure funding to turn their bright ideas into successful business.

Professors from OCTANe@UCI presented the top seven of about 100

biomedical engineering breakthroughs that UCI scientists and

engineers have developed this year, said Steven George, chairman of

the department of biomedical engineering -- translational technology.

The breakthroughs presented Tuesday at UCI’s Beckman Center ranged

from affordable ear implants to bioengineered tissue that regenerates

nerve function after injury.

OCTANe@UCI comprises 14 faculty members, 80 graduate students and

350 undergraduate students.

“The researchers are presenting their technologies and business

strategies to an audience interested in investing in those products

and getting them off the ground,” George said. “Today, we’re hearing

from seven faculty affiliated with our program and hearing about

their scientific achievements.”

About 80 audience members listened to the pitches.

Among the technologies were a lab-on-a-chip, which enables

consistent and efficient drug delivery to a diseased site; a low-cost

cochlear implant that improves the ability to understand speech and

music; and a dental device called a periometer, which increases

dental implant success and can measure structural integrity in teeth.

Biomedical engineering professor James Earthman said the

periometer, which is about the size of a pen, provides electronic

information that can be used to save a decaying tooth or implant.

“The way they always did it was they took the nonoperative end of

a mirror, the piece of metal that the dentist taps on teeth to hear

if they’re loose or not,” Earthman said. “We believe there’s a better

way of doing that.”

A modification of an earlier invention, UCI’s cochlear implant

uses the same components found in cell phones -- a speech processor,

a transmitter, a microphone, a stimulator and a receiver -- to

improve hearing loss, UCI professor Fan-Gang Zeng said.

But the big difference between existing cochlear implants and

UCI’s model is the cost, Zeng said. The most widely used cochlear

implant devices cost between $25,000 and $40,000, while the UCI

devices cost around $50, he said. The surgery to implant the devices

would still be about $20,000 for either one, he said.

The other technologies included a high-speed cell analyzer that

manipulates the analysis of living cells; a stent-sizing instrument

that can size arteries instantly; an optical biopsy device that

detects cancerous or abnormal cells three-dimensionally; and

bioengineered nerve tissue that can restore nerve function after

injury.

Biomedical engineering professor Zhonping Chen said that the

optical biopsy device that he and professor Brian Wong developed can

diagnose cancer at much earlier stages and noninvasively, because it

can scope a cross-sectional image similar to ultrasound.

The procedure has already been tested on 50 patients at UCI

Medical Center, Chen said, and 200 people have already enrolled.

The instrument’s sale would be about $50,000, which would be

comparable to the cost of videostroboscopy tools that cost about

$70,000 and don’t provide a cross-sectional image, he said. Chen said

he projects 1,000 such devices will be sold worldwide by 2012.