When Dr. Tamatha Fenster received a call from a young patient requesting a refill on her Oxycodone for pelvic pain, she was faced with a dilemma: letting the patient remain in pain or refill a prescription and perpetuate an opioid dependency.
With few other pain-relief options, she refilled the prescription. “I had to think of an alternative for pelvic pain for women,” said Dr. Fenster, assistant professor of clinical obstetrics and gynecology at Weill Cornell Medicine and an obstetrician and gynecologist at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. And she did just that.
Dr. Fenster, along with other researchers and physicians, recounted their technology development and commercialization journeys at the annual Dean’s Symposium on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, hosted by Enterprise Innovation Dec. 18 in Uris Auditorium. In its eighth year, the symposium celebrates innovation and Weill Cornell Medicine’s entrepreneurial spirit, while encouraging and motivating the next generation of innovators, inventors and entrepreneurs.
“Ultimately, Weill Cornell Medicine researchers and physicians want to benefit society,” said Dr. John Leonard, senior associate dean for innovation and initiatives. “There are lots of exciting and rewarding aspects of that—the impact on society from your work and the financial aspects such as growing your research.”
It’s intimidating for would-be inventors to figure out the long, complicated process of taking their ideas from the discovery stage to market where patients will benefit. The symposium gives them a starting point by highlighting the institution’s resources, support, network of mentors and innovation successes. Weill Cornell Medicine already commercialized 82 products including research tools, software and medical devices.
Dr. Fenster, for instance, took a cue from colleagues in anesthesiology and pain management who were implanting neurostimulators into the spine to alleviate back pain. This device delivers mild electrical pulses to specific nerves which disrupts pain signals traveling to the brain.
Ideas started flowing. She decided to create a tampon- or cup-like device that could be used during chronic pelvic pain. The device would be available over the counter and used with an app, so a woman could control the frequency and the amplitude of the neurostimulator to match the level of pain she is having.
From there she worked with the SC Johnson College of Business and Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering at Cornell University to bring the idea to life. The resulting TammyCup prototype has the potential to reduce the need for women to take medications like opioids for all pelvic pains, including IUD insertions, biopsies, menstrual cramps and endometriosis, among other conditions.
“It’s an obligation we have as physicians to constantly innovate. We can always find a way to do things better for our patients,” said Dr. Fenster.
Translating Concept into Reality in Women’s Health Innovation
(From Left) Drs. Rache Simmons, Bobak Mosadegh and Tamatha Fenster
Dr. Fenster and Dr. Bobak Mosadegh, associate professor of biomedical engineering in radiology, have become serial inventors and entrepreneurs after their initial forays into entrepreneurship. They joined Dr. Rache Simmons, Anne K. and Edwin C. Weiskopf Professor of Surgical Oncology and budding inventor for a panel discussion.
Dr. Fenster and Dr. Mosadegh’s invention, SmartHer, leverages mixed reality and AI for surgery, allowing physicians to visualize in three dimensions fibroids in the uterus, so they can decide the best way to make an incision and remove them.
Dr. Simmons discussed the great impact breast cancer has on women. “I can successfully remove the cancer, but we also want to achieve an optimal cosmetic result. Sometimes due to the size of the cancer relative to the breast size or the location of the cancer, there can be a resulting deformity. That has been a frustration point for me.”
There is no product currently in the market that is soft like breast tissue, can fill the space permanently, but doesn’t hinder further diagnosis and treatment. Dr. Simmons said she is excited about the prototype she has developed to meet this critical need. She held up what looked like a soft, translucent string of pearls, which feels like breast tissue. The string is radiolucent so it won’t obstruct imaging, adjustable to the needs of individual patients and can be pulled out right away for follow-up surgeries, if necessary. She is currently in preclinical studies with this prototype and is preparing for Institutional Review Board approval to test this product in patients.
As the panel demonstrated, innovators think about changing the way we do things for the better, and when it can’t be done with available tools, they build something new. “This is where research centers and academic medicine are innovating all the time, because you are thinking of patient care all the time,” said Dr. Krystyn Van Vliet, vice president for research and innovation and professor in the Cornell University College of Engineering with a joint appointment in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering. “That’s where innovation is highly motivated, not by the market but by the patient.”
She described the path and support available at Weill Cornell Medicine: Innovators start with ideas for new technologies and interventions, and develop them into inventions that Cornell protects as intellectual property. Cornell then helps innovators find companies that can license the technology to take it to market, or helps launch startups to develop the technology into products or services. She likened the journey to: plant, cultivate, protect, connect and collaborate. “People are most important in moving research from the bench to the world,” Dr. Van Vliet said.
The Unexpected Path of an Entrepreneur
During a “fireside chat,” Dr. Robert A. Harrington, the Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean of Weill Cornell Medicine, and Dr. Rachel Haurwitz, co-founder, president and CEO of Caribou Biosciences, highlighted what this process looks like further down the pathway.
