Accio Energy – Accio Energy, Inc. is an Ann Arbor, Michigan-based early-stage renew­able energy com­pany led by expe­ri­enced and suc­cess­ful pre­vi­ously venture-backed exec­u­tives. The com­pany is devel­op­ing unique “turbine-less” wind energy gen­er­a­tion tech­nol­ogy to deliver clean, sus­tain­able energy to peo­ple around the globe. The company’s pro­pri­etary Aero­voltaic™ sys­tems gen­er­ate elec­tric­ity using wind and a charged water mist. Col­lect­ing renew­able energy from elec­tric pan­els is not new (e.g. solar). Accio is the first to design pan­els to col­lect wind energy. To date, the com­pany has proved its tech­ni­cal con­cept, achieved net pos­i­tive energy, and has a path requir­ing just incre­men­tal advances to scale the tech­nol­ogy into a com­mer­cially pow­er­ful game-changer. With the abil­ity to improve on key tur­bine weak­nesses, Accio is devel­op­ing highly man­u­fac­turable prod­ucts that win on both fea­tures and costs for onshore and off­shore dis­trib­uted and utility-scale instal­la­tions closer to pop­u­la­tion cen­ters. As a man­u­fac­turer of Aero­voltaic™ wind energy gen­er­a­tion sys­tems, Accio Energy will lever­age the sophis­ti­cated auto­mo­tive sup­ply chain infra­struc­ture in Michi­gan to deploy wind energy sys­tems glob­ally that will dis­rupt the entire wind energy sup­ply chain cost struc­ture with dis­tinc­tive sys­tems that are as silent, sta­tion­ary, and mod­u­lar as solar pan­els, and more cost effec­tive than wind turbines.

Advanced Bat­tery Con­cepts – Advanced Bat­tery Con­cepts, LLC (ABC), has invented GreenSeal™ tech­nol­ogy, an elec­trode that rev­o­lu­tion­izes bat­tery design. GreenSeal™ dra­mat­i­cally improves the per­for­mance and func­tion­al­ity of large-format, recharge­able bat­ter­ies. Test data demon­strates that lead-acid bat­ter­ies built with GreenSealTM prod­ucts store more energy, have more power, and are antic­i­pated to last longer than con­ven­tional lead-acid bat­ter­ies. Yet, they have lower mate­r­ial cost. The GreenSealTM elec­trodes are chem­istry agnos­tic, allow­ing the com­pany to quickly move to other chemistries. After estab­lish­ing itself in the lead acid mar­ket, the Com­pany plans to develop a lead car­bon ver­sion of the bat­tery for Smart Grid appli­ca­tions fol­lowed by a metal air ver­sion for use in trans­porta­tion applications.

Advanced Bat­tery Con­trol – Advanced Bat­tery Con­trol LLC is com­mer­cial­iz­ing a rev­o­lu­tion­ary Bat­tery Man­age­ment Sys­tem (BMS) that enhances the reli­a­bil­ity, effi­ciency, and cost of bat­tery packs in auto­mo­tive, mil­i­tary, aero­space, renew­able energy, and util­ity appli­ca­tions. The tech­nol­ogy is deliv­ered to the cus­tomer through the DESA plat­form (Depend­able Effi­cient Scal­able Archi­tec­ture), a patent-pending hard­ware and soft­ware solu­tion that enables bat­tery pack devel­op­ers and man­u­fac­tur­ers to deliver excep­tion­ally robust, reli­able prod­ucts at up to half the cost and size of con­ven­tional bat­tery packs. Unlike cur­rent BMS prod­ucts, the DESA plat­form per­forms a wide range of bat­tery reli­a­bil­ity– and lifespan-enhancing functions—independent of cell chemistry—including the simul­ta­ne­ous dis­charge and recharge of indi­vid­ual cells while a pack is in use, and the dynamic, real-time recon­fig­u­ra­tion of bat­tery mod­ules and packs to allow for the com­plete bypass of fail­ing or dam­aged cells. Advanced Bat­tery Con­trol is led by Mr. David Park, an expe­ri­enced bat­tery indus­try exec­u­tive and venture-backed entre­pre­neur, along with DESA inven­tors and com­pany co-founders Dr. Kang Shin and Dr. Hahn­sang Kim of the Real Time Com­put­ing Lab­o­ra­tory (RTCL) at the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan. The com­pany is pur­su­ing a com­bi­na­tion of grants, loans, and ven­ture invest­ment to begin assem­bling application-specific prototypes.

Angott Med­ical Prod­ucts – Angott Med­ical Prod­ucts has devel­oped a low cost, non-invasive, com­fort­able, radiation-free, multi-modality med­ical device to screen for breast can­cer (BC). BC kills 41,000 women in US each year, 465,000 world­wide. Early treat­ment dra­mat­i­cally reduces deaths and treat­ment costs. First sales are expected in May-2012. Rev­enues will be $300M in 5 years, cre­at­ing 443 jobs in Michi­gan. Mar­ket sur­vey indi­cated 65% of doc­tors would buy Tester, 74% of women would pay at least $30 for test.

Gold stan­dard for BC screen­ing today is mam­mo­gram (MMG), which is read by radi­ol­o­gist. Its sen­si­tiv­ity is 80% and pos­i­tive pre­dic­tive value (PPV) is 22%. Due to con­cerns about cumu­la­tive radi­a­tion, its use is lim­ited to women over 40 (some­times over 50). Aver­age MMG costs $130.

AMP Tester will be sold to doc­tors and will have sen­si­tiv­ity of 95% and PPV of 75%. It is suit­able for repeated test­ing, which means it can be used for women of all ages and can be used to mon­i­tor treat­ment progress. Doc­tors will pay $15k to buy Tester and then just $15/test, likely charg­ing patient’s $30–60 per test. All data is cap­tured dig­i­tally and is ana­lyzed by soft­ware. Results are imme­di­ate and will be com­pared to prior tests.

Apo­Life, Inc. – Apo­Life, Inc. is a pri­vately held, early stage biotech­nol­ogy com­pany with a pro­pri­etary yeast pro­duc­tion plat­form, which has appli­ca­tion in the accel­er­ated devel­op­ment of mon­o­clonal anti­bod­ies (mAbs) dur­ing drug dis­cov­ery and cost effec­tive man­u­fac­tur­ing. ApoLife’s busi­ness strat­egy is to develop bio­generic and pro­pri­etary anti­bod­ies and pro­teins for can­cer and infec­tious dis­ease ther­apy through cor­po­rate part­ner­ships and licens­ing arrange­ments. ApoLife’s tech­nol­ogy will shorten the dis­cov­ery phase for mAbs by 1/3; and will reduce man­u­fac­tur­ing cap­i­tal and costs by up to 50%, low­er­ing over­all health­care costs. In 2009, the world­wide ther­a­peu­tic mAb mar­ket gen­er­ated rev­enues of over $35B. Mon­o­clonal anti­body treat­ment has improved the sur­vival rate of can­cer patients, yet the cost for treat­ment is >$50,000/yr/patient because the cur­rent pro­duc­tion process (using ani­mal cells) is highly inef­fi­cient. Apo­Life is devel­op­ing a non-animal sys­tem using a yeast, S. cere­visiae. ApoLife’s team was suc­cess­ful in receiv­ing NIH SBIR and State grants, has com­pleted the proof of con­cept and has two issued patents. The com­pany is gen­er­at­ing rev­enues by selec­tively licens­ing the tech­nol­ogy. Suc­cess­ful exits by com­pa­nies like Gly­coFi that use other plat­form tech­nolo­gies (acquired by Merck for $400M), pro­vide solid bench­marks demon­strat­ing the poten­tial mar­ket value of ApoLife’s yeast pro­pri­etary plat­form technology.

Arbor Pho­ton­ics – Arbor Pho­ton­ics is devel­op­ing high power, fiber laser solu­tions for advanced mate­ri­als pro­cess­ing and defense appli­ca­tions. The company’s prod­ucts will be lasers and lasers sub­sys­tems that enable increased pro­duc­tiv­ity and new capa­bil­i­ties in the grow­ing $2 bil­lion indus­trial laser mar­ket. Spe­cific appli­ca­tions include cur­rent and next gen­er­a­tion man­u­fac­tur­ing of solar cells, micro­elec­tron­ics, flat panel dis­plays and LEDs. Tar­get cus­tomers are orig­i­nal equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­ers and defense con­trac­tors. Unsur­passed prod­uct per­for­mance is achieved with unique 3C Fiber™ tech­nol­ogy, licensed exclu­sively from the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan that can eco­nom­i­cally deliver 2 to 5 times more power and pro­cess­ing speed than com­pet­ing alter­na­tives. Founded in 2007, the com­pany cur­rently employs 10 peo­ple in 3,800 sq ft of lab­o­ra­tory and office space in Ann Arbor. The com­pany has been awarded three Small Busi­ness Inno­v­a­tive Research awards from the Navy and National Sci­ence Foun­da­tion and a third is pend­ing with the Army.

Armune Bio­Science – Armune Bio­Science is a mol­e­c­u­lar diag­nos­tic com­pany devel­op­ing a prostate can­cer diag­nos­tic test uti­liz­ing autoan­ti­bod­ies which are capa­ble of diag­nos­ing can­cer ear­lier and more accu­rately than com­pet­i­tive tech­nolo­gies. It is well estab­lished that the ear­lier can­cer is detected the bet­ter the five-year sur­vival rates. The tech­nol­ogy can also be used to detect lung and breast can­cer. Prog­nos­tic tests will also be devel­oped using autoan­ti­bod­ies for all three forms of can­cer to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between indo­lent and aggres­sive can­cer. This infor­ma­tion will be invalu­able to the oncol­o­gist and patient when deter­min­ing treat­ment options. The Com­pany has iden­ti­fied 20 autoan­ti­bod­ies / bio­mark­ers which have been attached to Luminex® beads and then stud­ies were com­pleted to val­i­date the assay. The Armune prostate can­cer diag­nos­tic test is being devel­oped as a LDT (Lab­o­ra­tory Devel­oped Test) in com­pli­ance with CLIA regulations.

