7 promising Indiana life sciences early stage companies compete for cash prizes and consulting services
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind., Oct. 16, 2013 — After a successful New Venture Competition in 2012, BioCrossroads announces seven finalists today who will compete and be recognized at the Indiana Life Sciences Summit reception on October 21, 2013. The Competition is an effort to encourage entrepreneurial activity among Indiana life sciences early stage companies and discover promising companies along the way.
“The New Venture Competition has proven to be a great way for us to find and reward promising companies, and is an excellent opportunity for the competing companies to gain some exposure within Indiana’s life sciences community,” said David L. Johnson, President and CEO of BioCrossroads. “This competition provides not only BioCrossroads, but other investors and influencers, a great platform for knowledge sharing in this space.”
The BioCrossroads New Venture Competition presented by Krieg DeVault was open to life sciences (biotechnology, pharmaceutical, medical device, diagnostic, ag-biotech) and health information technology companies holding a substantial nexus to Indiana and a high potential for attracting investment capital. The finalists competing for cash prizes and professional consulting services include:
Curvo, a cloud-based platform that hospitals use for free by sharing their purchasing data; medical device companies buy access to Curvo and use hospital data to make targeted offers.
GoLIMS, which provides a secure, centralized, and audited solution for research and development teams worldwide. The cloud-based research management platform allows for project organization and milestones, electronic notebooks, inventory, and document management. The platform is available for all research disciplines, including biotech, agriculture, and manufacturing, in both corporate and academic settings.
Jace Medical,an emergent medical device company driven to improve the lives of patients by designing, developing, and commercializing innovative products. The first product development is a novel cardiac device that will not only improve surgeon performance and efficiency, but also provide a quantifiable difference in long-term clinical outcomes.
Solstice Medical’s healthcare information technology platform, DOCK-to-DOC®, which optimizes surgical supply chain operations and surgical workflow productivity reducing costs, improving clinical efficiency and patient satisfaction. The company was named Innovator of the Year by the Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly and a “Companies to Watch” by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation.
Spensa Technologies, which designs, develops and delivers novel technologies for the agricultural industry that reduce labor, foster eco-friendly farming and enhance production efficiency. Its first two products include a software platform, MyTraps.com, that streamlines the pest control monitoring process and fully automated field system for insect population monitoring called Z-Traps.
In addition to a cash prize of $25,000, the winner of the competition will have access to the Indiana Seed Fund II staff and the fund’s network of resources to provide business planning and early-stage strategic support. They will also have the opportunity to make a presentation to the ILSFII investment committee for added exposure. Second and third place companies will be awarded cash prizes of $15,000 and $10,000 respectively.
“We are honored to be the presenting sponsor of the New Venture Competition, which provides a great forum for recognizing new and up-and-coming life sciences companies in the state of Indiana,” said Gregory B. Coy, Partner and Life Sciences Practice Chair at Krieg DeVault. “BioCrossroads has created a wonderful platform to showcase entrepreneurship and encourage business development in this sector. Krieg DeVault certainly appreciates the hard work and effort that all of the applicants, and particularly the finalists, have demonstrated in this year’s competition.”
There is also a Pre-Venture prize of $10,000 for a promising technology that is very early in its development. Finalists in the Pre-Venture category are:
Emphymab Biotech, a biotechnology company developing a first disease-modifying platform drug for emphysema and other chronic diseases. Based on proprietary technology from Indiana University School of Medicine, the company is advancing a monoclonal antibody treatment that targets inflammatory factor EMAPII and blocks disease progression.
Rene Medical, developing the patent pending kidni System™ to treat contrast induced nephropathy (CIN) utilizing Rene Treat™ solution. This global growing unmet clinical need affects in the US 2.5 million people every year and adds $10 billion in costs to the US healthcare system.
Both of the Pre-Venture finalists come out of the Indiana University Research and Technology Corporation’s Spin-Up program, which provides valuable early-stage technology commercialization support to Indiana University-affiliated companies.
All winners will be announced at the Indiana Life Sciences Summit Networking Reception at the JW Marriott Hotel in Indianapolis on October 21, 2013.
5AM Ventures, CHV Capital, Inc., StepStone Business Partners, OrthoWorx and Halo Capital Group sponsored the Competition presented by Krieg DeVault.
About BioCrossroads
BioCrossroads (www.biocrossroads.com) is Indiana’s initiative to grow, advance and invest in the life sciences, a public-private collaboration that supports the region’s existing research and corporate strengths while encouraging new business development. BioCrossroads provides money and support to life sciences businesses, launches new life sciences enterprises (Indiana Health Information Exchange, Fairbanks Institute for Healthy Communities, BioCrossroadsLINX, OrthoWorx and Datalys Center), expands collaboration and partnerships among Indiana’s life science institutions, promotes science education and markets Indiana’s life sciences industry.