13 14annual report

Reporting information for the fiscal year of July 1, 2013 - June 30, 2014

2014 ANNUAL REPORT

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By The Numbers

FY 14 Performance Inventions License/ Campus Disclosures Options Chattanooga 2 0 Institute of Ag 40 8 Knoxville 68 9 Martin 2 0 Memphis 28 3 Memphis - MDO 2 1 UTSI 3 0

Patents Filed 0 18 27 0 37 4 1

Patents Startups Issued Revenue Formed 0 $ - 0 3 $ 274,552 0 12 $ 345,931 3 0 $ - 0 12 $ 383,545 1 0 $ - 0 1 $ - 0

87

28

145

21

$ 1,004,028 4

Maturation Funding LEAD INVENTOR

FY 14 Financials REVENUES 2013 2014 UT - UTRF Budget Allocation Patent Recovery Costs License & Royalites Contractual Income & Net Revenue

$ 2,095,148 $ 199,166 $ 788,607 $ 255,663 $ 3,338,854

EXPENSES 2013 2014 Personnel Productivity/Operations Protection Royalty Distributions Expenses

$ 1,443,708 $ 541,990 $ 615,836 $ 419,879 $ 3,021,413

TECHNOLOGY

Gabor Tigyi

Preclinical proof of concept study using an autotaxin inhibitor to inhibit liver fibrosis and carcinogenesis

Monica Jablonski

Pharmacokinetics and biodistribution of a novel treatment for age-related macular degeneration

Rajesh Dudani

Technology to continuously monitor the endotracheal tube tip (ETT) position in the newborn patients.

Karen Hasty

Diagnosis of cartilage injury and early osteoarthritis.

Steve Ripp

Bioluminescent zebrafish as a tool for high-throughput drug screening

Ziling (Ben) Xue

Novel chemical sensor with high sensitivity toward biodiesel contaminant in jet fuel and diesel.

Neal Stewart

Short and strong inducible synthetic promoters

Feng Chen

Novel terpinoids for use in bio-pesticide and bionematacides

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Tech Transfer News Change in UTRF Leadership On February 3, 2014, David Washburn left the University for a new opportunity. Washburn served as president and CEO of UTRF since May 2013 and prior to that, was Vice President of the Knoxville Office.

After Washburn’s departure, the UTRF board of directors selected David Millhorn, executive vice president and vice president of research and economic development, to serve as president of UTRF. Stacey Patterson, assistant vice president and director for research partnerships, was elected to serve as vice president of UTRF. Drs. Millhorn and Patterson have been and will continue to work with the current staff of UTRF based in Knoxville and Memphis to continue the operations, increase efforts to help more faculty members and accelerate technology commercialization across the UT System.

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Update on TVC Champion, QuickSod QuickSod swept the first ever Tennessee Venture Challenge Pitch Competition in April, claiming both the $25,000 overall prize as well as the $5,000 Crowd Favorite Award.

QuickSod is a startup company headed by John Sorochan, Associated Professor and Distinguished Scientist of Turfgrass Science in Plant Sciences at the UT Institute of Agriculture. The business is based on UT intellectual property that promises sod producers a product that will significantly decrease time to harvest while increasing yield.

QuickSod used a portion of their winnings to establish QuickSod Inc. as a C corporation and secure a UTRF incubator mailbox lease before entering into discussions with UTRF to license the technology the company is based on. They also plan to use the funds to redo their initial experiment outdoors to demonstrate the technology is effective in real-world conditions. After that, they intend to scale the experiment up to a full acre on a local farm. They hope to have the results of that experiment completed by July 2015 so their results can be presented at the 2015 Turf Producers International Summer Convention & Field Days .

Tech Transfer News UTHSC Startup Launches Its First Product In an effort to better engage her students in a post-clinical conference, Dr. Hallie Bensinger, a University of Tennessee Health Science Center advanced practice nurse and instructor, found herself strolling through the aisles of a school supply store on Easter weekend of 2010 in hopes of finding fake money to hand out in a Jeopardy-style PowerPoint lecture she was preparing. What she found instead were dice that when rolled formed stories or sentences, and just like that, the idea for “Ponder: The Socratic Way” came into being.

