2008 Intel + UC Berkeley Technology Entrepreneurship Challenge Winners

First Prize Winner:
NeuroMOD, National University of Singapore: Start-up@Singapore Competition

NeuroMOD Technologies (NeuroMOD) is a development stage company that designs, develop, manufacture, and market implantable medical devices for patients suffering from neurological disorders. Our initial product, the NeuroMOD Epilepsy Control System (NECS), focuses on epilepsy, a neurological disorder which affects more than 50 million people in the world today.

Second Prize Winner:
Polyskin, National Institute of Immunology, India: DST-Intel India Innovation Pioneers Challenge

Affordable solutions for burn wound management has been lacking in India having over a million patients annually. Existing solutions are expensive and require specialized skills for administration, limiting their reach. Polyskin uses a patent-pending process to formulate membranes out of drug encapsulated polylactide (PLA) particles. These are sent in bulk to hospitals who use our simple process to prepare membranes to treat the wounds. PLA, a USFDA approved, bio-compatible polymer has been in use for sixty years clinically. Preclinical trials have been completed and the company seeks $ 0.75 M for commercialization. Our process can be used for newer drug delivery systems for treating tumors and for tissue engineering applications.

Third Prize Winner:
SCU Panda Park, Sichuan University, China: National "Challenge Cup" Entrepreneurship Contest - China

With the advanced technique support from the key laboratory of leather chemistry and engineering of education ministry, Sichuan University, we use the new clean leather technology----“the tannery method in which takes the carbon dioxide supercritical fluid as reaction media” to replace water in traditional process by carbon dixoide supercritical fluid, to provide environmental protection, ecological quality leather technology. In the world, the technology can be realized only in the skin into leather wet in the course of almost non-operation of water, thereby eliminating the source of tannery waste water.

People's Choice Prize Winner:
Nano Precision Medical, Univeristy of California, Berkeley & San Francisco: Berkeley Business Plan Competition

Nano Precision Medical is developing a novel technology called NanoFlow which enables the high-precision and low-cost delivery of a wide variety of therapeutic molecules—improving patient outcomes and lowering side effects.  Our first product in development is an implantable device that can deliver precise doses of Interferon-alpha over many months to treat chronic hepatitis C (HCV).  With an addressable HCV treatment market size estimated at $1.2 billion and expected to double in the next 5 years in the U.S. alone, HCV treatment represents an extremely attractive opportunity.  Furthermore, substantial evidence exists to suggest that continuous delivery of IFN-α will both increase effectiveness as well as decrease the debilitating side effects compared with current delivery methods that leave the patients in a severely debilitated state.