Innovation Anthology #472:
The first ever Nanotechnology Award at the the 2012 TEC VenturePrize Business Plan Competition goes to the Calgary company, Parvus Therapeutics Inc.
Parvus is commercializing a breakthrough technology that could treat and potentially cure many auto-immune diseases.
According to company President and CEO Phil Coggins, PhD, the nanoparticles or navacims are coated immune system proteins that target specific diseases.
And they were discovered quite by accident by Dr. Pere Santamaria at the University of Calgary.
PHIL COGGINS: When Pere was trying to do an MRI essentially of the pancreas, he made an MRI contrast agent, an iron oxide nano particle. And in order to kind of get it to go where he wanted it to go, the pancreas, he coated it with proteins which are specific for diabetes. And the imaging experiments worked . There was just one kind of big problem. And that was that the spontaneously diabetic mice that he had administered this material to were no longer diabetic,
Parvis Therapeutics will use the $175,000 TEC Nano VenturePrize to commercialize its discovery and hopes to have navacims available to clinics within a year.
FOR INNOVATION ANTHOLOGY
I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
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Program Date: 2012-05-08