Washington University in St Louis spun out eight companies during the past financial year and marked a 16% increase in novel invention disclosures.

Washington University in St Louis’s tech transfer office, the Office of Technology Management (OTM), generated a record of eight new spinouts during the financial year that ended June 30.

OTM has now launched a total of 19 companies over the past three financial years. Patent filings rose for the fourth consecutive year, climbing by 22% to 324, as did novel invention disclosures, which increased by 16% to 205.  

More disclosures helped OTM conclude 108 for-fee agreements during the period, generating turnover of $16.9m for the university and its backers.

Nichole Mercier, managing director of OTM since March 2016, said: “Over the past year, our office has made a commitment to providing increased outreach to university faculty.

“The results have been fantastic, as faculty members have come back with new inventions that show tremendous commercial potential.

“It is exciting to see more and more of our faculty members pursuing commercialization via startup company formation.

“These past few years have seen a substantial increase in the amount of entrepreneurial activity among both faculty and students. It is always rewarding to see university intellectually property being taken into the marketplace, and more importantly, having the potential to benefit society.”

The university named the following six spinouts formed during the past financial year:

  • ATM Cardiac Diagnostics, which has developed improved and less invasive evaluation software to analyse cardiovascular health.
  • Avvi Biotech is a developer of  recombinant adenoviruses – artificially formed molecules based on a group of viruses that can cause infections of the lung, stomach, intestine and eyes – that will be used to expedite promising candidates for new vaccines.
  • Precision Virologics, which also develops adenovirus vaccines, with a focus on infectious diseases such as the Zika virus and dengue fever.
  • CalPact, which is looking to build biomedical imaging systems based on photoacoustic computed tomography that uses laser pulses to generate ultrasonic waves that are converted into an image. The research was conducted Lihong Wang, a professor of medical engineering and electrical engineering who now practises at California Institute of Technology.
  • DxGPS, which has created an imaging technique called Diffusion Basis Spectrum Imaging that could identify central nervous system diseases and injuries.
  • Encodia, which is working on protein sequencing technology capable of simultaneous processing and quantifying many proteins from complex mixtures.