{"id":2407,"date":"2002-09-15T18:00:31","date_gmt":"2002-09-15T22:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/?p=2407"},"modified":"2014-12-15T18:01:14","modified_gmt":"2014-12-15T23:01:14","slug":"infinite-possibilities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2002\/09\/infinite-possibilities\/","title":{"rendered":"Infinite Possibilities"},"content":{"rendered":"

A biomedical start-up across the street from the Homewood campus \u2014IBT\u2014is creating lifesaving products that draw upon faculty and alumni expertise.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
Biomedical Engineering Professor Nitish Thakor (left) and his former student, Ananth Natarajan, MD, \u201992 MSE, launched IBT to take a \u201cbench to bedside\u201d approach to developing neurological technology. On the monitor can be seen the recording of brain rhythms from an experiment in Thakor\u2019s lab.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Like a good novel, the story behind Infinite Biomedical Technologies (IBT) begins with an intriguing partnership\u2014between a self-professed \u201chigh school drop-out\u201d and a scientist straining to hear the music of the human brain. To date, their collaboration has led to the development of a promis\u2013 ing portfolio of biomedical devices\u2014several of which have lifesaving potential. What\u2019s more, in just five years of operation, their Baltimore-based company has raised more than $3.7 million, nearly one-third of which is invested in collaborative investigations with Hopkins researchers, including the Department of Biomedical Engineering. And co-founded by a Whiting School alumnus, IBT has already provided opportunities for other alumni to become involved in creating advanced biomedical products.<\/p>\n

But before we reveal the plot, let\u2019s first introduce the principal characters.<\/p>\n

The CEO: Ananth Natarajan, MD, \u201992 MSE<\/strong><\/p>\n

He was anything but your average teenager. The son of a cardiologist and a nephrologist, Ananth Natarajan decided at the age of 14 to drop out of high school\u2014not to go to work, but to enroll at nearby Duke University. Having attended Duke\u2019s pre-college program, he felt he was ready for college. Duke agreed, and after he double-majored in biomedical and electrical engineering, he graduated with distinction in 1990 at age 18.<\/p>\n

That was only the beginning of pursuing his studies\u2014and his vision. \u201cWhen I was starting my senior year at Duke, having grown up around physicians, I saw there was a pretty big chasm between engineering and medicine,\u201d Natarajan recalls. \u201cAlthough there were a lot of great technological discoveries being made in the late \u201980s, there wasn\u2019t really a good mesh with actual applications in clinical medicine. With that in mind, I decided I wanted to develop a career that bridged the two.\u201d<\/p>\n

Natarajan\u2019s advisors recommended the Whiting School to help him merge these two interests. \u201cThey told me that Hopkins was the best institution in the world when it came to applying engineering principles to the practice of medicine,\u201d he says. Arriving at Hopkins for a visit in 1989, Natarajan met with Nitish Thakor, professor of Biomedical Engineering and chief investigator at the Biomedical Instrumentation Laboratory. The chemistry between the two was immediate. \u201cI explained to him my vision for applying engineering to real-world clinical problems, and he was very excited by that,\u201d Natarajan recalls. \u201cHe suggested that I work with him while getting my graduate degree.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a value to being next to a university campus. This could be the beginning of a industrial park or an incubator. Why not here?\u201d NITISH THAKOR<\/cite><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"During<\/a>
During the past year, IBT has been taking the next step: creating the clinical neurodiagnostic tool being demonstrated above. In high-risk surgeries, IBT\u2019s Intraoperative Neurological Monitor will enable clinicians to assess the health of the central nervous system\u2014in real time.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Scientist: Nitish Thakor<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the first things you notice about Thakor is his dry, understated sense of humor. However, bring up the topic of his life\u2019s research, and his passion about the subject becomes readily apparent. \u201cThere was a time when we didn\u2019t worry about the brain because we had to worry about the heart,\u201d he says. \u201cNow, heart attacks can be handled. So, the brain has become the next frontier, which is why I work on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thakor\u2019s area of expertise and research is neuroengineering, an emerging field defined by its use of engineering, computational, and mathematical approaches to solving problems in clinical neurosciences (the medical study of the human brain and nervous system). The central focus of Thakor\u2019s lab is on developing a host of solutions\u2014such as new and advanced sensors, instrumentation, micro- and nanotechnologies, and signal processing algorithms\u2014 that will lead to technology development and practical clinical applications for neurological use. \u201cWe take projects from basic research to commercial applications and research solutions from \u2018bench to bedside,\u2019 \u201d says Thakor. \u201cAfter 10-15 years of basic research and development, here we are on the threshold of clinical use on patients in lifesaving situations. The university-industry partnership is the one that is making it happen. We couldn\u2019t have done this without the Biomedical Engineering Department and the Whiting School. There\u2019s a value to being next to a university campus. This could be the beginning of a industrial park or an incubator. Why not here?\u201d<\/p>\n