A final assay val­i­da­tion study will be com­pleted mid-November and then CLIA appli­ca­tions will be sub­mit­ted to MI, NY and FL. Once the CLIA appli­ca­tion is approved, Armune will hire addi­tional lab­o­ra­tory peo­ple plus sales and mar­ket­ing per­son­nel and start gen­er­at­ing rev­enue the first quar­ter of 2011. The poten­tial for sales growth is excel­lent and the fifth year sales fore­cast is $71 million.

Com­pen­dia Bio­science – With roots at the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan, Ann Arbor-based Com­pen­dia Bioscience’s Oncomine prod­uct has become the lead­ing human can­cer genomic data­base with pow­er­ful built-in analy­sis and data pre­sen­ta­tion engines. Oncomine has shown “real-world” util­ity, hav­ing been used to dis­cover causal can­cer genes and poten­tial ther­a­peu­tic tar­gets, as well as to link tumors, path­ways and drugs with gene sig­na­tures. Oncomine is soft­ware as a ser­vice (SAAS), tar­geted to sig­nif­i­cant phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies and uni­ver­si­ties. Fif­teen of the top twenty can­cer bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies are cus­tomers, and more than 12,000 researchers in acad­e­mia are users.

Recently Com­pen­dia began cou­pling its tech­nol­ogy solu­tions with its sci­en­tists, to pro­vide an expert ser­vice offer­ing for global drug-development com­pa­nies, becom­ing an exten­sion of their can­cer research teams. We are most expert in the Oncomine tools and data, and have vast expe­ri­ence in gaug­ing pre­dic­tive out­comes, mak­ing such an out­sourced ser­vice a worth­while direction.

Now in its fifth year, Com­pen­dia has sig­nif­i­cant rev­enues, a staff of 26 and antic­i­pates 2010 to be its 2nd prof­itable year. Our mis­sion… Cure can­cer through the use of genomic data.

CSquared Inno­va­tions – CSquared Inno­va­tions LLC is deploy­ing a laser-assisted atmos­pheric plasma depo­si­tion tech­nol­ogy which offers a high speed, cost effec­tive and highly scal­able “plat­form” approach to the syn­the­sis of nanos­truc­tured mate­ri­als and films for large area Li-Ion bat­tery elec­trodes, pho­to­voltaic mate­ri­als, and indus­trial coat­ings. Con­ceived in the Addi­tive Man­u­fac­tur­ing Process Lab­o­ra­tory at the Uni­ver­sity of Michigan-Dearborn by Dr. Pra­vansu Mohanty, who presently serves as CSquared Chair­man & CTO, the tech­nol­ogy oper­ates under atmos­pheric con­di­tions, allows direct depo­si­tion of mate­ri­als from gas, liq­uid and pow­der pre­cur­sors, and achieves coat­ing growth rates of two orders of mag­ni­tude faster than the state of the art. Together, these fea­tures offer unprece­dented cost sav­ings and oper­a­tional flex­i­bil­ity across mul­ti­ple indus­tries. For exam­ple, Li-Ion bat­tery man­u­fac­tur­ers cur­rently use a multi-step and time inten­sive fab­ri­ca­tion process, which is expen­sive and lim­its their cell archi­tec­ture; CSquared’s atmos­pheric hybrid depo­si­tion tech­nol­ogy com­bines mate­r­ial syn­the­sis and con­sol­i­da­tion into a sin­gle step which can be used to fab­ri­cate binder free elec­trodes in exist­ing assem­bly lines or to fab­ri­cate multi-layer mono­lithic spe­cialty high power bat­tery cells with solid elec­trolytes. CSquared is located in Farm­ing­ton Hills, MI and has an option for an exclu­sive license to the tech­nol­ogy from UM Tech­nol­ogy Transfer.

Cur­rent Motor – Cur­rent Motor Com­pany fills the unmet need for prac­ti­cal, afford­able, elec­tric vehi­cles in a grow­ing envi­ron­men­tally con­scious mar­ket. The com­pany devel­ops and man­u­fac­tures all-electric motor­cy­cles and motor scoot­ers in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Cur­rent Motor’s core cus­tomers are urban pro­fes­sion­als who want to do their part for the envi­ron­ment. Already, many in the company’s tar­get audi­ence have made the switch from cars to gas scoot­ers. In the U.S. 150,000 scoot­ers are sold per year, a $600MM mar­ket. Export mar­kets include Europe (1.5MM scoot­ers sold per year), Brazil (1.4MM), China (15MM), and India (11MM).

Cur­rent Motor’s com­pet­i­tive advan­tage is based on our busi­ness model and our inte­grated smartphone/location based soft­ware appli­ca­tions. The com­pany is a sys­tem inte­gra­tor allow­ing for cap­i­tal effi­ciency ($400,000 to develop first vehi­cle), and speed to mar­ket (18 months). This strat­egy also allows Cur­rent Motor to build a bet­ter per­form­ing bike at a lower price than com­peti­tors. Cur­rent Motor’s IP rests in the company’s motor tech­nol­ogy and con­trol sys­tems, includ­ing inte­gra­tion with smart­phones. The com­pany has applied for one patent with more in development.

Dis­cera – Estab­lished in 2001, Dis­cera, Inc is a tim­ing and clock oscil­la­tor com­pany. Its pro­pri­etary MEMS (micro-electrical mechan­i­cal sys­tem) Pure­Sil­i­con™ res­onator tech­nol­ogy enables lower cost, enhanced rugged­ness, smaller size and wider tem­per­a­ture range than quartz based prod­ucts. Dis­cera has devel­oped a wide range of oscil­la­tor solu­tions that address the per­for­mance, size, power and cost require­ments for the con­sumer, enter­prise, indus­trial and com­mu­ni­ca­tion mar­kets. Dis­cera offers rapid deliv­ery of both pro­to­type and pro­duc­tion replace­ments for stan­dard quartz oscil­la­tors and inno­v­a­tive prod­ucts with addi­tional fea­tures and func­tion­al­ity nor­mally asso­ci­ated with Clock prod­ucts. Dis­cera was formed to com­mer­cial­ize research orig­i­nally per­formed at the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan and Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley. Head­quar­tered in San Jose, Cal­i­for­nia, with R&D cen­ter in Ann Arbor, Michi­gan, the com­pany has accu­mu­lated an impres­sive port­fo­lio of granted or exclu­sively licensed patents.

Eco Prod­ucts LLC – Eco Prod­ucts LLC intends to pro­duce and sell energy effi­cient coat­ing for var­i­ous sub­strates such as glass, poly­car­bon­ate and acrylic to day light­ing prod­uct man­u­fac­tur­ers like sky­light man­u­fac­tur­ers, green­house fab­ri­ca­tors, build­ing con­struc­tors etc. Our prod­uct, when uti­lized in the con­struc­tion of green build­ings, saves energy and pro­vides com­fort. Green or sus­tain­able build­ing includ­ing the use of day light­ing is the prac­tice of cre­at­ing health­ier and more resource-efficient mod­els of con­struc­tion, ren­o­va­tion and oper­a­tion. Research and expe­ri­ence increas­ingly demon­strate that when build­ings are designed and oper­ated with their life style and life cycle impacts in mind, they can pro­vide great envi­ron­men­tal, eco­nomic and social benefits.

We will help reduce the threat of global warm­ing and the emis­sion of green house gases by pro­duc­ing energy effi­cient coat­ings for some of the bil­lions of square feet of glaz­ing mate­ri­als pro­duced annu­ally in build­ing construction.

We will build an orga­ni­za­tion that will con­duct busi­ness eth­i­cally, that will be socially respon­si­ble and that will con­tribute to the growth of the local econ­omy by pro­vid­ing addi­tional jobs and resources.

Elec­tro­Dy­namic Appli­ca­tions, Inc. – Elec­tro­Dy­namic Appli­ca­tions, Inc. is a research and devel­op­ment com­pany founded by Aero­space Engi­neer­ing pro­fes­sor Dr. Alec Gal­limore and Elec­tri­cal Engi­neer­ing and Space Sci­ence pro­fes­sor Dr. Brian Gilchrist from the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan. EDA’s founders and research staff have a deep knowl­edge and under­stand­ing of elec­tric space propul­sion sys­tems, the space plasma envi­ron­ment, and the more gen­eral field of plasma elec­tro­dy­nam­ics serv­ing both ter­res­trial and space appli­ca­tions. EDA’s founders and research staff main­tain strong con­nec­tions with crit­i­cal devel­op­ments in operational/scientific needs, sys­tem appli­ca­tions, and related tech­nolo­gies within gov­ern­ment, indus­try, and academia.

EDA’s busi­ness activ­i­ties focus on crit­i­cal tech­nol­ogy incu­ba­tion and high-tech con­tract research for indus­trial and gov­ern­ment clients. It is prin­ci­pally focused on tech­nolo­gies for aero­space, space, and other severe envi­ron­ment appli­ca­tions. Spe­cial­ties include elec­tric propul­sion (EP) (Hall thrusters, ion thrusters, nanopar­ti­cle propul­sion, elec­tro­dy­namic tether propul­sion, and oth­ers), plasma diag­nos­tics, hyper­ve­loc­ity sys­tem — plasma inter­ac­tion and reme­di­a­tion, plus space and vac­uum tech­nolo­gies in gen­eral. EDA Inc. per­forms tech­nol­ogy devel­op­ment at all stages from con­cep­tual design and numer­i­cal sim­u­la­tion, to pro­to­type man­u­fac­tur­ing, to test­ing and qualification.

