Xilis

DUKE INVENTOR: Xiling Shen, David Hsu
xilis.net

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the U.S and metastatic disease remains predominantly incurable. New cancer cases and healthcare costs continue to increase year-over-year. Precision medicine aims to select the most effective treatments for patients, but existing approaches only benefit a minority of patients.

 

Xilis is developing next generation micro-organosphere technology for precision cancer therapy. The XilisμO platform enables rapid diagnostics, personalized drug screening, and scalable patient-derived models for high-throughput drug discovery.

 

Avalo Biosciences

DUKE INVENTOR: Mariano Alvarez, Brendan Collins

avalo.ai

Avalo has developed a proprietary algorithm to predict complex traits either for polygenic human diseases or for AgTech.

They believe that their algorithm is superior certainly superior to linear regression machine learning but also to more sophisticated competitors.

For AgTech – the technology can assist with crop quality, disease resistance, etc. For human disease, the technology could be used to predict multiple genes contributing to a polygenic disease in each patient.

SafineAI's new type of microscope that uses a bowl studded with LED lights of various colors and lighting schemes produced by machine learning.

SafineAI

DUKE INVENTOR: Roark Horstmeyer
safineai.com

Basic blood tests require significant manual effort and are ubiquitous bottlenecks in healthcare systems. SafineAI seeks to develop a new “intelligent” computational microscope that, combined with cloud-based machine learning algorithms, will automate blood analysis and open up new diagnostic possibilities.

Duke engineering graduate students formed SafineAI to miniaturize a reconfigurable LED microscope. This concept has already earned them a $120,000 prize at a local pitch competition.

This microscope adapts its lighting angles, colors, and patterns while teaching itself the optimal settings needed to complete a given diagnostic task. In the initial proof-of-concept study, the microscope simultaneously developed a lighting pattern and classification system that allowed it to quickly identify red blood cells infected by the malaria parasite more accurately than trained physicians and other machine learning approaches.

The research was published in Biomedical Optics Express, a publication of The Optical Society (OSA) (www.dx.doi.org/10.1364/BOE.10.006351).

Simbuka

DUKE INVENTOR: Edgard Ngaboyamahina

simbuka.africa

Simbuka is a Social Enterprise registered in Rwanda that positions environmental technologies and solutions for private sector investment and scale through technology validation and identification of an appropriate business model. Simbuka develops and implements adequate pilot programs to ensure the required resources are available and demonstrate economic viability in Rwanda and across the continent. By leveraging existing non-government and government programs in environmental management, WaSH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene) and manufacturing, Simbuka identifies appropriate partners to integrate innovation into the wider socio-economic framework, thus safeguarding continuation beyond the initial deployment.

Simbuka is currently exploring pilot opportunities and business models for technologies developed by the Duke University Center for Water, Sanitation, Hygiene and Infectious Disease (WaSH-AID)North Carolina State University, and Triangle Environmental.

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S.H.E. is a fully automated, sterile, sanitary pad disposal unit engineered to provide dignity and privacy, waste reduction and safe hygiene.
S.H.E. is a fully automated, sterile, sanitary pad disposal unit engineered to provide dignity and privacy, waste reduction and safe hygiene.

S.H.E. – Safe Hygiene for Everyone

Menstrual Hygiene and Health (MHH) is a neglected sanitation topic in emerging markets, and menstrual waste disposal is particularly absent in many shared and public settings. Waste streams are growing with increased urbanization and access to disposable products. Safe, discreet and compact disposal options, such as the S.H.E., can empower women and girls, support better health and a cleaner environment. S.H.E. is a fully automated, sterile, sanitary pad disposal unit engineered to provide dignity and privacy, waste reduction and safe hygiene. With a capacity of up to 15 pads at a time and a processing time under 15 minutes, S.H.E. thermally treats pads between 800 and 900°C, emitting virtually no smoke and producing minimal ash.  Center for WaSH-AIDBiomass Controls

Dr. Ngaboyamahina

NgaboyamahinaDr. Ngaboyamahina is the Founder and Managing Director of Simbuka. He’s also a Research Scientist at the Duke Center for WaSH-AID (Water, Sanitation, Hygiene and Infectious Disease) where he leads R&D activities that encompass waste treatment and technology transfer under the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-supported Reinvent the Toilet Challenge. The Center for WaSH-AID is an intensely collaborative translational research team, working closely with academic, non-profit, and private industry partners to facilitate the development and sustainable deployment of novel technology-based health solutions around the world.

Immcure

DUKE INVENTOR: Qi-Jing Li, Xiao-Fan Wang
immcure.com

Immcure aims to develop next-generation cancer immunotherapies that control tumor progression, convert cancers to manageable chronic diseases, and eventually lead to a cure.

immcure logo

Memory / Exhaustion resistant CAR-T / TCR-T therapy

Immcure’s unique T cell genetic engineering platform is geared to modify T cells for enhanced therapeutic potential, which includes memory T cell differentiation programs and exhaustion resistant T cell transformation programs. CAR-T and TCR-T products armed with such modifications can achieve prolonged cancer metastasis control as well as improved efficacy reach the purpose of preventing metastasis as well as improving the efficacy.
Pink calla lilies

Calla Health Foundation

DUKE INVENTOR: Nimmi Ramanujam

callahealthfoundation.com

Calla Health is a newly formed entity dedicated to improving the lives of women through technological innovations. Our vision is to sustainably improve access to women’s cancer prevention with a low-cost, hand-held, portable imaging devices, mHealth communication platforms, and an automated decision-making algorithm. Technologies under Calla Health are the Pocket Colposcope and the Callascope, which were developed to implement “see-and-treat” paradigms.

Calla Health logo

The Pocket Colposcope

The new instrument with the potential to revolutionize cervical cancer screening in low-resource settings.

Colposcope for detecting cervical cancer

The Callascope

Reimaginging the gynecological exam as we know it, obviating the need for the speculum and enabling users to have more autonomy over their bodies.

callscope

Valenbio

MANAGEMENT: Sean O’Brian
DUKE INVENTOR: Dennis Thiele, Jiaoti Huang

Sisu Pharma is dedicated to developing targeted drugs for patients with therapy-resistant Prostate Cancer. Prostate Cancer is the second most common cancer in men worldwide and there were over 1.3 million new cases of the disease globally in 2018. There are several treatments available for Prostate Cancer but none are curative and prolonged treatment inevitably results in resistance and death. Sisu Pharma’s proprietary technology specifically targets a key protein that is critical to the survival and spread of advanced Prostate Cancer, providing desperately needed treatment for patients with no remaining options.

sisu pharma logo