A Clemson University team of business administration and bioengineering students is a finalist in the Breast Cancer Start-Up Challenge, a competition created by the Avon Foundation, National Cancer Institute, and The Center for Advancing Innovation that aims to advance biomedical inventions.
The team created a business plan for an invention that allows for a new approach to tissue regeneration following breast cancer surgery. As a finalist, Clemson’s business team has an opportunity to launch a startup company, negotiate licensing agreements and raise seed funding to further develop its product.
Clemson bioengineer Karen Burg, breast cancer cell biologist Brian Booth, bioengineer Chih-Chao Yang, and their research team at the Clemson University Institute for Biological Interfaces of Engineering, with funding from the Avon Foundation, developed and patented an engineered tissue with anti-cancer properties that can be used to test breast cancer therapies or can be used as “injectable tissue” to replace breast tissue removed during cancer surgery.
The challenge featured student teams led by entrepreneurs from the U.S., United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, India, and the Netherlands, along with 10 unlicensed breast cancer inventions. The teams had to make startup business plans based on these inventions.
Other colleges presented business plans, but Clemson was the only university that created technology and also had a team developing a business plan. Teams from the University of North Carolina/Duke University, Wake Forest University and Tulane University also competed.
“The Breast Cancer Start-Up Challenge ties engineering and science with economic development,” said Anand Gramopadhye, dean of the College of Engineering and Science at Clemson, in a release. “Clemson researchers are helping place the university and South Carolina at the forefront of bioengineering and breast cancer research. More importantly, these entrepreneurial skills are expected of the next generation of engineers and scientists to create new companies.”