ENRG Power Sys­tems – ENRG Power Sys­tems is the pre­miere sup­plier of ground-breaking advanced igni­tion sys­tem tech­nolo­gies which reduce oper­at­ing costs and improve the envi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance of light-and medium-duty com­mer­cial vehi­cles. Fuel econ­omy improve­ments of 14–19% and green­house gas emis­sion reduc­tions of 15–50% have been achieved through its Plasma Drive Igni­tion® sys­tem, using the power of plasma igni­tion to increase the oper­at­ing effi­ciency of today’s V-8 gas engines. Avail­able as a retro­fit sys­tem, the Plasma Drive Igni­tion sys­tem pro­vides tomorrow’s cleaner-burning engine tech­nolo­gies for today’s vehi­cle fleets.

ENRG Power Sys­tems (EPS) was estab­lished in 2009 to engi­neer, man­u­fac­ture and mar­ket the Plasma Drive Igni­tion sys­tem. Head­quar­tered in the met­ro­pol­i­tan Detroit area – with offices in Grand Rapids, Michi­gan and tech­nol­ogy devel­op­ment facil­i­ties in Long Island, New York– EPS is well-positioned to cap­i­tal­ize on and meet the country’s accel­er­at­ing need to reduce green­house gas emis­sions and reduce the demand for for­eign oil. EPS is a mem­ber of Wayne State University’s Busi­ness Incu­ba­tor, TechTown.

The company’s prin­ci­pals have over 60 years of expe­ri­ence in auto­mo­tive and high per­for­mance igni­tion sys­tems, as well as degrees from MIT and Har­vard Busi­ness School, posi­tion­ing them to lead the growth of the com­pany in the US and beyond.

ePack – ePack uses state of the art micro­ma­chin­ing tech­nol­ogy to pro­vide cost effec­tive and high vol­ume pack­ag­ing prod­ucts and ser­vices for MEMS and other microde­vices. Micro­electro­mechan­i­cal Sys­tems (MEMS) are mov­ing mechan­i­cal devices that are man­u­fac­tured thou­sands at a time on sil­i­con wafers and cur­rently rep­re­sent an $8B mar­ket. There are a wide range of appli­ca­tions includ­ing: motion sen­sors, micro­phones and micros­peak­ers in cell phones; micromir­rors for pro­jec­tion screen dis­plays; and var­i­ous sen­sors in auto­mo­biles and air­planes. Each appli­ca­tion requires a cus­tom designed pack­age and because of their small size, need pack­ag­ing for pro­tec­tion from envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors includ­ing humid­ity, dust and vibra­tion. As a result, pack­ag­ing accounts for 50 – 80% of their total man­u­fac­tur­ing cost. ePack addresses these costly road­blocks to com­mer­cial­iza­tion with a series of generic pack­ag­ing tech­nolo­gies applic­a­ble across the MEMS mar­ket and for many inte­grated cir­cuits. Using this tech­nol­ogy, thou­sands of micro­ma­chined devices are encap­su­lated in batch mode, reduc­ing cost, size and increas­ing reli­a­bil­ity. ePack is cur­rently work­ing with sev­eral cus­tomers in order to apply these tech­nolo­gies to their next gen­er­a­tion MEMS prod­ucts, and is work­ing to expand its pro­duc­tion capabilities.

Epsilon Imag­ing Inc. – Epsilon Imag­ing is an early stage med­ical diag­nos­tic com­pany focused on increas­ing the util­ity of com­mer­cial ultra­sound imag­ing sys­tems, thereby improv­ing car­dio­vas­cu­lar care and reduc­ing health­care costs. A world­wide push for health­care reform and cost reduc­tion is dri­ving a migra­tion to dig­i­tal sys­tems for patient man­age­ment. Simul­ta­ne­ously, firms are seek­ing low-cost diag­nos­tics which enable pre­ven­tive med­i­cine. As a result, there is demand for effi­cient, computer-assisted diag­nos­tic tools that can be seam­lessly inte­grated into exist­ing hos­pi­tal work­flow and sys­tems. One of the areas at great­est odds with this direc­tive is car­dio­vas­cu­lar care, which is expe­ri­enc­ing increased patient vol­ume and costs from an aging pop­u­la­tion. Epsilon has cre­ated a solu­tion to address these con­flicted car­dio­vas­cu­lar health­care needs, and is posi­tioned to take advan­tage of this emerg­ing mar­ket oppor­tu­nity. Epsilon has devel­oped EchoIn­sightTM, a workflow-efficient, car­dio­vas­cu­lar analy­sis soft­ware pack­age which pro­vides infor­ma­tion on a patient’s heart func­tion. Today, with­out inva­sive surgery, a car­di­ol­o­gist can only infer car­diac tis­sue health by using indi­rect mea­sures (heart rate and blood pres­sure) or anatom­i­cal visual infor­ma­tion (Echocar­dio­gram, CT or MRI images). In con­trast, EchoIn­sightTM directly mea­sures tis­sue per­for­mance to pro­vide a quan­ti­fied mea­sure of mus­cle con­trac­til­ity, and pin­points spe­cific prob­lem areas, offer­ing the pos­si­bil­ity of treat­ment optimization.

Evi­gia – Evi­gia is a lead­ing provider of wire­less sens­ing, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and track­ing prod­ucts and solu­tions tar­get­ing mil­i­tary, secu­rity, and com­mer­cial appli­ca­tions. The Evi­gia prod­ucts advan­tage is in longer bat­tery life, smaller form fac­tor, and func­tion­al­ity per unit cost that all achieved through Evigia’s tech­nol­ogy for inte­gra­tion of elec­tron­ics and sens­ing func­tions on an inte­grated sil­i­con chip. Evi­gia is one of the three com­pa­nies with full suite of wire­less sen­sor hard­ware prod­ucts selected by US Depart­ment of Defense (DoD) for its global Total Vis­i­bil­ity & In-Transit Asset Vis­i­bil­ity (TAV & ITV) pro­gram. The com­pany was founded in 2004 and is based in Ann Arbor. The team has exten­sive indus­trial, startup, and com­mer­cial­iza­tion back­ground. We pur­sue growth in secu­rity, mil­i­tary and indus­trial equip­ment health mon­i­tor­ing, and com­mer­cial asset track­ing mar­kets enabled by our next gen­er­a­tion inte­grated prod­ucts with fur­ther minia­tur­iza­tion of the form fac­tors, exten­sion of bat­tery life and features.

Fana­roo – Fana­roo® is an ecom­merce enter­prise plat­form that com­pletely changes the game for sports teams and their fans by allow­ing fans to become more con­nected with the teams they love. It offers fans the oppor­tu­nity to see them­selves in the mid­dle of the action by insert­ing their name and logo into real-life sports and enter­tain­ment shots and then print­ing that image onto vir­tu­ally any kind of pro­mo­tional prod­uct. It offers a level of cus­tomiz­ing and per­son­al­iza­tion for sports fans never avail­able before. Instead of just pur­chas­ing a pic­ture of their team or favorite play­ers in action, they can actu­ally per­son­al­ize this pic­ture, plac­ing their own name on the field, the jer­sey, the ball, the score­board, anywhere.

A com­bi­na­tion of the founders’ resources, their expe­ri­ence within the indus­try, along with the rela­tion­ships of its strate­gic part­ners, has led to key achieve­ments in its strate­gic plan that include devel­op­ing its e-commerce plat­form tech­nol­ogy, pro­tect­ing its IP, sourc­ing its man­u­fac­tur­ers, and exe­cut­ing flag­ship licens­ing agree­ments with Pro­fes­sional and Col­le­giate Sports orga­ni­za­tions rep­re­sent­ing 50 teams. Fana­roo is in var­i­ous stages of licens­ing with an addi­tional 300+ teams includ­ing the Detroit Red Wings, Chicago Black­hawks, NFL, NBA, PGA, CCHA, USTA Ten­nis, MLB, MiLB, and NCAA.

Focus Power – Focus Power is devel­op­ing an inno­v­a­tive approach to Unmanned Arial Vehi­cle (UAV) engine design that breaks down com­pro­mises between per­for­mance require­ments and far out­per­forms exist­ing offer­ings. UAV engines must be pow­er­ful, light­weight, quiet, and effi­cient – and until now these require­ments are often at direct odds with each other. Focus Power’s tech­nol­ogy will deliver much needed improve­ments to the bat­tle field (and upcom­ing civil­ian appli­ca­tions) in a timely and cost effec­tive man­ner. The $10B UAV mar­ket is grow­ing approx­i­mately 10% per annum. The engine seg­ment of the mar­ket com­prises roughly 10% of the over­all mar­ket size, and this pro­por­tion is expected to grow as engines become more spe­cial­ized and inte­grated into the over­all UAV sys­tem. The Focus Power team has cur­rently invested its own time and resources into its engine sys­tem, and we are work­ing with a major UAV man­u­fac­turer to develop the power plant for their appli­ca­tion. Future invest­ments into Focus Power will be applied toward R&D facil­i­ties, pro­duc­tion tool­ing, and engi­neer­ing per­son­nel. Focus Power cur­rently shares resources with Cobra Moto, LLC (Hills­dale, MI) and its part­ner Fac­tory Pipe (Ukiah, CA), how­ever, as the com­pany grows, sep­a­rate facil­i­ties and per­son­nel in Michi­gan will be added.

FreeStride – FreeStride Ther­a­peu­tics, Inc. is a Michi­gan vet­eri­nary phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pany devel­op­ing a novel drug that restores and main­tains ani­mal bone health. Pow­er­Gait™ uniquely pre­vents both inflam­ma­tion and bone loss that occur in leg injuries. The pri­mary mar­kets are Thor­ough­bred race­horses and com­pan­ion ani­mals. First cus­tomers will be rac­ing sta­bles that train young horses, which are at great risk of leg injury. The address­able mar­ket is ~$500 million.