“Ponder: The Socratic Way” is a critical thinking game designed to challenge students with unpredictable and constantly changing patient case scenarios. The game requires students to think through problems, accounting for the patient’s pathophysiology, pharmacology, labs, vital signs, chief complaint and changing situation in order to win award cards. An instructor facilitates game play by encouraging questions and discussion.

“You have to really pull from what you know and think on your feet. The game presents a variety of unpredictable patient scenarios just like you see on the floor,” Bensinger said. “I’ve personally used it with more than 100 students, and the response has been great.”

The game was first used in a pilot study

among Bensinger’s students at UTHSC, where it received positive feedback, averaging 4.5 out of 5 stars in all categories measured by student questionnaires. It also received positive feedback from students in a pilot study at Union University School of Nursing, and it is currently undergoing a larger pilot study within Methodist Le Bonheur’s nurse residency program.

In 2012, Bensinger decided to take what she’d developed in the classroom and turn it into a business. She founded LifeCareSim, a startup company dedicated to developing educational games that can be used throughout curriculums to help students master the art of nursing and stimulate critical thinking. Bensinger licensed “What Would Socrates Think?” from the UT Research Foundation (UTRF), making it LifeCareSim’s first product. More products geared towards different courses are in the prototype stage.

“It’s been thrilling to watch Hallie successfully embrace a new role as entrepreneur and startup founder, and I’m excited to see LifeCareSim bring their first product to market,” said Richard Magid, vice president of UTRF. “We think that this is a company that can rapidly have a positive impact on how critical thinking skills are taught by medical educators.”

“What Would Socrates Think?” became avail-

able for order on Nov. 22, 2013 and is currently available for purchase at the introductory presale price of $499.

[UPDATE THIS] LifeCareSim also is developing another game called “The Call Light Game” that can be combined with low fidelity mannequins in a nursing lab and used in conjunction with “What Would Socrates Think?” to simulate a real nursing floor. This product can be used throughout curriculums to build critical-thinking skills. This product will be presented in January at the 14th Annual International Meeting on Simulation in Healthcare (IMSH 2014) in San Francisco.

For more information on “What Would Socrates Think?” and other games in development, visit lifecaresim.com.

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Tech Transfer News Semiconductor Crystals Grown At UT Being Licensed For Research

Electrical wires small enough they can only be seen through a microscope may sound like something only possible in a science fiction movie, but that’s just one of the many applications for the two-dimensional semiconductor crystals being grown at the University of Tennessee and licensed to research institutions around the world.

Researchers in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in UT’s College of Engineering have successfully grown four combinations of these crystals which are being used by the scientific community for cutting edge research in solar energy, dry lubrication, energy storage, nitrogen monoxide sensors, lithium ion batteries and flexible electronics.

UT Professor David Mandrus, who initially had the idea that UT should begin growing crystals in order to make these materials widely available to the scientific community, explained that while there are many applications for these crystals, the idea driving the major interest in these samples is the fact that they can be reduced down to incredibly thin layers of atoms PAGE 6

and used to build electrical devices.

“These crystals can be cleaved down until they are extremely thin, only three layers of atoms wide. They are true semiconductors, so they’re very attractive for making nanoelectronics,”said Mandrus.

Mandrus said that increasing scientific access to high quality crystals is an idea he’d been pursuing for years, and it finally came to fruition through the Tennessee Crystal Synthesis Initiative, an Organized Research Unit (ORU) supported by the UT Office of Research & Engagement.

“We received about $15,000 a year for two years. It sponsored some workshops and got this project off the ground,” said Mandrus.

Once researchers at UT became proficient at growing these specialized crystals, they found them to be in high demand. Several outside entities inquired about licensing crystals for their research, and eventually, that led to the creation of the Tennessee Crystal Center. Michael Koehler, a Materials Science and Engineering post-doctorate research associate, manages the center. He grows the crystals, accepts orders and ships the materials around the world. His first order came from a university in Switzerland. Koehler hopes to expand UT’s crystal offering from the current four combinations to upwards of 10 within the next year or two.

