ImmPro (Prof. Neil Kelleher, Weinberg) is the latest startup to join The Q! ImmPro is a contract research organization that offers protein characterization with greater resolution and sensitivity using a novel mass spectrometry platform. Q Entrepreneurial Fellow, Jack McGee WCAS '22, is leading efforts at the InQbation Lab.

The Querrey InQbation Lab has now hosted 15 resident startups who are currently at or have graduated from The Q. We are amazed by the pace at which The Q community continues to grow!

To become a Q Startup Resident, an active IP option/license must be in place with Northwestern. To express interest, please complete this SPACE FORM.

NylaNova, a new Northwestern startup co-founded by Q Entrepreneurial Fellow Yosi Kratish and Prof. Tobin Marks (Weinberg), executed an exclusive option for Northwestern technology that seeks to disrupt the nylon recycling industry. Their novel catalyst quickly, cleanly, and completely breaks Nylon-6 down into its monomeric form within minutes. It does not generate harmful byproducts and does not require toxic solvents, expensive materials, or extreme conditions.

Sibel Health (Prof. John Rogers, McCormick) was awarded a $17.5M grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to advance ANNE One, their FDA-cleared wireless monitoring solution for labor and maternal health monitoring. Read more.

Epicore Biosystems (Prof. John Rogers, McCormick) announced the commercial launch of Connected Hydration, a sweat-sensing wearable patch and mobile app that increases industrial safety for workers facing harmful effects of dehydration and heat exposure. It equips workers with customized, real-time insights about sweat volume loss, electrolyte loss, body temperature and body movements. Read more

Vanqua Bio (Prof. Dimitri Krainc, Feinberg) announced their first patient dosed in Phase 1 clinical trials evaluating VQ-101, its small molecule GCase Activator for GBA-Parkinson's Disease. Read more

NICU2Home (Prof. Craig Garfield, Feinberg and Young Lee, McCormick), a graduate of INVOForward Digital Health and Kellogg's Medical Technology Financing and Commercialization, was acquired by AngelEye Health, a leader in offering a complete HIPAA-compliant patient engagement platform. NICU2Home offers seamless engagement for families and clinicians through the NICU stay and transition from NICU to the home. Read more

Opera Biosciences (Prof. Danielle Tullman-Ercek, McCormick) won first place at the Kellogg Healthcare Entrepreneurship Business Plan Competition. This annual competition is supported by the McNerney Healthcare Entrepreneurship Fund. It is open to early-stage healthcare companies with a strong affiliation with Kellogg.

Third Coast Dynamics (Dr. Brad Allen and Prof. Michael Markl, Feinberg) was the first place winner of the 2024 MIT Sloan School of Management Healthcare Innovations Prize! Third Coast is developing a cloud-based risk stratification tool for aortic diseases that uses artificial intelligence to provide hemodynamic imaging biomarkers (blood flow metrics) from standard CT angiography and MR angiography images. Read more.

Yobee Care's (Prof. Ruchi Gupta, Feinberg, 2023 FoundHer Fellow) Restorative Scalp Mask was selected as the “Most Significant Hair & Scalp Care Formula – Indie” at Cosmetics & Toiletries' 2024 Allē Awards. Read more.

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Amphix Bio (Prof. Samuel Stupp, McCormick) is raising $15M in Seed funding, to continue their clinical development. Their platform uses supramolecular peptide structures to create biomaterials that trigger regenerative signaling pathways and provide an extracellular scaffold to support biological repair. Their first indication is bone graft for spinal fusion, and second indication is spinal cord Injury. Their first program will be a drug-device combination product going through the IDE/PMA pathway.

Affix Medical (Prof. Riad Salem, Feinberg) is raising $500k in Pre-Seed funding to continue on their mission to improve percutaneous drain management for all patients with indwelling lines/tubes/catheters. Their flagship product is a drain fixation device that mitigate the need for suture fixation, expedites dressing changes, and decreases rates of tube-related complications. This device is tailored specifically to long-standing percutaneous drains placed by Interventional Radiologists and was developed in collaboration with interventional radiologists at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

Inomagen Therapeutics (Prof. Rishi Arora, Feinberg) is raising a $5M Seed round to continue its development of a non-viral gene therapy to improve the treatment of atrial fibrillation. In conjunction with the company’s ongoing SBIR Fast Track grant award, the funds will be used to develop its novel transcatheter cardiac gene delivery system, optimize its proprietary plasmid vector, conduct therapeutic dose response studies, and continue building the team with a goal of filing an IND and initiating clinical study in 2026. 