FreeStride was cre­ated by three local entre­pre­neurs with exten­sive expe­ri­ence in new com­pany cre­ation, drug devel­op­ment and life sci­ences mar­ket­ing. Their skills are well-suited to tak­ing Pow­er­Gait™ from clin­i­cal eval­u­a­tion through mar­ket launch. Once FDA approved, the com­pany will expand in Michi­gan to include dis­tri­b­u­tion, prod­uct man­u­fac­tur­ing and admin­is­tra­tive functions.

FreeStride is seek­ing fund­ing to fur­ther clin­i­cal effi­cacy test­ing. Dr. Ali­cia Bertone, a FreeStride con­sul­tant and one of the world’s pre­em­i­nent researchers in equine ortho­pe­dics, will per­form these stud­ies. Dr. Bertone per­formed the ini­tial pilot clin­i­cal stud­ies, which demon­strated potent effec­tive­ness. The next series of stud­ies will opti­mize dos­ing and sig­nif­i­cantly reduce the tech­ni­cal risk for addi­tional devel­op­ment of Pow­er­Gait™. With these results, FreeStride will be in a very strong posi­tion to raise the $3.5M nec­es­sary to launch PowerGait™.

GraviKor – GraviKor is a global leader in the devel­op­ment and imple­men­ta­tion of state of the art space­frame and struc­tural weight reduc­tion tech­nolo­gies to the mil­i­tary and secu­rity mar­kets. Lever­ag­ing over a dozen patented tech­nolo­gies in this field, GraviKor pro­vides unprece­dented mar­ket dif­fer­en­tia­tors for mil­i­tary ground vehi­cle man­u­fac­tures that place them at the head of the pack in the weight vs per­for­mance spec­trum. Uti­liz­ing a rad­i­cal new space­frame fab­ri­ca­tion method based upon the use of high-strength Defor­ma­tion Resis­tance Weld­ing, GraviKor com­boined advanced man­u­fac­tur­ing and inno­v­a­tive design to reduce vehi­cle weight by over 25%, while also increas­ing rollover pro­tec­tion by as much as 70%. GraviKor, cur­rently in the beta test phase on select mil­i­tary ground vehi­cle plat­forms, tar­gets a com­mer­cial launch, or license thereof, of their first space­frame prod­uct by 2012.

Hygieia, Inc. – Hygieia, Inc has com­mer­cial­ized Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan tech­nol­ogy to rev­o­lu­tion­ize dia­betes care. Hygieia lever­ages the mature glu­cose meter busi­ness model, to mar­ket an easy-to-use hand­held device that con­tin­u­ously opti­mizes a patient’s insulin dosage, help­ing them man­age their diabetes.

Hygieia’s tech­nol­ogy is pro­tected by mul­ti­ple patents and appli­ca­tions. Its Man­age­ment Team com­bines indus­try vet­er­ans and ser­ial startup exec­u­tives. Hygieia’s Clin­i­cal Advi­sory Board is a Who’s Who of lead­ing endocri­nol­o­gists and dia­betes edu­ca­tors, many of whom are pub­lish­ing influ­en­tial reports ahead of a late 2011 mar­ket launch.

Hygieia received a favor­able “Pre-IDE Process” opin­ion from the FDA on its 510(k) reg­u­la­tory strat­egy. Its glu­cose mon­i­tor­ing plat­form has already been cleared by the FDA. In a third clin­i­cal trial, cur­rently under­way at the Inter­na­tional Dia­betes Cen­ter (IDC) in Min­neapo­lis, Hygieia’s soft­ware has gen­er­ated over 700 dosage rec­om­men­da­tions man­ag­ing 45 patients.

Hygieia has raised over $700K from angel investors, and an addi­tional $587K through NIH/IRS grants. The Com­pany is cur­rently rais­ing $10M in Series-A financ­ing, which funds go-to-market activ­i­ties at the IDC, the Joslin Clinic in Boston, and the Henry Ford Health Sys­tem. Treat­ment pro­to­cols devel­oped at these three ini­ti­a­tion cen­ters influ­ence 107 dia­betes cen­ters nation­wide, expand­ing Hygieia’s patient base and revenues.

ImBio – ImBio has pro­pri­etary med­ical image pro­cess­ing algo­rithms pro­tected by three sep­a­rate patents which pro­vide for sig­nif­i­cant improve­ments in the detec­tion and quan­tifi­ca­tion of tem­po­ral changes in tis­sue prop­er­ties. Results from clin­i­cal tri­als already com­pleted show that ImBio’s tech­nol­ogy will be a game-changer for Radi­o­log­i­cal prac­tice as it pro­vides for sig­nif­i­cantly improved diag­nos­tic and treat­ment response sen­si­tiv­ity over exist­ing clin­i­cal approaches. The tech­nol­ogy has been exclu­sively licensed to ImBio and was devel­oped by fac­ulty mem­bers at the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan (UM) over the past decade. This tech­nol­ogy can be adapted to ana­lyze data col­lected from dif­fer­ent med­ical imag­ing modal­i­ties includ­ing mag­netic res­o­nance imag­ing (MRI) and com­puted tomog­ra­phy (CT). ImBio has a unique patent port­fo­lio and plans to rapidly develop its own image work­sta­tion for direct mar­ket dis­tri­b­u­tion for use in early can­cer treat­ment response assess­ment and quan­tifi­ca­tion of lung func­tion. These appli­ca­tions will allow for deter­mi­na­tion of patient response to can­cer treat­ment ear­lier than cur­rently pos­si­ble as well as to pro­vide physi­cians with a regional map of lung func­tion. ImBio seeks fund­ing to develop a com­puter work­sta­tion capa­ble of pro­cess­ing med­ical image data sets using the tech­nol­ogy. ImBio’s team has been involved with the devel­op­ment of this tech­nol­ogy and has the exper­tise to ensure its rapid deploy­ment into the marketplace.

Inmat­ech – Inmat­ech offers advanced, cus­tomized super­ca­pac­i­tors for the auto­mo­tive and defense mar­kets address­ing the needs for longer oper­a­tional time of mobile elec­tron­ics, improved power deliv­ery and many thou­sands load cycles. The high cycla­bil­ity and peak power of super­ca­pac­i­tors com­ple­ment the high energy of bat­ter­ies mak­ing the com­bi­na­tion of a bat­tery and a super­ca­pac­i­tor an ideal solu­tion for energy stor­age. Inmatech’s advanced prod­uct design and novel mate­ri­als enable sig­nif­i­cantly lower cost and three times higher energy den­sity than state-of-art devices at uncom­pro­mised power capa­bil­i­ties. Non-flammable, aque­ous elec­trolytes ensure safety and envi­ron­men­tal com­pat­i­bil­ity with­out com­pro­mis­ing low tem­per­a­ture performance.

The defense indus­try is an early tech­nol­ogy adapter seek­ing high per­for­mance energy stor­age devices for pow­er­ing the mod­ern sol­dier dur­ing long­ing mis­sions and for extended range vehi­cles among oth­ers. The auto­mo­tive mar­ket is fore­casted to grow more than 4 times in the fol­low­ing 6 years, fueled by the demand for hybrid elec­tric vehi­cles as well as busses, trams and sub­ways used in urban pub­lic trans­porta­tion. Both mar­kets can real­ize sig­nif­i­cant per­for­mance ben­e­fits from Inmatech’s advanced super­capc­i­tors. We also sup­port our cus­tomers with the devel­op­ment of hybrid energy stor­age sys­tems com­bin­ing bat­ter­ies and supercapacitors.

Inno­v­a­tive Sur­gi­cal Solu­tions – Inno­v­a­tive Sur­gi­cal Solu­tions, LLC (ISS) is a technology-driven med­ical device com­pany, spe­cial­iz­ing in the devel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing of pro­pri­etary nerve mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems. Injury to nerves is a major risk of sur­gi­cal pro­ce­dures and pro­tec­tion of nerves becomes an increas­ing chal­lenge with Min­i­mally Inva­sive Surgery (MIS). ISS has pio­neered a game-changing method for map­ping nerve loca­tion, result­ing in a mon­i­tor­ing tech­nique that is safer, faster and eas­ier to use than tra­di­tional techniques.

Con­ven­tional nerve mon­i­tor­ing is based on EMG, a com­plex method of mea­sur­ing mus­cle activ­ity, which is extremely dif­fi­cult to inter­pret. The sur­geon must rely on inter­pre­ta­tion by a neu­ro­phys­i­ol­o­gist or use an inter­face they nei­ther under­stand nor trust. The sur­geon is not in con­trol and inter­pre­ta­tion is highly vari­able and prone to errors.

We offer an alter­na­tive to EMG. Our prod­uct is called Neu­ral­MAS™ and its method of mon­i­tor­ing nerves uses MMG, which func­tions by detect­ing and mea­sur­ing the mechan­i­cal activ­ity in con­tract­ing mus­cle fol­low­ing nerve stim­u­la­tion. Neu­ral­MAS™ can eas­ily locate and map nerves dur­ing surgery, ulti­mately increas­ing sur­geon com­fort and patient safety.

We have a fully devel­oped prod­uct and have received FDA clear­ance to mar­ket the device. Rapid growth is antic­i­pated and we are seek­ing accel­er­a­tion cap­i­tal for mar­ket­ing, sales train­ing, work­force expan­sion and inven­tory buildup. We will achieve prof­itabil­ity within 12 months, with rev­enue greater than $50M by year 3.

Ix Inno­va­tions – Estab­lished in 2009, Ann Arbor-based Ix Inno­va­tions is ded­i­cated to enhanc­ing the usabil­ity of elec­tri­cal test and mea­sure­ment instru­men­ta­tion through con­tin­ual prod­uct inno­va­tion. With par­tic­u­lar exper­tise in ana­log cir­cuitry, the com­pany was founded based on intel­lec­tual prop­erty related to very low power measurement.