Hatching Ideas: The First Stage<\/strong><\/p>\n\"10_14003\"<\/a>\n

Natarajan spent two years at Hopkins, earning his master\u2019s in biomedical engineering in 1992. Although Thakor was away on sabbatical during part of this period, Natarajan remembers it as a very productive time. \u201cDr. Thakor and I actually raised our first offer for seed capital in 1991, with the help of JHU\u2019s Office of Technology Licensing,\u201d he says. \u201cHowever, I decided that the project and timing were not quite right. I was not quite finished with my education, so we turned down that offer.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1992, Natarajan entered the University of Chicago\u2019s Pritzker School of Medicine, graduating with an MD in 1996. \u201cThroughout that time, I continued to talk with Nitish on a regular basis,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI even spent my first summer during medical school back at Hopkins, working at his lab. We were hatching several different ideas on how we could create a company.\u201d<\/p>\n

By 1996, the timing seemed right. After receiving special permission from the American Board of Obstetricians and Gynecologists to complete a part-time residency track leading to certification as an OB\/GYN physician, Natarajan returned to Baltimore\u2014with the goal of starting a new company with his mentor, a company assertively named Infinite Biomedical Technologies.<\/p>\n

The new company would greatly benefit from Thakor\u2019s expertise. More a decade ago, through his neurological studies, Thakor began to investigate a problem pointed out to him by neurologists and anesthesiologists\u2014that of not being able to understand the rhythms in the brain, especially for the purposes of clinical diagnosis. The human brain, like the heart, is regulated by electrical charges or \u201csignals.\u201d The repeated sequence of these signals forms a recognizable rhythm, which can be monitored and analyzed. Decoding and understanding brain rhythms can be critical in at least two ways, according to Thakor. \u201cOne issue is monitoring a patient while under anesthesia, or in an operating room for brain or spine surgery. Another is assessing potential damage when a patient suffers cardiac arrest and blood flow to the brain is interrupted.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, identifying brain rhythms (EEGs) is no easy matter. Individual brain signals are minute\u2014one-thousandth the size of a heart signal. \u201cWhat\u2019s more,\u201d say Thakor, \u201cthe heart is one organ generating a single rhythm sequence, while the brain is a hundred billion \u2018hearts\u2019 doing different things. There\u2019s also a lot of noise in the brain rhythm, so isolating and interpreting that message is very challenging.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thakor uses a shortcut to integrating and reading brain rhythms through a process called evoked response, in which the brain, given an artificial stimulus, responds with a diagnostic set of rhythms. Still, this manual process can consume precious time when a patient\u2019s life is at stake. \u201cIf it takes me 10 minutes before I can interpret a certain brain rhythm,\u201d says Thakor, \u201cthat can be too late. It\u2019s like \u201cName That Tune\u201d\u2014I need to figure out the tune from the first few notes of the evoked response to know whether something has happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"This<\/a>
This small two-channel \u201cheadbox\u201d is now being developed at IBT. In a critical care unit, its dangling electrodes would be hooked up to a patient\u2019s head. The headbox would then wirelessly transmit brain rhythms to a diagnostic monitor. The monitor (on page 12) is displaying the raw data of brain rhythms\u2014the EEG at the top of the screen\u2014as well as the neuroelectrical parameters to assess brain function.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Thakor\u2019s research into the basic mechanisms of brain injury, which began under a 1986 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has led from the creation of mathematical models of neurons and neural networks, to the development of signal processing algorithms for analysis of brain rhythms such as EEG and evoked responses. Still, throughout his investigations, Thakor was nagged by a recurring missing link. \u201cEach time we developed methods to determine the brain rhythms and analyze mathematically how the brain rhythms are changing due to surgery or anesthesia or brain injury, the issue that remained was how to take that from bench to bedside\u2014we never actually built the instrument,\u201d he says. \u201cThe underlying premise\u2014that we needed to create a clinical instrument to monitor real patients\u2014remained on the back burner.\u201d<\/p>\n

