EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES
Innovation Rising
When Texas innovators need that helpful push to take their products from design to putting actual products in the hands of potential customers, they can turn to Texas’ Emerging Technology Fund (ETF). Established by the 79th Texas Legislature, the ETF awards grants — $100 million is set aside for 2006 and 2007 — to small companies ready to take that next step.
“It’s difficult for some of these companies to get over that mountain of opportunity to where venture capitalists are more comfortable helping them with the big money,” says Mark Ellison, director of the ETF. “We want to help them get there.”
Austin’s NanoCoolers, one project under way in 2007, received $3 million in ETF grants toward its work on innovative and energy-efficient cooling technology, according to NanoCoolers’ Gary Baum. NanoCoolers’ work could yield advances in cooling computers, electronics and even automotive headlamps.
“Once we can get customers, we turn the corner more from research mode into operational mode, actually taking it and trying to ramp up production and engage customers,” Baum says.
Eligible fields of innovation include life science, defense, nanotechnology and energy, among others. It is that diversity of projects that makes Texas a hotbed of opportunity.
“We don’t say, ‘Oh, we’re going to focus on healthcare,’ or, ‘We’re going to focus on energy technologies,’” Ellison says. “We let the market dictate where we want to go.”
For more information, visit www.emergingtechfund.com.
NANOTECHNOLOGY
Chemotherapy through nanotech
Chemotherapy is often accompanied by numerous side effects and can be life-threatening in itself. But EnGeneIC, an Australian biotechnology firm, claims it has developed a way to take the misery out of chemo.
EnGeneIC’s method uses nanocells — inert bacteria containing anti-cancer drugs — that can attach themselves to cancer cells, delivering their drug payload precisely where it is needed. This would allow chemotherapy to be delivered with dosages at a tiny fraction of those currently used.
The National Cancer Institute reports that cancer treatments cost U.S. governments and citizens $78.2 billion in 2006 alone.
For more information, contact EnGeneIC through its Web site at www.engeneic.com.
EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES
Driverless car
An Austin company is teaming with the University of Texas to develop a “robot” SUV that drives itself, in preparation for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Urban Challenge.
Austin Robot Technology is fine-tuning the robotic vehicle for the DARPA challenge in November 2007. The DARPA Urban Challenge pits autonomous vehicles from around the globe against one another in a race through an artificial urban landscape. The challenge is intended to accelerate research and development in autonomous ground vehicles that could help save lives on the battlefield.
Congress has mandated that by 2015, one-third of U.S. ground combat vehicles should be unmanned. By 2010, the U.S. Army plans to spend $14.8 billion on a new combat system that includes autonomous navigation systems.
For more information, contact Dave Tuttle, info@austinrobot.com, Austin Robot Technology, www.austinrobot.com.
MEDICAL SCIENCE
Shoot down cancer
An injection of ethanol alcohol through the skin directly into a bone tumor may be a valuable treatment for thyroid cancer patients whose cancer has spread to the bone, according to Japanese researchers.
Researchers found that tumor volume was reduced by more than 50 percent in all of the study’s patients. More research is needed, however, to determine dosage levels and study the treatments effects on survival and recurrence.
More than 33,550 cases of thyroid cancer will be diagnosed in the United States this year. Cancer costs workers $2.3 billion in lost time in the first year of treatment alone, according to the National Cancer Institute.
For more information, contact Maryann Verrillo, Society of Nuclear Medicine, (703) 652-6773, mverrillo@snm.org.
ENERGY/UTILITIES
Heat to Electric
Physicists at the University of Utah have developed tiny devices that turn heat into sound and then into electricity. The approach holds promise for an alternative source of electricity, providing a way to harness solar energy and cool computers.
“It is a new source of renewable energy from waste heat,” says Orest Symko, the University of Utah physics professor leading the research.
The U.S. Army is funding the research and is interested in producing a portable source of electric energy that could be used on the battlefield to run electronics, Symko says.
Symko foresees using the devices to generate electricity through heat released from nuclear power plant cooling towers. The U.S. market for cooling towers is $1 billion annually. The U.S. electricity market is estimated at $270 billion annually.
For more information, contact Orest Symko, professor of physics, University of Utah, (801) 581-6132, orest@physics.utah.edu.
MEDICAL SCIENCE
Building smarter mice
Texas scientists working with mice to block a brain enzyme — Cdk5 — reported some unexpected results. The mice got smarter.
“We didn’t know what would happen at that time, but the [mice] were more interested in learning, were faster at it and were also able to [quickly] adjust to changes in their environments,” says Dr. James Bibb of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas.
Cdk5 is a naturally occurring brain enzyme that has shown to over-stimulate synapses in the brain, which can wear out the connections vital to long-term memory in people. Eliminating the enzyme in the mice improved their memory skills, which leads to the study of future Alzheimer’s treatments, according to Bibb.
“I’m very excited about looking into its possibilities for Alzheimer’s and other cognitive disorders,” he says. “This is just the beginning, and the next couple of years are going to be very exciting.”
The Texas Department of State Health Services estimates 280,000 Texans have Alzheimer’s, a neurodegenerative disease most commonly found in people over age 65. Annual costs for U.S. Alzheimer’s and dementia care top $148 billion.
For more information, contact Dr. James Bibb, james.bibb@utsouthwestern.edu, (214) 648-4168