Ix Inno­va­tions recently launched the Pock­et­Pico™ picoam­me­ter – a highly sen­si­tive instru­ment that quickly and accu­rately mea­sures elec­tri­cal cur­rent down to a tril­lionth of one ampere. The PocketPico’s hand­held size and unique SafeRang­ing™ tech­nol­ogy make it the first major inno­va­tion in this space in nearly a decade. Engi­neers find the PocketPico’s high accu­racy, category-leading speed, and sin­gle mea­sure­ment range effec­tive for test­ing and char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of opto­elec­tron­ics, sen­sors, nano­ma­te­ri­als and more. Fur­ther­more, the instrument’s small size and soft­ware inter­face make it ideal for low power field demon­stra­tions at con­fer­ences, trade shows and spon­sor visits.

The Pock­et­Pico picoam­me­ter is just the company’s first prod­uct to mar­ket. Ix Inno­va­tions will fuel growth by fur­ther devel­op­ing com­ple­men­tary low power test and mea­sure­ment prod­ucts under the Pock­et­Pico brand umbrella and by part­ner­ing with indus­try lead­ing com­pa­nies to enter new mar­ket segments.

LED Opti­cal Solu­tions – LED Opti­cal Solu­tions, LLC (aka LEDOS), is a Michi­gan based com­pany formed in Jan­u­ary 2008 to meet demand in the com­mer­cial light­ing indus­try for more com­plex LED opti­cal sys­tems. The team at LEDOS is com­prised of sea­soned per­son­nel who gar­ner over two decades of advanced opti­cal devel­op­ment, design & sys­tem inte­gra­tion expe­ri­ence while employed in the auto­mo­tive indus­try and today remain on the cut­ting edge of LED light­ing design, devel­op­ment and manufacture.

At LEDOS, we know light! And as light­ing pro­fes­sion­als we are com­mit­ted to cre­ation of high per­for­mance LED light­ing designs and prod­ucts. LEDOS is cur­rently intro­duc­ing the patent pend­ing Pow­ered by LEDOS – LED Bulb, a “Screw In” bulb style retro­fit appro­pri­ate for post top orna­men­tal street lamps. Other unique LED designs are cur­rently avail­able for licens­ing. LEDOS staff also enjoys per­form­ing advanced design and devel­op­ment work pro­vid­ing solu­tions to the most chal­leng­ing prob­lems in com­mer­cial light­ing, auto­mo­tive and mil­i­tary industries.

LEDOS is a found­ing mem­ber of the Michi­gan Solid State Light­ing Asso­ci­a­tion, an affil­i­ate part­ner of the Macomb/Oakland Uni­ver­sity Incu­ba­tor, a man­u­fac­tur­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the Munic­i­pal Solid State Light­ing Con­sor­tium and a mem­ber of the Illu­mi­nat­ing Engi­neer­ing Society.

Life Mag­net­ics, Inc. – Life Mag­net­ics, Inc., an early stage diag­nos­tics com­pany and Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan spin-out, is devel­op­ing a novel plat­form for bac­te­ria iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and antimi­cro­bial sus­cep­ti­bil­ity test­ing (“ID/AST”). The cur­rent standard-of-care requires the growth of extremely large pop­u­la­tions of cells, which results in time lags for test results (2–4 days). Our pro­pri­etary tech­nol­ogy plat­form, how­ever, is sen­si­tive to sin­gle cell changes, allow­ing for sig­nif­i­cantly faster time to results (<8 hours). The abil­ity to rapidly and accu­rately mon­i­tor bac­te­r­ial growth and response to chem­i­cal agents with sin­gle cell sen­si­tiv­ity pro­vides us with the oppor­tu­nity to sig­nif­i­cantly improve clin­i­cal out­comes while at the same time low­er­ing the cost of care and mit­i­gat­ing the spread of drug-resistant bac­te­ria. Due to the plat­form nature of the tech­nol­ogy, we have cho­sen to simul­ta­ne­ously develop and com­mer­cial­ize our first two prod­ucts: Staph­Sense (Methicillin-resistant Staphy­lo­coc­cus aureus or MRSA ID/AST) and Lab­FAST (expanded AST plat­form). The technology’s sim­plic­ity lends itself to follow-on prod­ucts for can­cer and indus­trial micro­bi­ol­ogy test­ing tar­geted later in the Company’s devel­op­ment pro­grams. With fund­ing received from the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan and Arbore­tum Ven­tures, Life Mag­net­ics has demon­strated proof-of-concept with bac­te­ria, yeast, and can­cer cells.

MatchRX – Breck­en­ridge Cap­i­tal LLC d/b/a MatchRX is a web-based mar­ket­place that was devel­oped exclu­sively for the phar­macy indus­try. At MatchRX, we pro­vide a sim­ple, secure way for phar­ma­cies to bet­ter man­age inven­tory on a daily basis. By con­nect­ing phar­ma­cists across the US, we enable our mem­bers to buy and sell over­stocked pre­scrip­tion drugs at 10%-90% off of whole­sale prices from one another. The result is an easy way to min­i­mize waste and improve their bot­tom line. That may be why many of our 500+ mem­bers refer to us as the “Ebay” of the phar­macy industry.

Health­care, Inter­net, and Waste Man­age­ment are three of the lead­ing spaces dri­ving todayʼs econ­omy. At MatchRX, weʼve incor­po­rated each of these fields in a sin­gle busi­ness model. By devel­op­ing MatchRX, weʼve helped phar­ma­cists even the play­ing field with the large national chains.

As writ­ten in the July 2010 issue of Americaʼs Phar­ma­cist, there are mul­ti­ple rea­sons for phar­ma­cists to incor­po­rate MatchRX into their daily rou­tine from becom­ing more efficient by increas­ing inven­tory turns, reduc­ing car­ry­ing costs, reduc­ing waste in landfills and water­ways, to sav­ing money when pur­chas­ing (Aver­age Sav­ings of 22% off whole­sale) and sell­ing on the site. Itʼs free to join, free to post, and mem­bers only incur a fee when another mem­ber pur­chases an order. In other words, phar­ma­cists can only benefit by join­ing MatchRX.

May­a­te­ri­als – May­a­te­ri­als, Inc. devel­ops and man­u­fac­tures Organic/Inorganic Nano Build­ing Blocks known by their chem­i­cal name as silsesquiox­anes (SQs), start­ing from the renew­able and green resource, rice hull ash (RHA). These nanobuild­ing blocks are used to com­pletely engi­neer the prop­er­ties of sur­faces, thin films and mono­lithic com­po­nents, nanome­ter by nanometer.

The core of most of May­a­te­ri­als’ SQs is the small­est sin­gle crys­tal of sil­ica, 1 nm in diam­e­ter to which organic groups are attached in a uni­form 3-D array. These organic/ inor­ganic hybrids achieve prop­er­ties inter­me­di­ate of tra­di­tional ceram­ics and poly­mers. Thus, SQs are con­sid­ered the first new class of chem­i­cal feed­stocks in 50+ years, since the inven­tion of nylon.

May­a­te­ri­als tech­nol­ogy offers the means to improve the per­for­mance of cur­rent coat­ing mate­ri­als or to cre­ate novel coat­ings, thin films or monoliths/composites with supe­rior per­for­mance for a broad range of indus­tries includ­ing air­craft, auto­mo­tive, struc­tural mate­ri­als, micro­elec­tron­ics, pho­ton­ics, and semi­con­duc­tors. May­a­te­ri­als also uses its RHA derived sil­ica prod­ucts to cre­ate new mate­ri­als for the next gen­er­a­tion of insu­la­tion, vac­uum insu­la­tion panels.

May­a­te­ri­als busi­ness plan can be sum­ma­rized as devel­op­ing new, advanced tech­nolo­gies based on our RHA derived prod­ucts and com­mer­cial­iz­ing them through joint ven­tures, spin-out sub­sidiaries, or tech­nol­ogy license agreements.

Monarch Antenna – Monarch Antenna, Inc. (Monarch) is an Ann Arbor-based Michi­gan startup com­pany that was formed to com­mer­cial­ize advanced tech­nol­ogy in smart anten­nas. Our Self-Structuring Antenna (SSA) sys­tem, which dra­mat­i­cally improves sig­nal strength, was co-developed by Michi­gan State Uni­ver­sity and Del­phi and has been licensed to Monarch for all applic­a­ble mar­kets. Monarch is under grant from NASA to develop antenna appli­ca­tions for future space mis­sions, and is part of a NIST-TIP grant to develop smart anten­nas for infra­struc­ture mon­i­tor­ing. We have iden­ti­fied sev­eral mar­kets for our tech­nol­ogy and prod­ucts, among them: Smart Grid, Indus­trial Automa­tion, Military/Defense/Homeland Secu­rity, First Respon­der (Fire/Safety/Police), Trans­porta­tion (Auto­mo­tive & Com­mer­cial), and Con­sumer Electronics.

The vast major­ity of the anten­nas employed in today’s wire­less devices are pas­sive, i.e. static/fixed designs that fail to meet the chal­lenges of today’s rig­or­ous and highly com­plex RF envi­ron­ment (sig­nal loss/slow trans­mis­sion). In an attempt to com­pen­sate for these fail­ings, mul­ti­ple anten­nas are required in one device/structure; thus increas­ing costs. Our SSA antenna can greatly improve link qual­ity, range (or cov­er­age), capac­ity, bat­tery life and reduce the need for extra­ne­ous anten­nas (thus reduc­ing costs). SSA tech­nol­ogy will become the de-facto solu­tion when com­mu­ni­ca­tion needs are critical.