Taking that next step\u2014building an actual device (in this case, a diagnostic monitor for brain injury detection in the operating room and neurological intensive care)\u2014can prove daunting to a researcher with no background in commercial development. \u201cTo proceed systematically on this path requires a very different form of engineering development and organizational resources,\u201d says Thakor. \u201cTypically, professors do not do product development research.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, by 1997, the solution presented itself: his former student. Natarajan felt likewise: \u201cEven before we founded IBT, Nitish had spent 10 years of hard work unlocking several fundamental discoveries about the brain\u2019s response to injury. His neurological projects played a seminal role in our genesis of the company.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Successful Launch<\/strong><\/p>\n

IBT was founded on March 17, 1997. \u201cWhen we decided to start a company,\u201d Natarajan says, \u201cneither Nitish nor I had any business experience. But we decided to go ahead.\u201d Natarajan already had a number of development ideas; what remained to be found was capitalization.<\/p>\n

That same year, Natarajan was invited to NIH to sit in one of the study sections for the Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR). \u201cIn reviewing those applications, I realized that the program had a lot of potential,\u201d he says. For individuals who want a career in developing biomedical devices, such an opportunity provides \u201cthe necessary seed funding to see the ideas flourish,\u201d he points out. \u201cThis is particularly important in the medical device arena, where venture capital is typically not invested until a much later stage, due to regulatory and other financial hurdles that small companies in the biotech and medical device arena typically face.\u201d<\/p>\n

IBT was awarded its first SBIR grant in 1998, and others quickly followed\u2014to date, the company has received 11 NIH grants, totaling $3.7 million. To put this amazing streak into perspective, the average hit rate for receiving SBIR grants is about 33 percent. However, IBT has had an 80 percent success rate between first submission and first resubmission\u2014that is, four of its five proposals have received funding.<\/p>\n

Leroy Nyberg, MD, PhD is well-qualified to speak about IBT\u2019s success. He had overseen one of the company\u2019s grants as Urology Program director at the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive, and Kidney Diseases, part of NIH. \u201cI was so impressed with what they have done, the people they\u2019ve hired, and products in development even at that early stage,\u201d says Nyberg. \u201cWhat makes IBT unusual is that many times the president of these companies is not a physician, but is either an engineer or a business person. What makes Ananth more successful is that in addition to his bioengineering background, he\u2019s able to take his clinical expertise and really think of innovative clinical ideas in many areas.\u201d Natarajan \u201chas been very effective in getting funding from many different NIH institutes for many projects, using SBIR. That really attests to his ingenuity, expertise, and vision in developing products. He\u2019s an original thinker who can really take ideas and run with them,\u201d Nyberg states.<\/p>\n

Natarajan calls his relationship with NIH \u201ca very rewarding partnership. It has made an enormous contribution to the growth of this company.\u201d Now in its fifth year, IBT has a full-time staff of seven, and is rapidly moving to product development in three key areas:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • Cardiac technology: The company is building the Implantable Myocardial Ischemia Detection Indication and Action Technology (IMMeDIATE). Literally a lifesaving \u201cearly warning\u201d device for heart patients, it is a sensor to be used with existing pacemakers; its special signal processing software detects reliably impending myocardial infarctions.<\/li>\n
  • Gynecology: Stress incontinence can become a debilitating problem for older women. IBT is developing a non-surgical therapy in the form of an artificial urethral sphincter. This Intraurethral Continent Prosthesis (INCOPRO) uses advanced materials and microfabrication (MEMS) technology to create a small implantable valve.<\/li>\n
  • Neurocritical Care: The fruits of Thakor\u2019s research are being applied to the development of several devices. For example, the Cortical Injury Monitor assesses the extent of brain injury following cardiac arrest. And the Intraoperative Neurological Monitor provides real-time feedback on a patient\u2019s neurological status during high-risk situations.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Fast Learning Curve<\/strong><\/p>\n

