Purdue researchers receive $175K from Purdue Innovates to strengthen market readiness of their work

In its latest round, the Trask Innovation Fund supports innovations in cancer therapy, cell manipulation and superabsorbent materials

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University researchers from the College of Agriculture, College of Pharmacy and College of Science have received $175,000 from the Trask Innovation Fund to advance Purdue intellectual property for commercial use. The innovations include cancer therapy, cell targeting and manipulation, and superabsorbent materials.

The fund is managed by the Purdue Innovates Incubator, which provides programming for the Purdue University community to create, refine, and support their solutions. Funding recipients can receive up to $50,000 for their initial project; they can reapply up to three times for a total of up to $100,000 to support the same technology.

From fiscal years 2013 to 2023, approximately $3 million in Trask funding was awarded to 81 projects. Forty percent of the technologies that received Trask funding were licensed or placed under an industry option.

The deadline to apply for the next round of funding is September 27. You can download and edit the Trask Proposal Template. Questions about the applications can be sent to [email protected].

Here are the Spring 2024 Trask Innovation Fund recipients, their projects, and award amounts:

Andrea Kasinski; College of Science, Purdue Institute for Cancer Research, and Purdue Institute for Drug Discovery; “First-in-class fully engineered microRNA for targeted cancer treatment”; $45,920

Kasinski is the deputy director of the Purdue Institute for Cancer Research and an associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences. She and her research team are developing effective, nontoxic therapies to treat non-small cell lung cancer. The World Cancer Research Fund International reported that nearly 2.5 million new cases would be diagnosed in 2022. Kasinski said that most patients are diagnosed after their tumors have metastasized, or spread from the lungs to other parts of the body.

“Patients with metastatic disease have a poor five-year survival rate of about 8 percent,” she said. “Our agents can help these patients.”

Most cancers are not caused by a single lesion, meaning they require therapies that target multiple cancer-causing genes. This has led to traditional combination therapy, or treatment with multiple agents.

Kasinski’s research aims to combat multiple cancers with a single agent that acts as a multi-drug cocktail.

“The ability to simultaneously affect multiple genes that cancer cells depend on results in increased efficacy and reduces the risk of tumor recurrence,” she said.

Purdue’s research into developing the agents will focus on achieving specific delivery and improving stability. The agents are small RNAs, or ribonucleic acids, single-stranded nucleic acids found in all living cells. Kasinski and her team developed a chemically modified version that is 400 times more stable and achieved specific delivery to cancer cells.

“Trask’s funding will allow us to complete studies to highlight our agents’ improved efficacy and reduced toxicity compared to previously tested formulations,” she said. “We will also conduct stability and pharmacology experiments that will significantly reduce the risk of our therapy, leading to increased investor interest.”

Senay Simsek; College of Agriculture; “New Technologies for Developing Super-Derivative Bioabsorbents for Industrial Applications”; $50,000

Simsek leads a team of researchers using cellulose extracted from hemp and refined through a series of processes to create patented superabsorbent materials. Simsek is a professor and head of the Department of Food Science and also serves as dean of Food Science.

“We are passionate about the potential of our product to have a significant impact on the environment,” Simsek said. “By introducing a commercial product that helps save our planet, we want to lead in sustainable innovation—helping to heal the planet one application at a time.”

Simsek and her team tested hemp-based superabsorbent materials using standardized absorption tests, comparing them to traditional superabsorbent materials. She said the hemp hurd showed significantly higher absorption capacity than traditional materials.

“This validation highlights not only the effectiveness of our technology, but also its potential to replace less sustainable options on the market, offering a biodegradable and renewable alternative,” she added.

Simsek will use the funds to acquire larger bioreactors and develop technologies to produce the superabsorbent material in larger quantities.

“So far, our results have been based on laboratory experiments,” she said. “Scaling up is a critical step in testing across industrial applications and a key step toward turning our ideas into reality.”

Yoon Yeo; Department of Pharmacy, Purdue Cancer Research Institute and Purdue Drug Discovery Institute; “Immunoactive Complex for Cancer Immunotherapy”; $50,000

Yeo leads a team of researchers developing a nanoparticle formulation called IMAX, or Immuno-Active Complexes, to investigate how the body’s innate immune system can be harnessed to treat cancer. Yeo is the Lillian Barboul Thomas Professor and Associate Head of the Department of Industrial and Molecular Pharmaceutics by courtesy at the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering.

Current immunotherapy approaches largely focus on the adaptive immune system, including checkpoint inhibitors and T-cell engineering. Yeo said the innate immune system, which is crucial for initiating adaptive responses, remains underexplored.

