Campus docs and engineers forge new path to innovation and profits

Lonnie Shea is a professor of chemical and bioengineering at the University of Michigan. His wife, Dr. Jacqueline Jeruss, is an associate professor of surgical oncology at the medical school. Together, they're creating a “cancer magnet” to implant just under the skin, such as on the arm, to determine if cancer cells return after surgery or chemotherapy.

“If metastatic cells re-emerge, that's the first place they would go,” said Shea, adding that the implant could serve as “a canary in a coal mine” and would offer an early alert to patients and physicians that cancer has returned.

The couple, recruited last summer from Northwestern University, said the intersection of his engineering sensibilities and her physician perspective helped inspire the metastatic-sensor implants idea. Their different viewpoints were crucial to identifying the opportunities and the constraints in the technology. “I will never understand breast cancer to the extent she does,” Shea said. “It would be hard for a Ph.D to understand all the subtleties of that patient experience. But she can convey the needs and understands the challenges.”

Some of the nation's leading research universities, including U-M, want to create within their institutional walls what these two researchers brought together in one family: greater collaboration between engineering and medical school faculties to foster next-generation technologies. The goal is to not only advance the practice of medicine, but to improve the patient experience and foster a more efficient healthcare system, which has usually been beyond the purview of university-based scientists.

Michigan created its Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering in 2012. It formally linked the schools of medicine and engineering with the aims of bringing biomedical researchers closer to patients and speeding the integration of new discoveries into medical care.

While medical-engineering collaborations have been ongoing between Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1970, MIT entered into a formal agreement last October with Massachusetts General Hospital, one of Harvard Medical School's main teaching hospitals. The goals included improving disease diagnosis, finding new ways to treat and prevent infectious and autoimmune diseases, and improving diagnosis and treatment of neuro-degenerative and psychiatric illnesses.

Other programs have been launched in recent years at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University. At the University of Colorado, the College of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering is looking at electrical engineering in medicine and biology as it applies to medical imaging and brain function. At Case, the department of Biomedical Engineering has begun collaborating with the medical school in a new graduate program in translational health technology.

“The need for engineering expertise in medicine is enormous at this time,” said Dr. Henry Sondheimer, senior director of medical education projects for the Association of American Medical Colleges. “It's a different type of training and way of looking at problems. We're all into cognitive diversity.”

The National Institutes of Health has begun putting the financial muscle of the federal government behind the new approach. Its National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences will spend much of its $635 million budget this fiscal year on projects to help move scientific advances from bench to bedside. An NCATS spokesman said the agency does not track how much is spent on projects that link bioengineers with medical scientists.

But the number is likely to rise as universities are seeing a shift in emphasis among the approximately 5% of any given year's medical school student body who choose to simultaneously pursue medical and doctoral degrees. Dual-degree students usually focused their doctorate research in the biological or biochemical sciences. Now, more medical students are entering fields such as engineering and science history. “We need people who think differently to solve the big problems in medicine,” Sondheimer said.

Though Michigan's engineering and medical schools are not far apart, much of the work occurs at the university's North Campus Research Complex, a 174-acre facility the university acquired from Pfizer Co. in 2009 for $108 million. Its facilities include the George Granger Brown Memorial Laboratories, the new $46 million Center for Excellence in Nano Mechanical Science and Engineering, and the Electron Microbeam Analysis Laboratory, which just underwent a $4.4 million renovation.

One of the new department's goals is to shorten the time it takes to bring new technology to market so it can focus on the current needs of the healthcare system, which often include improving medical processes as well as coming up with new technologies. “You do need to be working on things that won't go into clinical practice for 20 years or for the next generation, but you also need to be working on the problems of today,” Shea said. “I think there is a growing body of researchers who say, 'Can't we make better use of this new knowledge and translating it into therapies?' ”

U-M was one of 10 universities chosen to participate in the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation's Translational Research Partnership. Funded by the famed medical-device inventor who died in 1998, the program supports applied research aimed at solving unmet clinical needs. Projects underway at U-M include development of regenerative peripheral nerve devices for the fine control of prosthetic limbs, which received $222,600 in Coulter funds.

Products generated by the University of Michigan Health System, Ann Arbor, accounted for about $11.47 million of the $18.5 million the university made in technology transfer royalties and equity sales revenue for fiscal 2014. UMHS research was funded in part by grants from 245 companies totaling $61.4 million.

Some universities that are just getting started on creating collaborative programs between their engineering and medical schools are running into the turf battles that can hinder new academic endeavors. At the University of Illinois, for instance, there is an ongoing dispute as to what the collaboration will look like.

The downstate Urbana-Champaign campus has proposed opening a new engineering-based medical college. The Chicago U-I campus wants to create a new “translational bioengineering institute” that includes branches at the university's other campuses, which are in Peoria and Rockford as well as Urbana-Champaign.

But such institutional turf wars have not been a barrier at the 10-campus University of California system. The state has long been a hotbed for medical innovation.

UC President Janet Napolitano recently named University of California at San Francisco professor of biochemistry and biophysics Regis Kelly special adviser for innovation and entrepreneurship. His work will inform UC Ventures, a new $250 million fund for investing in UC-developed technology.

Projects underway include better imaging of human arteries by the tiny catheter-based units now used during percutaneous coronary interventions. University of Southern California and UC Irvine researchers are splitting a $2.6 million NIH grant to develop the improved technology.

UC San Diego launched an Institute of Engineering in Medicine in 2008 to pursue technologies that rely on both disciplines. “We are not entirely in the engineering or medical schools; we are the bridge between the two,” said Dr. Shu Chien, institute chairman.

A few universities have the advantage of starting from scratch. The new Dell Medical School that will open at the University of Texas at Austin in 2016 is generating excitement among the engineering and other faculties.

“University of Texas-Austin has been the largest tier-one research university in the country without a medical school,” said AAMC's Sondheimer. They “are looking forward to an extreme amount of collaboration.”

Even without the medical school, research has paid off at UT; its Office of Technology Commercialization helped create 37 companies over the past five years. It's also developed 191 license and option deals that have generated almost $83 million in licensing fees for the university.

The university plans for the new medical school to collaborate with numerous institutions on campus, including the Dell Pediatric Research Institute, Cockrell School of Engineering, LBJ School of Public Affairs, McCombs School of Business, and the schools and colleges of communication, education, law, liberal arts, pharmacy, nursing and social work. A $50 million gift from the Austin-based Livestrong Foundation is being used to create the Livestrong Cancer Institutes on campus.

“The word we like to use is 'ecosystem.' Our focus is on enabling an entire ecosystem to improve health,” said Maninder “Mini” Kahlon, vice dean for partnerships and strategy at Dell Medical School.

Follow Andis Robeznieks on Twitter: @MHARobeznieks