News

Michael Lavdas, MESc’20 and member of the current cohort of Western Medical Innovation Fellows along with Mayo Clinic medical student David Soriano scored second prize in a two-day Innovation Sprint. The sprint was designed to encourage collaborative innovation at Mayo Clinic and engaged experts in information technology, clinical practice and business users to form cross-disciplinary teams. The teams then had to identify a problem, develop solutions and then sell it in a pitch all within the course of a weekend. The theme of the sprint was advanced healthcare at home.

Asha Parekh, PhD’15, who was a member of the first cohort of the Western Medical Innovation Fellowship, is seeing results after years of work as the company she founded receives Health Canada approval. Parekh, a biomedical engineer, co-founded the company Front Line Medical Technologies in 2017, with Dr. Adam Power, a vascular surgeon based at Victoria Hospital and Associate Professor of Surgery at Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry.

In addition to their day-to-day work as Medical Innovation Fellows (MIF), completing market validation studies and prototyping two major projects, the ambitious team participated in the 2021 Falcons’ Fortunes pitch competition hosted by FACIT. The annual pitch competition offers a cash prize for novel cancer solutions to Ontario-based entrepreneurs and industrious researchers. FACIT is a commercialization venture firm for Ontario cancer innovations and acts as a bridge between the public and private sectors.

Ting-Yim Lee has developed medical imaging software so versatile he jokingly calls it the Swiss army knife of diagnostics.

His cutting-edge CT Perfusion technology measures blood flow in bodily tissues, helping computerized tomography scans guide treatment for patients who have had a stroke.

The software is also used to get a handle on the spread of cancer in patients and to assess how well tumours have responded to treatment.

In their latest report which analyzes data from fiscal year 2018, AUTM ranks WORLDiscoveries and our partners (Western, Lawson and Robarts) 6^th in Canada in terms of gross revenues. This boosts WORLDiscoveries up one place from the 2017 report where we ranked 7^th in Canada. This report highlights that WORLDiscoveries remains one of the most successful technology transfer and business development offices in Canada when compared to our peer institutions.

Researcher Dr. Qingping Feng is proof of the axiom it takes years to become an overnight success.

So, he’s willing to wait a while longer, if that’s what it takes, to know for certain that the sepsis treatment he has worked on for more than two decades will save millions of lives.

Feng has been named the 2020 WORLDiscoveries Vanguard Innovator of the Year, an honour that celebrates market-ready research, for his team’s development of the protein annexin A5 into a pharmaceutical that may become the world’s first effective treatment for sepsis, including when it arises as a complication of COVID-19.

Several London, Ontario news outlets broadcast an exciting, commercialization ready device, explaining the value it could bring if brought to market.

The Portable Temperature Regulating Device for Medical and Temperature-Sensitive Products Packaging and Transportation, a project headed up by Kamran Siddiqui, Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at Western University, allows for the transport of organs and vaccines at the exact temperature needed in order to ensure the integrity of its contents.

Lisa Cechetto, Executive Director of WORLDiscoveries delivered a virtual presentation to new faculty introducing them to our office.

WORLDiscoveries three key messages are covered:

1. Western is a creator owned institution
2. WORLDiscoveries is more than just a patent office; we offer other services and educational programs
3. When we compare ourselves to other tech transfer offices, particularly in Canada, we are among the most successful

WORLDiscoveries welcomes seven PhD graduates, medical students and scientists from across the country to be part of the sixth cohort of its Medical Innovation Fellowship (MIF) program.

More than just a patent office, WORLDiscoveries has several educational offerings; the MIF being our hallmark program, WD also administers the Proteus Innovation Competition, Graduate Student Innovation Scholars program and professional development workshops regarding patents and intellectual property.