“Innate immune cells, such as dendritic cells and natural killer cells, often remain dormant or even promote tumor growth due to immunosuppressive factors in the tumor microenvironment,” she said. “Effective strategies are needed to overcome this suppression and coordinate a robust antitumor response that supports both innate and adaptive immune functions.”

IMAX stimulates the innate immune system and induces immunogenic cell death to elicit potent anti-tumor responses. When administered intratumorally, IMAX eliminates primary tumors and protects against metastasis and tumor recurrence.

“IMAX has been validated in preclinical mouse models of various cancers, including breast cancer, colon cancer, pancreatic cancer, head and neck cancer, and melanoma,” Yeo said. “In these studies, IMAX consistently demonstrated potent antitumor activity, improved survival rates, and provided resistance to tumor recurrence. The methodology and results were published in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”

Yeo said the funds will be used to conduct preclinical studies to support the launch of IMAX technology.

“We will evaluate the pharmacokinetics, biodistribution and safety of IMAX to de-risk the technology and gain confidence from commercialization partners and investors,” she said. “This study will also help us obtain NIH (National Institutes of Health) Small Business Innovation Research funding, which supports small businesses.”

Jesse Chi Zhang; Department of Science, Purdue Cancer Research Institute and Purdue Institute of Inflammation, Immunology and Infectious Diseases; “Precision Opto-Control System for Manipulating Chemical Processes in Cells”; $30,000

Zhang leads a team of researchers working on real-time precision opto-control, or RPOC, which uses a laser-based approach to give users site- and chemical-specific control over chemical processes in living cells. Zhang is an assistant professor in the James Tarpo Jr. and Margaret Tarpo Department of Chemistry at Purdue.

A five-minute video about the technology is available on the Purdue Chemistry YouTube channel.

“The imaging capabilities of our system were compared to those of a commercial confocal fluorescence microscope, showing very similar results in resolution and imaging speed,” he said. “What sets it apart is its ability to be opto-controlled, a feature not available in traditional confocal microscopes.”

Initial applications of RPOC are in the life sciences, namely basic biological research. Zhang said RPOC also shows significant potential in pharmaceutical research, as it can help elucidate site-specific drug functions in cells or animals.

“We are actively exploring the use of RPOCs to regulate cell division, embryonic development, and cancer cell migration by precisely releasing or activating compounds at desired subcellular locations,” he said. “This pursuit holds promise for the development of new methodologies for manipulating cellular behavior and cell fate.”

Zhang said the Trask funds will be used to purchase two more lasers and a faster galvanometer scanning system to complete the RPOC prototype.

These innovations and others created by Purdue researchers are available for further development and licensing. Contact the Purdue Innovates Office of Technology Commercialization at [email protected] for more information.

Why the Trask Innovation Fund is Important

Trask Innovation Fund awards support Purdue researchers in the “valley of death,” the period between the creation of a new innovation and its introduction to the market.

Sometimes it takes years for an innovation to catch the attention of the industry. Matt Dressler, fund manager for the Purdue Innovates Incubator, said that in that time, researchers can encounter several obstacles.

“These challenges include technology becoming outdated or inventors becoming discouraged by lack of progress,” he said. “Trask funding can address these challenges as Purdue faculty transform a discovery into a commercially viable product. The fund complements several other Purdue Innovates resources available to university inventors and entrepreneurs.”

About the Purdue Innovates Incubator

The Purdue Innovates Incubator is the gateway to a rich ecosystem of programs and services designed to help early-stage startups take the next step. Programs provide settings for cohort work and one-on-one consultations. Content includes explaining problems from a client’s perspective, developing a business model, conducting customer interviews, building a team, identifying regulatory paths and legal structures, and more. Purdue alumni and community members interested in becoming mentors are invited to contact the Incubator team.

About Purdue University

Purdue University is a public research institution that demonstrates excellence at scale. Ranked in the top 10 public universities and with two colleges in the top four in the United States, Purdue discovers and disseminates knowledge at a scale and quality unmatched by any other. More than 105,000 students attend Purdue in a variety of modalities and locations, including nearly 50,000 in-person at the West Lafayette campus. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue’s main campus has frozen tuition for 13 consecutive years. See how Purdue never stops as it relentlessly pursues the next giant leap—including its first comprehensive urban campus in Indianapolis, the Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. School of Business, Purdue Computes, and the One Health initiative—at https://www.purdue.edu/president/strategic-initiatives.

Author/media contact: Steve Martin, [email protected]

Source: Matt Dressler, [email protected]