Temprian Oncology (Prof. Caroline LePoole, Feinberg, Prof. Sonbinh Nguyen Weinberg) is raising $300k in Seed funding to demonstrate proof of concept in the treatment of melanoma in vivo. Temprian Oncology is developing lipid-based nanoparticle supercarriers to deliver active ingredients to metastatic melanoma tumors. This novel approach combines chemo- and immunotherapy into an off-the-shelf product suitable for delivery in remote geographic locations.

INVESTORS: Contact the InQbation Lab for more information regarding these investment opportunities.

NU STARTUPS: To share your fundraising/milestone news, email inqbationlab@northwestern.edu.

2024 Q SUMMER SCHOLARS PROGRAM

For the second year, the Querrey InQbation Lab is proud to offer the Q Summer Scholars Program, providing summer entrepreneurial fellowship opportunities to Northwestern undergraduates with Northwestern startups. This 8-week, full-time in-person program provides students with hands-on experience, collaboration, and mentorship from Northwestern startups. The program culminates in a "Demo Day" where students showcase their summer projects to peers and the Northwestern Q and INVO communities. Among 45 applications, the following 10 students were selected: Andrew Basinger '25, Andrew Chin '25, Mackenzie Lanning '26, Aarav Lodha '26, Maura Madden '25, Irene Martinez '25, Katrina Peterson '25, Angelina Shi '25, Julia Song '25, and Cheryl Tang '26. Congratulations!

2024 SUMMER ENTREPRENEURIAL FELLOWS PROGRAM

The Q Summer Entrepreneurial Fellow Program provides summer entrepreneurial fellowship opportunities to Northwestern graduate students in PhD, MD or MBA programs.

Please join us in welcoming the three students interning with us this summer: Max Engle KSM '25, Minji Kim KSM '25, and Bhaargavi Ashok FSM '27.

2024 N.XT FUND

We’d like to congratulate Northwestern startups NuSera Biosystems and PreDx Imaging on being selected as 2024 N.XT Awardees! 

NuSera Biosystems (Profs. Igor Efimov & John Rogers, McCormick) is developing the next generation of organ-conformal bioelectronics for diagnosing and treating heart diseases. NuSera will be leveraging N.XT funding to develop a smart artificial aortic valve technology with fully integrated ECG sensing and electrical pacing.

PreDx Imaging (Prof. Tom Meade, Weinberg) is developing a novel class of bioresponsive contrast agents (BCAs) for monitoring physiological changes in live tissues via magnetic resonance imaging. PreDx is using N.XT funding to conduct customer discovery and produce BCAs for IND-enabling studies.

ANNOUNCING FARLEY-Q ENTREPRENEURSHIP 101 BOOTCAMP

FARLEY-Q 101 is a two-day summer workshop for scientists interested in being exposed to what entrepreneurship looks like at both a general and more practical level. For the inaugural cohort, the workshop will be open to those in research areas related to CLEANTECH and ROBOTICS. The workshop features opportunities to think about their own research with a translational lens and, through live workshops, mock customer discovery, and collaborative brainstorming, be able to distill and communicate their technology , and the value of it and the impact of its potential commercial product. Northwestern graduate students, postdocs and research scientists are invited to apply. Please share your interest and summer availability HERE.

Q ENTREPRENEURSHIP FELLOWSHIP

The Q is accepting applications for the 2024-2025 Q Entrepreneurial Fellows Program. EFs partner with Northwestern faculty to advance innovations towards commercialization. During the one year program, Fellows undertake technical development and define commercialization plans. EFs are supported with a one year salary (plus benefits), a $10k stipend, and access to resources like mentoring, instruction and coaching. MORE PROGRAM DETAILS

INVO PRACTICUM INTERNSHIP

Since October 2023, the 15th cohort of INVO Practicum interns contributed immensely to support INVO's activities with technology disclosure assessments, market analyses, marketing one-pagers, and preparation of non-confidential technology materials for industry conferences. Thank you to doctoral students: Jorie Budzikowski (Prof. Wendy Murray, McCormick), Karlin Compton (Prof. Carole LaBonne, Weinberg), Mara Fattah (Prof. Nathan Gianneschi, Weinberg), Zijun Gao (Prof. Samuel Stupp, Weinberg), Irtaza Haider (Kellogg), Qining Wang (Prof. Jennifer Dunn, McCormick)

Applications for the 2024-2025 academic year are currently open. For more information on the program, please visit the INVO Practicum website.

