Feature
Microscopy Center Spins Off Companies and New Hope for Patients
February 16, 2007
IU physician Bruce Molitoris didn't expect to be building businesses when he started, but now he's got two of them
Bruce Molitoris and his IU School of Medicine colleagues have built a world-class facility at the Indiana Center for Biological Microscopy, and now they are building businesses too.
Indiana University School of Medicine physician Bruce Molitoris didn't expect to be tackling the challenges of entrepreneurship 13 years ago when he started building what is now the Indiana Center for Biological Microscopy.
But that's just what Dr. Molitoris, professor of medicine and director of the nephrology section, is doing now, along with colleagues at the center and local entrepreneur James Strickland.
Two new companies have emerged from the IU School of Medicine's investment and expertise in microscopy: One promises to revolutionize the diagnosis of acute kidney failure and another is helping pharmaceutical companies bring new drugs to market.
The center, one of the most sophisticated such facilities in the world, makes advanced light microscopy systems — confocal and multiphoton — available to scientists from the School of Medicine, the state and around the world. The systems, combined with software designed at the center and using fluorescent molecules, make it possible to produce detailed quantitative three dimensional images of cells and to analyze activities in living cells within the body. With those capabilities, researchers can monitor the actions of drugs and other compounds in cells within the kidney or liver, evaluating their effectiveness.
Those capabilities are the foundation for the two new startup companies:
PharmacoPhotonics has patented technology for a device and technology that will provide rapid and accurate measurement of kidney function.
INphoton provides services to pharmaceutical companies, enabling them to test potential new drugs by monitoring the activity and location of the compounds within cells of different organs of the body.
PharmacoPhotonics' technology will bring an important new alternative for hospitals where three to five percent of all patients, and 15 percent or more of patients in intensive care, suffer from acute kidney injury, Dr. Molitoris said.
"There is a big clinical need for this in the hospital. We can't tell the kidney function of a patient during acute kidney injury in a rapid fashion that would allow us to make diagnostic and therapeutic decisions. Yet we know from clinical studies that patient outcome relates to the seriousness of injury to your kidneys," Dr. Molitoris said.
Currently, tests to measure the level of kidney function — the glomerular filtration rate — provide either a rough estimate or require a painstaking process of collecting urine samples over a 24-hour period.
The PharmacoPhotonics system should provide a true measure of the glomerular filtration rate in 15 to 30 minutes, Dr. Molitoris said.
The company's business operations will be overseen by CEO James Strickland, who previously co-founded DynoMed, an Indianapolis patient education company that produced medical content for physicians and consumers. Strickland had been working for ChartLogic Inc. of Salt Lake City, Utah, since that firm acquired DynoMed in 2004.
Strickland came back to Indianapolis looking for a new startup opportunity and found it through Robert C. McDonald of Aledo Consulting Inc. McDonald heads up IU's Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation office in Indianapolis, working to assist budding entrepreneurs from the school of medicine.
Strickland saw PharmacoPhotonics as the best opportunity coming out of the medical school at this time — a time when opportunities for life sciences businesses have improved significantly over the environment when he started DynoMed in 1999.
"It's a very different environment in Indiana. Indiana University and entities like the Indiana Economic Development Corporation have really done a great job in awakening the city to the need for entrepreneurial growth in the life sciences area," he said.
"I like the market for this type of technology: replacing a current widely used test. Twenty million Americans have chronic kidney disease, and another 20 million are at risk."
PharmacoPhotonics' next steps include developing prototype devices, a process that could lead to bringing an initial product to market in mid-2009, Strickland said.
Dr. Molitoris is co-owner with Strickland, and is medical director of PharmacoPhotonics.
INphoton, meanwhile currently is housed within IU School of Medicine under a management agreement with the university. The legal agreement enables the company to use university equipment and "rent" university employees to provide its services until it is able to move into its own facilities. INphoton recently was awarded an NIH small business grant (STTR) to further develop its technology.
INphoton has 10 managers, nine of whom are IU School of Medicine faculty, Dr. Molitoris said. "These faculty members represent an integrated team of scientists and physicians.
"The creation of INphoton grew out of the realization that we had something that would benefit large pharmaceutical companies and biotech companies that was much bigger than we could do at the university," he said.
"We want to keep our science going at the university; we're into cutting edge development of microscopic approaches to understanding disease processes."
The microscopy center was created more than a dozen years ago and was bolstered significantly by the Indiana Genomics Initiative (INGEN), IU's multidisciplinary genomics research enterprise that was funded by $155 million in grants from the Lilly Endowment, Dr. Molitoris said.
INGEN enabled the center to build its infrastructure, recruit new scientists and compete successfully for a $5 million George M. O'Brien Kidney Center of Excellence grant from the National Institutes of Health.