NextCat Inc. – NextCAT is com­mer­cial­iz­ing a port­fo­lio of patented het­ero­ge­neous cat­a­lysts for biodiesel pro­duc­tion that will enable cost effi­cient pro­cess­ing of sig­nif­i­cantly lower priced feed­stocks like resid­ual corn oil and waste veg­etable oil. This cat­a­lyst tech­nol­ogy is a prod­uct of research per­formed at the National Bio­fu­els Energy Lab (NBEL) at Wayne State Uni­ver­sity. Reg­u­la­tions (RFS2) and envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns are increas­ing the demand for biodiesel fuels but cur­rent pro­duc­tion processes are not cost com­pet­i­tive because the com­monly used feed­stocks are too expen­sive. The value propo­si­tion we offer to cus­tomers is the abil­ity to re-start an exist­ing biodiesel facil­ity that has been idled due to both high cost feed­stocks and inef­fi­cient pro­duc­tion processes. Total cost sav­ings is $1.00 — $1.25/gal. By part­ner­ing with biodiesel process equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­ers as our end user sales chan­nel, we are able to reach cus­tomers and offer a com­plete solu­tion. We are tar­get­ing retro­fits of exist­ing idle capac­ity as the short­est path to mar­ket. Our busi­ness model is based on a recur­ring rev­enue model where users are charged a usage fee of $0.125 per gal­lon of biodiesel produced.

NextGen Metabolomics, Inc. – NextGen Metabolomics Inc., formed in 2010 and based in Ann Arbor, Michi­gan, is a privately-held biotech­nol­ogy com­pany that focuses on advanced metabolomics appli­ca­tions. Metabolomics, one of the fastest grow­ing Life Sci­ence tech­nolo­gies, is the study of all the nat­u­rally occur­ring bio­chem­i­cal com­pounds (e.g. sug­ars, fats) in sam­ples such as cells, bioflu­ids and tis­sues, and holds a sig­nif­i­cant promise in under­stand­ing dis­ease. The metabolomics approach is still tech­ni­cally com­pli­cated, cre­at­ing the cor­po­rate objec­tive of NextGen to “Make Metabolomics EasyTM”.

The Founders of NextGen have pio­neer­ing patents in the devel­op­ment of the sci­ence of metabolomics, and are respon­si­ble for the estab­lish­ment of metabolomics plat­forms used today. NextGen has devel­oped the chem­i­cal and com­pu­ta­tional method­olo­gies to advance the tech­nol­ogy mak­ing it easy to accu­rately mea­sure bio­log­i­cal response to diag­nose the health of organ­isms and mea­sure the impact of dis­ease, the envi­ron­ment and other stres­sors. The IROATM metabolomics-enabling meth­ods will become the pre­ferred basis of many indus­trial scale plat­form appli­ca­tions includ­ing Diag­nos­tics, Tox­i­col­ogy, Drug Dis­cov­ery, Agri­cul­ture, Fermentation/Bioprocess con­trol, and ulti­mately metabolomics-based human health­care. NextGen’s busi­ness strat­egy is to license the right to use the IROA tech­nol­ogy to these mar­ket seg­ments and sup­ply IROATM-required media and soft­ware as consumables.

North Coast Indus­trial Imag­ing – North Coast Indus­trial Imag­ing (NCII) is a Michigan-based start-up com­pany that has focused on pro­vid­ing imag­ing ser­vices to busi­nesses and indus­trial con­cerns in the Great Lakes Region. With offices in Port Huron, NCII began by sell­ing ther­mal imag­ing cam­eras from man­u­fac­tur­ers such as Fluke, and has expanded to also pro­vide ser­vices such as ther­mal stud­ies, ther­mal imag­ing soft­ware and train­ing, and image pro­cess­ing appli­ca­tions for metal recy­clers. NCII was formed in Octo­ber 2007 and cur­rently has 3 full-time employ­ees and 2 part-time employ­ees. The NCII man­age­ment team con­sists of expe­ri­enced sales, engi­neer­ing, and oper­a­tions per­son­nel who have worked together pre­vi­ously. In mid-2010 NCII was approved to be a par­tic­i­pant in the Port Huron Inno­va­tion Cen­ter – and is also a mem­ber of Automa­tion Alley.

While the econ­omy in the State of Michi­gan and sur­round­ing states is pro­gress­ing toward diver­si­fi­ca­tion into alter­na­tive ener­gies and other inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies – much of the indus­trial base remains in tra­di­tional man­u­fac­tur­ing. To be com­pet­i­tive glob­ally, these man­u­fac­tur­ers must pur­sue tech­nolo­gies to reduce costs. NCII has begun devel­op­ment on low-cost devices based on ther­mopile tech­nol­ogy that will enable these busi­nesses to mon­i­tor indus­trial processes cost effec­tively – Michi­gan busi­nesses help­ing Michi­gan busi­nesses be effec­tive and competitive.

Ocu­Sciences – Ocu­Sciences, Inc. is a product-stage med­ical diag­nos­tic device com­pany com­mer­cial­iz­ing a rapid, non-invasive test for early detec­tion of reti­nal dis­ease. Ocu­Sciences has devel­oped a pro­pri­etary, ocu­lar imag­ing tech­nique, Reti­nal Meta­bolic Analy­sisTM (RMA), as a non-invasive, rapid bio­marker for mea­sur­ing the dam­age to reti­nal tis­sue due to dia­betes, mac­u­lar degen­er­a­tion and glaucoma.

The RMA tech­nol­ogy pro­vides a means to detect dis­ease processes sev­eral years ear­lier than cur­rent clin­i­cal meth­ods and before irre­versible struc­tural alter­ations due to cell death become vis­i­ble in the retina. Ocu­Sciences has demon­strated that RMA is more pre­dic­tive of dia­betes than the gold stan­dard HbA1C and pro­vides a func­tional meta­bolic map of the retina for patients with severe AMD to mea­sure the pro­gres­sion of damage.

This meta­bolic health bio­maker, used in cel­lu­lar assays and clin­i­cal tri­als, helps phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies develop more rapidly and pre­cisely oph­thalmic drugs. Physi­cians can use the device to screen patients. Optometrist and oph­thal­mol­o­gists can use the device to diag­nose and mon­i­tor dis­ease pro­gres­sion and guide therapy.

With 57M dia­bet­ics in the US today and a rapidly grow­ing epi­demic, the screen­ing for dia­betic retinopa­thy and early treat­ment can help pre­vent blind­ness in 24,000 patients annu­ally and reduce the $174B costs asso­ci­ated with diabetes.

Pixel Veloc­ity Incor­po­rated – Pixel Veloc­ity is a growth stage tech­nol­ogy com­pany that devel­ops and mar­kets advanced system-level video sur­veil­lance and threat detec­tion solu­tions to the home­land secu­rity mar­ket. Pixel’s prod­ucts pro­vide max­i­mum site secu­rity and oper­a­tional con­ti­nu­ity for large, com­plex sites with strate­gic national and local impor­tance – marine ports, air­ports, power gen­er­a­tion sites, and other crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture. The high-definition (HD) Pixel Video Fusion® video sur­veil­lance cam­era sys­tem helps infra­struc­ture own­ers and secu­rity teams mit­i­gate the impact of secu­rity inci­dents through unique pre­ven­tion, rapid response, and inves­tiga­tive capa­bil­i­ties. The company’s newest prod­uct, an auto­mated perime­ter pro­tec­tion sys­tem (PPS), auto­mat­i­cally detects a breach of a vir­tual fence line, zooms in for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, intel­li­gently clas­si­fies the sub­ject to fil­ter out erro­neous alerts, for­wards the infor­ma­tion to a first respon­der, and then auto­mat­i­cally tracks its where­abouts in the envi­ron­ment until appre­hended by offi­cers. This secu­rity solu­tion is rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing the oper­a­tional effi­ciency and safety in high-security envi­ron­ments, and pro­pelling the company’s growth by attract­ing the atten­tion of lumi­nary cus­tomers such as National Gallery of Art, The Pen­ta­gon, and Fort Knox. To learn more visit us at www.pixel-velocity.com.

Power Panel – Power Panel, Inc. is a Detroit based man­u­fac­turer of co-generating solar col­lec­tors, ther­mal stor­age tanks and com­plete bal­ance of sys­tem com­po­nents includ­ing mount­ing sys­tems, tank inte­grated plumb­ing, embed­ded con­trols and web enabled mon­i­tor­ing. Power Panel makes max­i­mum use of the avail­able solar resource address­ing both elec­tri­cal and ther­mal energy needs of a build­ing while deliv­er­ing a supe­rior cus­tomer Return on Investment.

The prin­ci­pal prod­uct is the Power Panel, solar panel capa­ble of simul­ta­ne­ously gen­er­at­ing both pho­to­voltaic elec­tric­ity and ther­mal energy. The patented device uses a highly insu­lated plas­tic and engi­neered foam enclo­sure along with a Pho­to­voltaic panel that enhances elec­tri­cal out­put by actively cool­ing the solar cells.

To take advan­tage of the sum­mer solar resource Power Panel is also devel­op­ing a solar ther­mal dri­ven air con­di­tion­ing unit that works in con­junc­tion with the Power Panel to pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant year round energy savings.

In addi­tion to pro­vid­ing build­ing mounted solu­tions, Power Panel has taken its rugged and durable core prod­uct items and is apply­ing them to a large mar­ket niche for mobile appli­ca­tions tai­lored for mil­i­tary for­ward oper­at­ing bases, dis­as­ter relief response efforts and energy deliv­ery to remote locations.

POW­ER­leap – POW­ER­leap cre­ates floor­ing prod­ucts that har­vest the energy in human foot-traffic to gen­er­ate elec­tric­ity. Cur­rently the pri­mary appli­ca­tions are pow­er­ing wire­less sen­sors and inter­ac­tive dis­plays, and we are improv­ing the tech­nol­ogy to make it a viable renew­able energy source.