Q EXECUTIVE-IN-RESIDENCE

Tom Wagner, current CEO of Berkshire Grey and former CTO of iRobot, spent three days at Northwestern as a Q EIR in Robotics. He met one-on-one with 15 faculty members, toured Northwestern's Center for Robotics and Biosystems, gave an inspiring seminar to over 60 attendees (left), had lunch with over 25 students (right), met with Kellogg-Q Residents, and gave a lecture to a room full of students. He inspired everyone with his entrepreneurial journey, the incredible AI-enabled enterprise robotics that his team created, and his probing questions in technology development. The Northwestern community is grateful for his generous ...

TRIENENS-INVO EVENT

Paula M. Trienens Institute for Sustainability and Energy and INVO co-hosted an event focused on green entrepreneurship and how Northwestern is building programs and resources to support commercialization and entrepreneurship in cleantech. Prof. John Torkelson, Walter P. Murphy Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering, shared a recent success story highlighting cross-university collaboration opportunities.

In addition, guest speaker Kathryn Meng, Investment Director at RA Capital Planetary Health, shared insights on investing opportunities in university-managed sustainable technologies in her talk, "The Green Gold Rush: Commercialization Opportunities in Climate."

The event concluded with dedicated networking time for attendees to connect with colleagues, guests, and INVO.

FOUNDHER

FoundHer Stories

Marinna Madrid, Co-Founder and CPO of Cellino, shared her FoundHer Story this month. Attendees learned about her co-founding experience with her faculty PI at Harvard and how she is building an automated biomanufacturing system for personalized cell therapies. REGISTER to attend our June FoundHer Stories session featuring Janice Chen of Mammoth Biosciences, co-hosted with Women in Bio.

FoundHer Fellows: Final Pitch Showcase

We celebrated our Q FoundHer Fellows, Ashima Shukla, Jacqueline Burke McC '22, and Rebecca Keate McC '23, who gave their pitches at the FoundHer Final Pitch Showcase! Attendees included mentors, panelists, faculty PIs and other guests. We are grateful for the FoundHer mentors, Michelle Hoffman (CBC), Lilli Zakarija (EdgeOne Medical), Dimitra Georganopoulou (Qral Ventures), and Liz McMath (CBC) and FoundHer panelists, Natasha Barrow (Eli Lilly), Azurii Collier (AbbVie), Angela James (iTeos Therapeutics), Marta New (Radyus Research), and Ritu Shah (Portal Innovations). Thank you for supporting Northwestern and our female scientist entrepreneurs!

"YES AND!" SCIENTIST ENTREPRENEUR BOOTCAMP SERIES

This month we successfully launched our inaugural “Yes And!" Scientist Entrepreneur Bootcamp Series! Founder and CEO of Improv @ Work, Heather Barnes, led our first two improv-based workshops designed to support Northwestern scientists in honing critical entrepreneurship and communication skills. Our first two debut workshops focused on refining science communication and negotiations. The final two workshops in May will be focused on leadership and networking.

Q ENTREPRENEURIAL FELLOWS ROUNDTABLE

In April, we hosted an EF Roundtable with guest Adam Jakus, former CTO of Dimension Inx. Entrepreneurial Fellows and FoundHer Fellows were invited to ask Adam about his journey in founding a startup based on his Northwestern academic research and the challenges of being a scientific founder on a lean team.

EF Roundtables aim to help entrepreneurial scientific founders discuss topics related to spinning out university technologies with faculty co-founders.

Q Founder Series | The Drug Development Journey, From Discovery to Regulatory Approval

Join us as we learn about the complex drug development journey from the initial discovery of therapeutic targets to navigating the important steps of preclinical research and the clinical research phases that lead to regulatory approval. REGISTER HERE

Q Founder Series | Designing Quality and ICH Compliance into Clinical Trials

Join us as we learn about the complex drug development journey from the initial discovery of therapeutic targets to preclinical research and the clinical research phases. This presentation will share how to proactively build quality, patient safety, and data integrity into clinical trial planning and conduct from a multiple stakeholder perspective. REGISTER HERE

ENTREPRENEURSHIP AT NORTHWESTERN NEWSLETTER

SUBSCRIBE to the Entrepreneurship at Northwestern Newsletter. This newsletter is a monthly roundup of university-wide news featuring the launches, raises, and milestones of our students, faculty, and alumni! This snapshot celebrates the wide-ranging impact of the Northwestern community and enables us to stay in touch with our Wildcat entrepreneurs.

Please share your own milestones through the newsletter.

Visit the Querrey InQbation Lab to learn more.

Previous Q newsletters may be found HERE.

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