    For IBT and its founders\u2014and for the company\u2019s continuing partnership with Hopkins\u2014the future looks promising. IBT\u2019s Baltimore headquarters, located on Charles Street at 29th Street, is a short walk from the Homewood campus (IBT also has a satellite office in California). To date, IBT has subcontracted more than $900,000 of research work to faculty in Biomedical Engineering and Neurology. \u201cThere have been great benefits on both sides,\u201d notes Thakor. \u201cWe\u2019ve received significant funding to support our research, while many of my students have leveraged their association with IBT in launching their careers, or are now working for IBT.\u201d Jeffrey Wallace \u201902 MSE and Feras Al Hatib, who was a postdoc fellow in Thakor\u2019s lab, are full-time employees of IBT. Rutwik Ghodadra \u201999 MSE; Manan Atit \u201998, \u201902 MSE; Neda Poomipanit \u201902 MSE; Ruchika Singhal \u201902 MSE; and Anshul Thakral \u201999, \u201901 MSE all contributed to furthering the unique relationship between Hopkins and IBT.<\/p>\n

    Natarajan admits that \u201cour evolution is kind of unique. We are going forward step by step, and we would like to go as far as we can.\u201d Thakor agrees: \u201cWe found that business development was not as burdensome or mysterious as we thought. Our learning curve has been really good.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Lani Hummel, director of the Whiting School\u2019s Office of Industrial Initiatives, is more deliberate in her praise. \u201cTo hear Ananth and Nitish talk about their efforts makes it sound easy after the fact, but that would really underestimate how much effort was involved here\u2014and how much of the success of this start-up was dependent upon a very solid symbiotic relationship that is still ongoing,\u201d she says. \u201cAt the same time, Nitish and Ananth are very open to partnering with other faculty, and sharing their expertise in moving intellectual property from concept to market. I think it\u2019s of tremendous value to the Whiting School to have a company that is ready and well-equipped to be supportive of our faculty and their entrepreneurial efforts.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Meanwhile, Thakor is setting up an Entrepreneur\u2019s Club through the Whiting School. Its purpose is to facilitate the exchange of information and lessons learned in an effort to encourage faculty to engage in entrepreneurial activities. \u201cWe\u2019d be very interested in talking to alumni and friends who\u2019d like to become involved in mentoring faculty and students in entrepreneurship,\u201d says Hummel.<\/p>\n

    \u201cWe\u2019ve really invested in developing a core competency as a university\/industry hybrid, and now it is paying off tenfold.\u201d ANANTH NATARAJAN, MD, \u201992 MSE<\/cite><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Natarajan observes that \u201cWe\u2019ve really invested in developing a core competency as a university\/industry hybrid, and now it is paying off tenfold, both for the company and for Hopkins\u2019 Biomedical Engineering Department. It\u2019s an opportunity to win on all fronts. Financially, it supports great research\u2014we can publish more, pursue patents, and get real products to market.\u201d<\/p>\n

    For further information on IBT, visit www.i-biomed.com . To learn more about the Entrepreneur\u2019s Club or industrial partnerships with the Whiting School, contact Lani Hummel at lhummel@jhu.edu or (410) 516-8941.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A biomedical start-up across the street from the Homewood campus \u2014IBT\u2014is creating lifesaving products that draw upon faculty and alumni expertise. Like a good novel, the story behind Infinite Biomedical Technologies (IBT) begins with an intriguing partnership\u2014between a self-professed \u201chigh school drop-out\u201d and a scientist straining to hear the music of the human brain. To…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2408,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-connection","issue-fall-2002"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nInfinite Possibilities - JHU Engineering Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2002\/09\/infinite-possibilities\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Infinite Possibilities - JHU Engineering Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A biomedical start-up across the street from the Homewood campus \u2014IBT\u2014is creating lifesaving products that draw upon faculty and alumni expertise. 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