Saurabh
Biswas
(College Station)—A Texas A&M University System research team working to develop a noninvasive method of diagnosing colon cancer was honored at two recent competitions for outstanding new ventures and business plans.
The team, led by Texas A&M University biomedical engineering graduate student Saurabh Biswas, has formed a company called Cologenomics Inc., and was recognized April 1 with three awards and cash prizes at the Rice University Business Plan Competition in Houston.
The team won the Outstanding Written Business Plan Award sponsored by Houston Private Equity Association, and placed first in the Austin Ventures Elevator Pitch Competition. In the overall competition, Cologenomics took fifth place. As one of the top seven teams to place, Cologenomics received complimentary website and hosting services for up to one year, provided by RENTthesite.com and software from Microsoft.
On March 12, Cologenomics won the first Big XII New Venture Championship in Dallas. The team was called the “clear winner” by judges at the competition, which was held in conjunction with the annual Big XII Basketball Tournament.
As winner of the Big XII competition, Cologenomics is eligible to compete in the world-renowned Global Moot Corp Competition May 3-6, 2006, at the University of Texas at Austin, which offers a cash prize of $100,000 to its winner each year for start-up funding.
“Being recognized at these competitions has generated a lot of interest in Cologenomics and gave the team great exposure to the venture capital community,” said David Riddle, licensing and intellectual property manager for the Office of Technology Commercialization, which helped establish the company. “It confirmed that the technology has incredible potential, a huge market and a great opportunity for success.”
The office helps System researchers bring technologies they develop to the public by negotiating licensing agreements and providing intellectual property protection. It also helps secure funding for the new ventures, such as through industry partners.
Biswas’s
company, Cologenomics, won first place last November in the University
of Texas’s Idea to Product International Competition.
Cologenomics’ concept as a platform technology, with applications in disease diagnosis, nutrition and pharmacogenomics, was created by Biswas. A platform technology is a single technology that can be applied to develop multiple applications.
Cologenomics applies advances in genomics technology, leading to the present technology, developed by faculty researchers in Texas A&M’s Departments of Statistics and Nutrition to create a fast, painless and convenient way to monitor very early signs of colorectal cancer in patients, thus possibly providing a 90 percent chance of survival and cure.
Through a noninvasive diagnostic test using a stool sample—a test that would identify signs of cancer much earlier than other screening methods—the technology identifies alterations in RNA, or global gene expression by using gene chips, stemming from cancer-causing cells at very early stages.
At the Big XII competition, the business plan for Cologenomics was recognized for reflecting the fundamentals of a successful, high return on investment start-up company with long-term viability. The plan’s novel screening approach was described as an innovative and practically feasible technology that could enhance the quality and lower the costs of healthcare delivery.
The plan was written by Biswas and Texas A&M MBA student Benjamin Price, with assistance from faculty advisor Richard Scruggs, director of the Center for New Ventures and Entrepreneurship in the management department of Texas A&M’s Mays Business School.
Cologenomics also has been recognized in other competitions. In November 2005, the team won first place among 40 finalists presenting at the University of Texas’s Idea to Product International (I2P) Competition, which featured teams from around the world including Purdue, Stanford, Penn State, Imperial College of London and The National University of Singapore. In spring 2005, Cologenomics took second place at Texas A&M’s fourth annual Ideas Challenge held at Mays Business School.
Biswas’s work in technology development also has been recognized. In 2004, he took second place at I2P for technology he presented on a heart-assist device for patients who have suffered a severe heart attack. He and Riddle developed a business plan based on that technology to form a company called CorInnova Inc., which then attracted almost $1 million in funding from the American Heart Association and the National Institutes of Health, and is now being tested at labs at Texas A&M’s College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.
Riddle said that Cologenomics will continue to hone its business plan and will pursue grant funding from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund, created in 2005 by Texas Governor Rick Perry to promote innovation and research in new technologies leading to jobs for Texans in emerging high-tech industries.
The Rice University Business Plan Competition is considered the world’s richest university-based business plan competition in guaranteed cash prize money. The 2006 competition was the sixth, with 35 of the top MBA schools from around the world presenting business plans to a panel of 150 judges considered experts in venture capital, early-stage investing and entrepreneurship.
The competition is hosted by the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship and the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management at Rice University.
The Big XII New Venture Championship was sponsored by the Big XII Center for Economic Development, Innovation, and Commercialization (CEDIC), founded by Pike Powers and Ron Kessler of Austin. The CEDIC promotes collaboration and commercialization of technologies developed at universities in the Big XII Conference, thereby leveraging assets and resources to create new jobs in Texas and beyond.