Dr. Haurwitz didn’t set out to be an entrepreneur but was following her passion for science when she found herself involved in one of the biggest discoveries of the century: CRISPR, a technology that allows scientists to edit DNA in cells. While she was getting her doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley, she and her colleagues, including Nobel Laureate Jennifer Doudna, decided to launch Caribou Biosciences in 2011 as a startup focused on using CRISPR as a tool for editing the genome and application in many different fields.
They licensed the foundational CRISPR-Cas9 technology from the university, but it was a struggle getting the company off the ground. Venture capitalists thought the vision they had was too big and raising money was challenging.
Eventually, Caribou started as a platform company, initially partnering with Novartis and Dupont to explore the potential of the CRISPR technology. Caribou then patented new CRISPR technology, which was more precise, and the company pivoted to develop cancer therapeutics. Caribou now has three off-the-shelf CAR-T cell therapies and four phase 1 clinical trials to treat blood cancers and autoimmune diseases.
Caribou fosters innovation and problem solving. “We ask ourselves, ‘What is the challenge a patient is facing and how can we use science and technology to solve it?’” Dr. Haurwitz said. “Also, ethics are critical and drive our decision making.”
One of the challenges in taking gene therapies to market is the strict regulatory environment, which requires a 15-year follow-up for long-term safety studies. “There is a real opportunity for the academic community to get engaged in regulatory science and our young Ph.D.s and postdocs to think about that as a way to make a societal difference,” said Dean Harrington.
Going from a scientist to a CEO is a steep learning curve. “I’ve learned the team is so important—having the right people at all stages of business development is needed to be successful at each step along the way. If you are not constantly iteratively learning, you are going to fall down in almost any role,” Dr. Haurwitz said. “We are in business, but at the heart of it is a complicated bit of science. If we get it right, we could do magical things for patients.”
Dean Harrington agreed. “I tell our students and postdocs that your ability to do great science that actually might help a greater number of people goes back to purpose and impact,” he said. “We want to make a difference through science and health care.”
Dr. Haurwitz advised innovators to just go for it, whether it is working toward a patent or learning more about the industry through informational interviews or taking a business class—just lean into it.
Dr. Paraskevi Giannakakou
Closer to home, Dr. Paraskevi Giannakakou, professor of pharmacology in medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and co-founder of Arma Bio, discussed the genesis of Arma Bio, which is working on first-in-class prostate cancer treatments. The clinical challenge in treating prostate cancer is how often patients face drug resistance. The researchers are focusing on a new drug target on androgen receptors that drive prostate cancer and are raising funds to develop it for eventual testing in clinical trials.
“In 2020, when we were getting ready to participate in the BioVentue eLab pitch competition for best business plan, I called the program director and told her, I’m not going to present. We were so early—all the other companies had boards and CEOs,” Dr. Giannakakou shared. But the director encouraged Dr. Giannakakou to do it just for the experience and their team received first prize. “That is what launched us.”
Innovations Beyond Therapeutics
(From Left) Drs. Denise Howard, Rahul Sharma, Keith Hentel and Conor Liston
The final panel discussed how clinicians can turn clinical care pain points and care delivery workflows into innovation. The goal is to empower clinicians to drive ideas that will make them more efficient and ultimately benefit patients through innovations beyond traditional therapeutics and devices. There is a wealth of opportunities to address inequities and inefficiencies through technology.
Dr. Denise Howard, associate professor of clinical obstetrics and gynecology, led off the discussion. She is revolutionizing the patient consent process and will use the funds she won in the 2024 Biomedical Business Plan Challenge competition to create a prototype that will help patients understand medical procedures to which they are consenting.
Dr. Howard noted that innovation and technology are key to advancing quality care. They can also inform clinical decision-making and clinical guidelines for imaging to reduce the cost and inappropriate use of imaging. Dr. Keith Hentel, professor of clinical radiology, discussed his efforts in the utilization of Appropriate Use Criteria in imaging, which have helped improve the patient experience and value of care provided.
To become an innovator is challenging for clinicians because they often lack dedicated time and administrative support to dive into their innovative ideas. All four panelists agreed that institutional resources are helpful.
“Teamwork and persistence make the vision a reality,” emphasized Dr. Conor Liston, professor of psychiatry and neuroscience in the Feil Family Brain and Mind Research Institute. Dr. Liston is defining basic mechanisms in brain circuits supporting learning, memory and motivation and how these functions are disrupted in depression, obsessive compulsive disorder and other neuropsychiatric disorders.
“Know your goal. Keep an open mind,” said Dr. Rahul Sharma, Barbara and Stephen Friedman Professor of Emergency Medicine and Chair of Emergency Medicine. Dr. Sharma is involved in virtual care and telemedicine training innovations. “It’s ok to be a little uncomfortable – put the patient first and remember the impact that innovation will have on our patients.”