In a first for UT, the crystals are available for license online through an easy to use electronic licensing process set up by the UT Research Foundation. Licensees must agree to the terms and conditions set forth by UTRF before payment is accepted.

“Most of the companies and researchers working on the nanowire projects aren’t set up to grow their own materials, so the Tennessee Crystal Center is providing a huge service to the scientific community by offering these high quality crystals for license,” said Mandrus.

UTRF hopes this opens the door for other UT technologies and innovations, including software and other materials, to be widely available for license through a simple online license.

“We’re really excited about the Tennessee Crystal Center,” said David Millhorn, University of Tennessee Executive Vice President and President of UTRF. “UTRF is always looking for innovative ways to license intellectual property and generate revenue for research at the university.

This is a win-win for the researchers, UT and the scientific community as a whole.”

In addition to being licensed, these crystals are also being used for ongoing research on the University of Tennessee campus.

For more information, visit http://utrf.tennessee. edu/tennxc.

Tech Transfer News UT-Developed Disease Detection Technology En Route to Marketplace An innovative disease detection technology developed by University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and UT Institute of Agriculture researchers is on its way to the marketplace.

Meridian Bioscience Inc. has entered into a technology and commercial license agreement with the UT Research Foundation for the development of the technology that could result in low cost, point-of-care disease detection using a portable device. Meridian Bioscience is a life science company that manufactures, markets and distributes a range of diagnostic test kits and other technologies.

Developed by Jayne Wu, associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering in UT’s College of Engineering, and Shigetoshi Eda, associate professor in the UT Institute of Agriculture Center for Wildlife Health within the Department of Forestry, Wildlife and Fisheries, the device can be used on site to detect infectious diseases, pathogens and physiological conditions in people and animals.

“As we see with the current Ebola outbreak, time is so important in successfully treating and preventing infectious disease outbreaks,” said Wu. “This device has the potential to save a lot of lives by saving time in detection.”

The device also will save money because the samples do not have to be sent to a lab and scrutinized by technicians. It can be used by any health care professional, anywhere. All that’s needed is a droplet of blood, or other bodily fluids, to place on a microchip within the device. The microchip is treated with disease-specific antigens—a toxin or other foreign substance that induces an immune response in the body—and captures disease-specific antibodies in the blood. If the antigens and antibodies match, the device tells the health care provider that the patient or animal is infected. This happens in a matter of minutes.

The device is also capable of detecting Standing from left to right: students Cheng Cheng, Quan Yuan, pathogens or their antigens, making it Shanshan Li, Haochen Cui, Xiaozhu Liu. Sitting from left to right: highly versatile.

Researchers Shigetoshi Eda and Jayne Wu. The technology has been tested for detecting human influenza A and tuberculosis in people, as well as Johne’s disease in livestock. The scientists expect use of the device to be expanded to detect various diseases and physiological conditions.

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UTRF Staff

About UTRF UTRF provides services to the University of Tennessee, helping it fulfill its mission to become a national leader in research, discovery and innovation.

The mission of UTRF is to encourage innovation, enhance research, and facilitate economic development by commercializing intellectual property created from within the University of Tennessee system.

UTRF’s strategic intent is to increase our revenue and assets; enhance the research enterprise at the University of Tennessee; and be a driver of economic development in the State of Tennessee.

Strategic Goals 1. Be a recognized leader in technology commercialization and technology-based economic growth.

2. Build trust and confidence in the technology commercialization system and achieve a high level of satisfaction for services and outcomes.

3. Achieve sustainable financial success and a return on deployed public and private resources by creating value.

4. Reach and sustain excellence in technology commercialization, continuous improvements and the highest level of performance in technology management practices, startup company business development and research park recruitment and incubation services.

5. Enhance and support research and instruction; expand educational opportunities for undergraduate, graduate, professional students and faculty to experience and participate in the technology commercialization and entrepreneurial processes.

Board of Directors

How Royalties Are Divided Income from licensing UTRF inventions is distributed to the following groups according to the University of Tennessee policy: • First $5,000 of gross income is paid to the inventors • 40% of net income paid to the inventors • 30% to UTRF • 15% to inventor’s department • 15% to inventor’s campus

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