Jessica Huber, professor of speech, language, and hearing sciences, collaborated with engineers on a device that helps people with Parkinson’s disease speak more loudly and clearly. Her startup, SpeechVive, helped her earn the 2014 Outstanding Commercialization Award for Purdue University Faculty. Alyssa Panitch, the Leslie E. Geddes Professor of Biomedical Engineering, has launched three startups, including Symic Biomedical, which secured more than $15 million in Series A financing this year. And Sherry Harbin, professor of biomedical engineering, founded GeniPhys in 2014. Her licensed research in collagen and engineering matrix technologies could revolutionize the way certain biomaterials are standardized and developed for research and medical purposes.

Engineering innovation

Jessica Huber, professor of speech, language and hearing sciences, has invented SpeechViveTM, which helps Parkinson's disease patients overcome the tendency to speak too quietly. (Purdue University photo/Andrew Hancock)

The idea came first, says Huber, who began working in 2006 with biomedical engineering researchers Kirk Foster, senior research engineer, and Jim Jones, engineering resources manager, both from the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, on a prototype that resembles a hearing aid. People with Parkinson’s disease often suffer from a diminished voice. Huber’s device creates background noise, forcing people to speak louder.

For the better part of a decade, Huber strived to perfect the technology while investigating the ways to build a business. And from component parts to batteries and molding, she learned a lot about engineering along the way. “That’s part of being a faculty member,” she says. “Anyone excited about learning who earns a PhD and finds a faculty position doesn’t just turn that off. The desire to learn never goes away.”

Today Huber’s invention is available in more than 25 states and through some 70 different speech pathology clinics. A current Series B fundraising round, along with a software update, could help them penetrate the market for veterans as SpeechVive is the sole provider for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Huber’s journey from idea to startup made her a good resource to help others on the same path. She was named the Faculty Fellow in Entrepreneurship in 2014, a position that allows her to meet with faculty and students regularly to provide direction on maneuvering the commercialization process. One group she started, the Entrepreneurial Ambassadors, gathers faculty who’ve started companies with faculty looking to do the same. “It’s really helpful to have people who’ve had startup success share their stories,” she says.

An evolving university culture that focuses on entrepreneurship is also paying dividends in the area of translational research. Huber says the Purdue Research Foundation, under the leadership of Dan Hasler, has helped make her multifaceted job easier — as both a faculty fellow and faculty entrepreneur.

Finding solutions

The technology being commercialized by Symic Biomedical was developed at the Purdue University Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering. From left are Alyssa Panitch, the Leslie A. Geddes Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Purdue and a founder and scientific advisory board member of Symic; Kate Stewart, co-founder and director of preclinical development for Symic; and John Paderi, co-founder and director of research and development for Symic. (Purdue Research Foundation photo)

Panitch arrived at Purdue in 2006 with startup experience under her belt, having helped launch one as a faculty member at Arizona State University. In addition to Symic Biomedical, which offers an innovative approach to treating disease through a new category of therapeutics, Panitch took Moerae Matrix, a peptide development company that treats diseases that involve inflammation and fibrosis, to current human clinical trials.

Like Huber, Panitch is now helping others realize their own startup dreams. In 2014 she was named the inaugural director of Deliberate Innovation for Faculty in life sciences and medical technologies. Her first piece of advice: Try solving unmet needs. “It’s better to have a technology that knows what its home is rather than have a technology searching for an application,” she says.

She also advises researchers to play to their particular strengths and make the most of on-campus resources like the Purdue Foundry, a center dedicated to getting startups off the ground. “Most of us are really smart people and we think we can do just about anything,” Panitch says. “But having a good business team is really important.”

As a named professor that honors the memory of Leslie Geddes, the iconic Purdue biomedical engineering inventor and innovator with whom she worked, Panitch remains passionate about carrying that translational research torch. “I like working with graduate students, seeing the light bulbs go off and helping them get to the point where they are really strong researchers,” she says.

Enhancing human medicine

Sherry Harbin, professor of biomedical engineering, in her laboratory in Purdue’s Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering. A tissue engineer with about 90 patents, Harbin founded GeniPhys, a startup based on her research in collagen and engineering matrix technologies. (Purdue Research Foundation photo)

Harbin has been at Purdue since her graduate school days in 1987, where she also worked with Geddes and others at the Hillenbrand Biomedical Engineering Center developing and translating tissue engineering technologies. Though her original plan was to attend medical school, her philosophy never altered even as she followed a research path. “My goal has always been to have a positive impact on human medicine,” Harbin says. “I realized I could do that best by working behind the scenes in developing new products.”

Harbin’s technology represents the first standardized self-assembling collagen that forms fibril networks similar to those found in our body’s tissues. These polymer building blocks support design customization of bioinstructive collagen-based materials as well as cell encapsulation. This customization, along with versatile formatting, makes them broadly useful for medical and research applications including 3D cell culture, medical implants, engineered tissue constructs, and vehicles for localized delivery of therapeutic agents and/or cells. Harbin says one highlight of developing this technology was working through ASTM International to draft standard guidelines for manufacturing and characterizing these new collagen formulations.

GeniPhys is currently selling research grade materials online that can be used in modernized 3D cell cultures. “We are generating a small stream of revenue and that’s important as we move forward into the planning stages of medical grade products,” says Harbin.

As for pushing the limits of her own research and development expertise, Harbin enjoys thinking about the broader aspects of commercialization. “When you go out and vet the technology and people say, ‘Wow, this is really going to be impactful,’ that’s really the motivation. There’s a significant gap in getting it from research grade on the lab bench to where it’s something that’s rigorously quality controlled and standardized. I’ve been trying to put those pieces into place.”

For Harbin and any researcher working along an engineering path marked by trial and error, the opportunity for commercialized success could have rippling effects throughout campus and society.