Since 2006 we have devel­oped numer­ous work­ing pro­to­types that demon­strate the proof of con­cept. In 2009 we began mov­ing to com­mer­cial­ize our pro­to­types and received angel invest­ment from friends and fam­ily. Begin­ning this year we have formed exclu­sive part­ner­ships with sev­eral tech­nol­ogy sup­pli­ers. Work­ing with these sup­pli­ers, we have begun imple­ment­ing pilot tests with com­mer­cial cus­tomers. Our most recent pilot was with Fox Studio’s Teen Choice Awards where our floor­ing sys­tem was installed under­neath a por­tion of the red carpet.

As a result of being the first com­pany to unveil sev­eral work­ing pro­to­types we have been fea­tured in major media out­lets includ­ing Forbes, Fast Com­pany and the Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel. We have reached peo­ple in over 50 coun­tries and have gen­er­ated over­whelm­ing demand for our prod­ucts from a wide range of cus­tomers. We have received hun­dreds of cus­tomer inquiries and sev­eral of our lead­ing cus­tomers have signed Let­ters of Intent to pur­chase our prod­ucts when they are com­mer­cially available.

ProNAi – ProNAi Ther­a­peu­tics, Inc. is a clin­i­cal stage biotech that is apply­ing pro­pri­etary, nucleic acid-based DNA inter­fer­ence tech­nol­ogy (DNAi®) to dis­cover and develop novel ther­a­peu­tic approaches for can­cer. The com­pany was founded in 2004 by phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal researchers and sci­en­tists who have sub­stan­tial expe­ri­ence in the area of nucleic acid research. The founders devel­oped DNAi® and lever­aged this to suc­cess­fully design a new class of ther­a­pies. ProNAi’s most advanced drug can­di­date, PNT2258, has strik­ing pre­clin­i­cal activ­ity in hema­to­log­i­cal and solid tumor mod­els. In March 2008, ProNAi received FDA approval to start a Phase Ia dose esca­la­tion trail to assess the safety and tol­er­a­ble of PNT2258 in patients with solid tumors. This trial is cur­rently enrolling patients.

To date, the com­pany has suc­cess­fully recruited a sea­soned senior man­age­ment team and a Board of Direc­tors with a proven track record in dis­cov­ery research, research oper­a­tions, prod­uct devel­op­ment, and busi­ness devel­op­ment. ProNAi’s Sci­en­tific Advi­sory Board has sig­nif­i­cant expe­ri­ence in nucleic acid research, and clin­i­cal trial design and development.

Real­Bio Tech­nol­ogy Inc. – Real­Bio™ Tech­nol­ogy Inc. is a ven­ture backed life sci­ence Tools Com­pany, com­mer­cial­iz­ing a three-dimensional cul­ture sys­tem which grows cells and tis­sue in a set­ting that closely mim­ics the in vivo envi­ron­ment. The Real­Bio D4 ™ Cul­ture Sys­tem is the first prod­uct from the plat­form tech­nol­ogy, ini­tially devel­oped through a $4.5 Mil­lion DARPA grant. The Real­Bio D4 offers phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and biotech­com­pa­nies the oppor­tu­nity to study ““human equiv­a­lent”” tis­sues within an in vitro envi­ron­ment. The plat­form enables researchers and sci­en­tists to develop cell struc­tures that mimic the nat­ural com­po­si­tion, con­fig­u­ra­tion and func­tion of nor­mal and dis­eased tis­sue. The Real­Bio D4™ Cul­ture Sys­tem is a major advance­ment in pro­vid­ing a means to make lab­o­ra­tory based research more “clin­i­cally rel­e­vant”, and will aid researchers and sci­en­tists in the quest for sci­en­tific dis­cov­ery and advance­ment. The ini­tial focus of the tech­nol­ogy is on can­cer tumors, liver and other struc­tured tis­sue, and the expan­sion of embry­onic, induced pluripo­tent and hematopoi­etic stem cells. Cur­rent cus­tomers include large phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and biotech com­pa­nies, large life sci­ence con­tract research orga­ni­za­tions, aca­d­e­mic research insti­tu­tions and sev­eral National Can­cer Insti­tute (NCI) Can­cer Centers.

Ret­roSense – Ret­roSense Ther­a­peu­tics is devel­op­ing a gene ther­apy to restore vision in patients who have been robbed of theirs by reti­nal degen­er­a­tive disorders.

The Ret­roSense oppor­tu­nity is char­ac­ter­ized by four key elements:

• Large mar­ket with high unmet need: Retini­tis Pig­men­tosa 100,000, advanced dry AMD 1,000,000, no FDA approved ther­a­pies for either condition
• Novel, well char­ac­ter­ized tech­nol­ogy: Human proof of con­cept on prece­dent approach, ani­mal proof of con­cept in mul­ti­ple species (mouse, rat, pri­mate) estab­lished, favor­able neu­ro­tox­i­c­ity and immuno­genic­ity stud­ies pub­lished, human safety of vec­tor established.
• Out­stand­ing man­age­ment team: 70 years com­bined expe­ri­ence, mul­ti­ple INDs, mul­ti­ple drug launches, mul­ti­ple startup suc­cess stories
• Cap­i­tal effi­cient pro­gram: The pre­clin­i­cal path is well defined. Ret­roSense expects to see bio­ef­fect / early human POC with just a few patients and a cou­ple of months into Phase I/IIa stud­ies (~$8 mil­lion to get to that point, from here).

Ret­roSense uses channelrhodopsin-2, a pho­to­sen­si­tiv­ity gene / pro­tein from blue-green algae. When admin­is­tered to a degen­er­ated retina, channelrhodopsin-2 restores light sen­si­tiv­ity and func­tional vision. Because the results are binary, Ret­roSense expects human proof of con­cept early in clin­i­cal tri­als, which are about 2 years out. Part­ner­ing rev­enues at that point are very likely.

Reveal Design Automa­tion – Semi­con­duc­tor com­pa­nies cur­rently spend $100M to develop a high-end chip, with half that cost spent on ver­i­fi­ca­tion – the process of ensur­ing a chip design meets spec­i­fi­ca­tions and is fault-free. Lead­ing chip design firms are actively adopt­ing a new gen­er­a­tion of method­olo­gies called for­mal ver­i­fi­ca­tion that dras­ti­cally reduce the effort in ver­i­fi­ca­tion and prob­a­bil­ity of miss­ing a bug. How­ever, exist­ing for­mal ver­i­fi­ca­tion tools do not scale with com­plex­ity of mod­ern designs. Reveal Design Automa­tion is the first to solve this crit­i­cal problem.

Our pro­pri­etary, patent-pending, exclu­sively licensed tech­nol­ogy achieves orders of mag­ni­tude improve­ments in scal­a­bil­ity com­pared to com­pet­ing tech­nolo­gies. For a high-end chip, full adop­tion of our tool across the design cycle could save up to $10M per chip design.

The ver­i­fi­ca­tion soft­ware mar­ket is $800M with an imme­di­ate $100M address­able mar­ket with lead­ing chip design firms. We are pro­to­typ­ing our tech­nol­ogy in part­ner­ship with ARM and are devel­op­ing a go-to-market strat­egy with Forte Design Sys­tems, an estab­lished firm with com­ple­men­tary technology.

Reveal has received $200K in grants, includ­ing SBIR Phase I fund­ing, and is in final stages of secur­ing SBIR Phase II fund­ing worth $500K. Reveal placed 6th out of 420 teams at the 2010 Rice Busi­ness Plan Com­pe­ti­tion and was fea­tured in For­tune Magazine.

Sen­sors, Inc. – Estab­lished in 1969, Sen­sors, inc. based in Saline Michi­gan, is a lead­ing world­wide sup­plier of advanced exhaust emis­sion mea­sure­ment sys­tems. These prod­ucts are used in state oper­ated smog check pro­grams on one hand and on the other com­prise sophis­ti­cated sys­tems employed in R&D and Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion lab­o­ra­to­ries of engine and vehi­cle man­u­fac­tur­ers. Sen­sors has also estab­lished itself as the leader in sup­ply­ing portable emis­sion mea­sure­ment sys­tems which have the accu­racy and per­for­mance of lab­o­ra­tory grade instru­men­ta­tion, but are rugged enough to enable mea­sure­ment of emis­sions and fuel-economy under real-world oper­at­ing conditions.

Sen­sors’ key cus­tomers include most of the world’s key reg­u­la­tory agen­cies includ­ing EPA and CARB in the USA, the EPD in Hong Kong and the JRC in Europe. Other major seg­ments include many pas­sen­ger car and heavy-duty engine and vehi­cle OEMs, Tier One sup­pli­ers, acad­e­mia, fuel man­u­fac­tur­ers and sup­pli­ers of exhaust after-treatment sys­tems. Recently, man­u­fac­tur­ers of off-road con­struc­tion and agri­cul­tural equip­ment and sup­pli­ers of marine and min­ing equip­ment have joined our list of customers.

Sen­sors designs, man­u­fac­tures, ser­vices and sup­ports its prod­ucts at its HQ in Saline. Sen­sors’ sub­sidiary, Sen­sors Europe, is based in Erkrath, Ger­many. Mar­ket­ing, sales and tech­ni­cal sup­port in China, Japan and Korea are achieved using long-established distributors.

