UW-Madison: WARF Innovation Award winners

Contact: Jeanan Yasiri Moe, (608) 890-1491, jyasirimoe@warf.org

Madison – A potential vaccine for a worrisome virus and a real-time method to monitor sedated patients have taken top honors in the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation’s annual Innovation Award competition. The winning teams are led by UW-Madison’s Jorge Osorio and Guelay Bilen-Rosas.

“The Innovation Awards highlight some of the most sensational ideas being developed across disciplines,” says Erik Iverson, managing director of WARF, the nonprofit organization that helps patent and advance UW-Madison research.

“These awards are all about the future,” adds Chancellor Rebecca Blank. “These projects show enormous promise.”

One of the prize-winning inventions could help turn the tide against Zika virus, which has received unprecedented attention due to its rapid march through the Americas and the pathogen’s link to severe neurological birth defects, including microcephaly. An estimated 1.65 million women of childbearing age in Latin America and the Caribbean could be infected before the epidemic abates.

There are currently no approved vaccines or therapies for Zika. But Jorge Osorio and Brock Bakke, both of the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine, aim to change that. They have developed a possible vaccine based on virus-like particles (VLPs), which structurally mimic the virus but do not contain the genetic material that makes the Zika virus infectious. Their approach is safer for pregnant women and other high-risk populations.

“I know we are in Wisconsin and sometimes we think we are far away,” notes Osorio. “But any of us can suffer. This is a UW response to a public health emergency.”

Guelay Bilen-Rosas and Humberto Rosas, both of the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, also took top honors for their work developing a noninvasive ultrasound monitor that can attach to the neck of a sedated patient and help ensure proper breathing.

It is a first-ever collaboration for the two researchers, who are married to one another.

Airway compromise remains one of the most dangerous emergencies encountered by health care providers at all levels. If not detected early it can cause brain damage and death.

The risk is growing as more procedures requiring sedation are pushed to outpatient settings where, frequently, there is no clinically trained anesthesiologist on site to monitor and intervene as needed.

“These are amazing doctors, nurses and providers but they don’t have the tools they need,” explains Bilen-Rosas. “We think this device has the potential to truly decrease morbidity and mortality.”

An independent panel of judges selected the winners from a field of six finalists drawn from among more than 400 invention disclosures submitted to WARF over the past year. The winning teams each receive an award of $10,000.

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