Pictured l-r: Tom Rafferty, Matt Rhyner, Meadow Clenendin, ORNL Director Jeff Wadsworth, Nano Nexus Managing Director Joy Fisher, David Madden.
Team: TIGON Nanostrategies
Team Members: Meadow Clenendin, David Madden, Tom Rafferty, Matt Rhyner
School: Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University
Faculty Advisor: Carolyn Davis
Product or Service: A new generation of molecular disease-hunting imaging probes that can detect tumors with as few as 10,000 cancer cells. The team says their nanotechnology-based imaging agents are more specific and sensitive than any existing products. Once injected into the body, TIGON probes accumulate at tiny disease sites and enable researchers, and eventually clinicians, to track disease progression sooner and more accurately than current techniques allow.
TIGON’s probes are innovative in that they use encapsulated nanoparticles and quantum dots as a substitute for traditional molecular imaging agents. Due to their small size and unique qualities, TIGON’s probes solve some of the technical difficulties researchers and clinicians face today. The fluorescent qualities of quantum dots do not fade quickly like existing dyes, the small size of the probes allows detection of significantly smaller disease sites, and by combining magnetic and fluorescent probes into one product, TIGON allows researchers to obtain two different types of images (MRI and optical) with one injection.
TIGON Nanostrategies will help clinicians save lives by enabling metastatic cancers to be detected sooner, presenting a greater likelihood of eradication from the body and more treatment options for patients. In addition, because of the low cost of production for TIGON’s probes, the team predicts they can offer this benefit to clinicians at a cost equal to or less than existing imaging agents. TIGON will also fulfill the need of their initial customers and researchers to conduct more efficient animal experiments. With current techniques, an animal researcher who wishes to conduct a three month animal study on three mice must sacrifice 36 mice (3 per week for 12 weeks). TIGON eliminates the need to sacrifice the animals because the probes can be imaged in the mice while they are alive, hence only 3 mice would be needed for the entire 12 weeks. Additionally, studies using TIGON’s probes are likely to be more accurate because researchers will be collecting data from the same animals over time.
TIGON’s long term goal is to bring the benefits of their new technology to clinics and cancer patients worldwide. In the meantime, as they work toward FDA approval, the team is focusing on selling their probes to preclinical researchers. Their primary targets are researchers at well-funded institutions around the world. Based on customer interviews, TIGON has learned that researchers do not tend to be highly cost-sensitive, and are willing to be early-adopters of emerging technology.
The TIGON team received a $500 award as one of six finalists in the Nano I2P® Competition at Nano Nexus 2007, a nanotechnology conference hosted by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, on April 3, 2007. The conference brought together universities, entrepreneurs, and leaders of the nanotechnology industry in an effort to move nanotechnology out of research organizations and into the marketplace.
”Being named a finalist brought validation to our product and all of our hard work,” said Matt Rhyner, a Ph.D. candidate in biomedical engineering at Georgia Tech. “It’s great to get feedback from the industry, and to gain additional support to keep going.”