NIH pilot to help move heart-graft technology to market faster

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vohraA UAB-led team is one of 24 to receive an inaugural NIH Innovation Corps grant to help translate technologies from the lab to the marketplace.

The I-Corps at NIH program provides three-member project teams with access to instruction and mentoring to accelerate the translation of technologies being developed with NIH SBIR and STTR funding. It is a pilot of the NSF Innovation Corps program program specially tailored for biomedical research.

Yogesh Vohra, Ph.D., professor of physics and principal investigator, is teaming with Raj Singh, Ph.D., CEO of Vivo Biosciences, and Steven Ceulemans, vice president for Innovation and Technology, Birmingham Business Alliance, to advance technology created by a UAB-Vivo Biosciences research team.

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The research team has developed a small-diameter, functionally graded, biohybrid vascular graft for coronary bypass applications in which no acceptable synthetic prostheses are available, Vohra said.

The nine-week NIH training program will enable the team to develop a much better understanding of the commercial landscape for this vascular graft technology and significantly refine its plan for bringing it to market.