Page 116 - Innovation Delaware 2019

HEALTH CARE
by the Numbers
120,000
Square feet of space available for health-sciences research at The Tower at STAR
11,856
Employees at Christiana Care, making it the largest private-sector employer in Delaware
4
Number of founding members of the Delaware Health Sciences Alliance (DHSA): Christiana Care Health System, Nemours/ Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children, Thomas Jefferson University and the University of Delaware. This partnership is focused on innovative collaborations among experts in medical education and practice, health economics and policy, population sciences, public health and biomedical sciences and engineering. DHSA also awards pilot grants to medical researchers.
500+
Number of robotic surgeries performed by Kurt Wehberg, M.D., of Beebe Healthcare’s Center for Robotic Surgery
SOURCES: BEEBE HEALTHCARE, CHRISTIANA CARE HEALTH SYSTEM, DELAWARE HEALTH SCIENCES ALLIANCE, UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
FROM LEFT: DR. BRUCE BOMAN AND FELLOW RESEARCHERS LYNN OPDENAKER, PH.D., AND SHIRIN MODERAI, PH.D.
MEDICAL RESEARCH IS THRIVING
Much medical research is being done at local hospitals in tandem with their aca- demic networks. For example, Dr. Bruce Boman at the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center & Research Institute of Christiana Care this spring received a $916,577 grant from the Wilmington-based Lisa Dean Moseley Foundation to further
his stem-cell research on colon cancer. Boman’s research goal is to control stem cell over-population, which results in the formation and growth of tumors. “While this is mainly lab-based research,” he says, “we are also collaborating with the University of Delaware, which is doing parallel computational studies.”
One of the people closely involved with the advancement of research at the University of Delaware is Prabhpreet Gill, a licensing associate working in technology commercialization of uni- versity research across several platforms, including health care. “We mostly are looking for commercial partners to de- velop promising technology,” Gill says, “unless it’s decided that a faculty mem- ber or even a student working on the research should commercialize it. We want to determine how best to extract value from our intellectual properties.” Gill estimates that life-science research projects make up about 25% to 30% of all commercialization and licensing work at the university.
As an example of his work, Gill cites the recent awarding of a $200,000 start-
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AMY COWPERTHWAIT
up QED grant from the University City Science Center in Philadelphia to a team of researchers at UD’s College of Health Sciences. The researchers have devel- oped a motorized ankle-foot device for children with cerebral palsy that includes a novel artificial muscle.
Another major hub for medical re- search is the Nemours Children’s Health System. In January, Nemours announced that two of its research scientists would be receiving grants totaling $2 million from the Lisa Dean Moseley Foundation. The grants “will support pediatric
cancer research, in particular the use of stem-cell therapy in the treatment of childhood leukemia,” according to the announcement. Nemours and its Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children are also working to address entrenched dispari- ties in health-care access and outcomes. Nemours’ Office of Health Equity and Inclusion has initiatives for cultural com-