Shade­Plex – Shade­Plex makes flex­i­ble solar power for park­ing canopies, shade struc­tures, portable tents, and other fab­ric appli­ca­tions. Shade­Plex prod­ucts have key solar tech­nol­ogy con­tent from our sup­pli­ers; but it’s our patent pend­ing, fab­ric frame tech­nol­ogy, our dis­tri­b­u­tion, and our brand­ing that makes it all acces­si­ble to the cus­tomer. Our flag­ship prod­uct, PV-FlexMount™, can be used where weight and flex­i­bil­ity rule out the use of rigid pan­els and at com­pa­ra­ble cost. It meets the engi­neer­ing, aes­thetic, and power gen­er­a­tion needs of com­mer­cial cus­tomers who want to reduce their elec­tric­ity bills or sup­port elec­tric vehi­cles using attrac­tive and func­tional alter­na­tives to rigid solar pan­els made of glass and metal. It also is highly opti­mized for mil­i­tary, gov­ern­men­tal and NGO cus­tomers who need quick, safe, and portable power generation.

Spinal Ven­tures – Spinal Ven­tures, LLC has devel­oped and patented pro­pri­etary med­ical devices for the min­i­mally inva­sive treat­ment of ortho­pe­dic con­di­tions that require con­trolled place­ment of engi­neered fillers. The main appli­ca­tions will be in the treat­ment of Ver­te­bral Com­pres­sion Frac­tures (VCF) and Inter­body Spinal Fusions (IBF), with addi­tional appli­ca­tions in col­lapsed bone frac­tures and bone voids due to tumors, trauma, and infected sur­gi­cal sites. Spinal Ven­tures will con­tract the man­u­fac­tur­ing of our prod­ucts with gov­ern­ment cer­ti­fied con­tract man­u­fac­tur­ing orga­ni­za­tions and we will mar­ket and dis­trib­ute them through exist­ing dis­trib­u­tor net­works. Ini­tially we will focus the major­ity of our efforts on the VCF indi­ca­tion and expand to the other indi­ca­tions once we begin to receive rev­enue from the sales.

Spinal Ven­tures was formed by expe­ri­enced ortho­pe­dic and med­ical device entre­pre­neurs to com­mer­cial­ize core tech­nolo­gies that will make a sig­nif­i­cant impact in large sur­gi­cal prod­uct mar­kets. Spinal Ven­tures’ prod­ucts, Ser­pen­tine™ and Legacy™, are supe­rior in terms of safety, effi­cacy and pro­ce­dural effi­ciency to the cur­rent stan­dards of care. Our prod­ucts are the only prod­ucts that allow for a high degree of flex­i­bil­ity and adapt­abil­ity in bio­me­chan­ics, mate­r­ial, and pro­ce­dure which trans­lates to respon­sive and sus­tain­able com­pet­i­tive advan­tages to cur­rent and future mar­ket demands.

Sproxil – Sproxil uses sim­ple to under­stand tech­niques to pro­vide robust anti-counterfeiting and brand loy­alty solu­tions pri­mar­ily in emerg­ing mar­kets. We tag prod­ucts with tamper-evident labels which have a unique, item-specific hid­den code much like a sophis­ti­cated ser­ial num­ber. Upon pur­chas­ing the prod­uct, con­sumers reveal and text mes­sage the code to Sproxil’s Mobile Prod­uct Authen­ti­ca­tion™ (MPA) ser­vice. We reply inform­ing the con­sumer about the product’s authen­tic­ity based on the code. A spe­cific code may only be used once and then it is inval­i­dated. The ser­vice is free to con­sumers and paid for by prod­uct man­u­fac­tur­ers. Our solu­tion also helps com­pa­nies con­nect directly to their con­sumers through cus­tomized text in the responses specif­i­cally tar­get­ing purchasers.

We’ve already sold more than 2m labels since our early 2010 launch and the Niger­ian reg­u­la­tory agency (equiv­a­lent to the US FDA) has endorsed MPA and selected it as Africa’s first national mobile-based anti-counterfeit ser­vice. We have secured grants from US AID, the Clin­ton Foun­da­tion and Nokia Forum and won awards from MITX and IBM. In addi­tion Pres­i­dent Clin­ton com­mended our work at the recent Clin­ton Global Ini­tia­tive annual meet­ing say­ing Sproxil’s ser­vice ““is a gen­uinely remark­able achievement…[it’s] empowering…putting peo­ple in charge of their own healthcare.

The Mack­i­naw Tech­nol­ogy Com­pany – The Mack­inac Tech­nol­ogy Com­pany was founded in 2007 by John Slagter. The sole pur­pose of the com­pany is to develop and com­mer­cial­ize energy sav­ing ther­mal insu­la­tion prod­ucts. Mackinac’s core asset is its coop­er­a­tive research and devel­op­ment work­ing rela­tion­ships with world class research and devel­op­ment orga­ni­za­tions. The Mack­inac Tech­nol­ogy Com­pany is devel­op­ing trans­for­ma­tive tech­nolo­gies that will pro­vide sub­stan­tial energy sav­ings with prod­ucts that can be pur­chased and installed at afford­able costs. Mr. Slagter has more than 30 years expe­ri­ence man­ag­ing con­struc­tion and man­u­fac­tur­ing busi­ness oper­a­tions and he has had con­sid­er­able expe­ri­ence man­ag­ing a vari­ety of tech­nol­ogy research and devel­op­ment projects which were ulti­mately brought to suc­cess­ful commercialization.

Ther­a­py­Charts – Ther­a­py­Charts is for the 500k men­tal and behav­ioral health pro­fes­sion­als who are dis­sat­is­fied with paper charts, 20% insur­ance take­backs, and are fear­ful of health­care reg­u­la­tions com­ing in 2012. Our team of attor­neys, com­puter secu­rity experts and psy­chol­o­gists have cre­ated a web-based elec­tronic health record (EHR) sys­tem that pro­vides smart prac­tice man­age­ment for psy­chol­o­gists and other men­tal and behav­ioral health pro­fes­sion­als. Ther­a­py­Charts fea­tures a clin­i­cian focused work­flow that keeps progress notes, treat­ment plans, other patient records, and appoint­ment sched­ules within two clicks. Our inno­v­a­tive web-based sys­tem designed to reduce dupli­ca­tion and man­ual double-entry, fea­tures fully HIPAA secure access from any com­puter in any loca­tion, has no soft­ware to install, and no backup hard­ware to main­tain. Unlike other EMRs, we inte­grate remote acces­si­bil­ity, secu­rity, legal com­pli­ance, and tai­lor it to the work­flow of clin­i­cians — all for a price com­pa­ra­ble to the monthly cable bill — which is less than the cost to man­u­ally retrieve a patient record from the archives and much less than the cost of pos­si­ble com­pli­ance fines.

Ves­taron – Ves­taron® uses clean tech­nol­ogy to develop novel insec­ti­cides for the envi­ron­men­tally con­scious 21st cen­tury. The Com­pany is lead­ing the tran­si­tion from syn­thetic to peptide-based insec­ti­cides in the agri­cul­tural biotech­nol­ogy indus­try. Vestaron’s first peptide-based prod­uct has been effec­tively man­u­fac­tured and suc­cess­fully field tested with a mar­ket launch planned in 2013. This and follow-on prod­ucts address sig­nif­i­cant and increas­ingly unmet mar­ket and reg­u­la­tory needs in multi­bil­lion dol­lar global insec­ti­cide markets.

Ves­taron pos­sesses a pio­neer­ing Clean­Tech plat­form tech­nol­ogy base that allows far more rapid devel­op­ment of inno­v­a­tive prod­ucts. Vestaron’s pro­pri­etary prod­ucts are based on the spe­cific mol­e­c­u­lar archi­tec­tures inher­ent within spi­der venom pep­tides that dis­play broad and potent bio­log­i­cal activ­ity against insects but lack any ver­te­brate tox­i­c­ity. To date the Com­pany has iden­ti­fied and char­ac­ter­ized three unique lead insec­ti­cide pep­tide ingre­di­ents. Each of these pep­tides is active at entirely novel mol­e­c­u­lar tar­gets (sites of action) within the insect pest. This is crit­i­cally impor­tant as insect resis­tance is ram­pant against exist­ing insec­ti­cides. Fur­ther, each of these pep­tides can be exploited by mul­ti­ple means of deliv­ery includ­ing: i) as a pep­tide insec­ti­cide, ii) as a phar­ma­cophore for devel­op­ing mim­ics, and iii) as a genetic mate­r­ial for the mod­i­fi­ca­tion of crop plants to express insect resistance.

Vir(Sn) – Vir(Sn), Inc. is a start up med­ical device com­pany based in Ann Arbor, MI. The com­pany was spun out of the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan Bio­med­ical Engi­neer­ing Depart­ment. Michael J. O’Donnell, MD FACC is a Founder and Pres­i­dent of Vir(Sn), Inc. The gold stan­dard of sur­gi­cal aor­tic valve replace­ment includes removal of the dis­eased aor­tic valve. Tran­scatheter aor­tic valve implan­ta­tion (TAVI) has emerged as an attrac­tive alter­na­tive to sur­gi­cal aor­tic valve replace­ment for patients with symp­to­matic severe cal­cific aor­tic steno­sis deemed to be at high sur­gi­cal risk. How­ever, there remains an unmet need for a safer TAVI pro­ce­dure. In the evolv­ing pro­ce­dure of TAVI implants, there remain sig­nif­i­cant com­pli­ca­tions, includ­ing device mal­po­si­tion, inad­e­quate valve siz­ing, coro­nary artery obstruc­tion, par­avalvu­lar regur­gi­ta­tion, and induced con­duc­tion abnor­mal­i­ties. Addi­tion­ally, for TAVI pro­ce­dures to expand in scope and accep­tance, the results must be judged favor­ably against sur­gi­cal aor­tic valve replace­ment. Vir(Sn) has unique catheter-based tech­nol­ogy to remove the dis­eased valve prior to the place­ment of the tran­scathter aor­tic valve implant and could mit­i­gate most of the com­pli­ca­tions of TAVI pro­ce­dures and approach the clin­i­cal gold stan­dard of the sur­gi­cal valve replace­ment. Vir(Sn) is cur­rently com­plet­ing pro­to­types for ani­mal and later first in man studies.