A win for the health industry in the Curtin Commercial Innovation Awards

The 2013 Curtin Commercial Innovation Awards winners have been announced, with the three winning entries each having strong or potential applications in the medical industry.

The winning team, comprising Dr Dehua Dong, Xin Shao, Professor Chun-Zhu Li and Professor Gordon Parkinson, developed a process for making highly efficient ion transport membranes - structures that selectively transport one component of a mixture present in gas or liquid, such as oxygen. Suitable for industrial and medical uses, the membrane has an integrated structure that is stable over a wide range of operating conditions, is readily scaled up for manufacture, has an intrinsically high performance and is commercially viable.

The director of Curtin’s Office of IP Commercialisation, Rohan McDougall, noted, “The production of pure oxygen is a global business worth about $20 billion per year, used in a number of applications such as steelmaking, medicine, the production of liquid fuels and more environmentally friendly combustion of fossil fuels.” He said current membrane-based processes are too slow and therefore not commercially viable, whereas Dr Dong and his team “have innovated a way to produce a membrane structure that has the highest recorded oxygen flux and is also mechanically strong and durable”.

Matthew Oldakowski and his colleagues, Professor Brett Kirk, Intan Oldakowska and spinal surgeon Dr Philip Hardcastle, were named runners-up for developing a novel spinal stabilisation implant, named the SZ Device, for use in the cervical spine to treat neck pain. Unlike traditional fusion techniques, the device maintains some movement in the stabilised spinal segment, obviating the need for a bone graft and the invasive surgical procedures associated with fusion, “potentially reducing trauma, surgical complications and cost”, McDougall said.

The implant is a unit with fasteners integrated into its body, allowing a simple insertion technique. The implant also uses a simple mechanism to allow the surgeon to adjust the magnitude and direction of the intervertebral movement provided at each instrumented level to suit the patient’s individual pathology.

The Early Research Career Award was presented to Elizabeth Grenik and her team for developing a bioactive synthetic hydrogel scaffold that can regenerate tissue, addressing chronic wound healing such as diabetic foot ulcers. The scaffold comprises 3D, porous hydrogels that are chemically bonded with biomolecules that are able to direct and regulate cell growth and differentiation. It provides not only a physical support but also biochemical signals for the tissue to regenerate and regain its functionality.

McDougall noted that “diabetic foot ulcers are responsible for more hospitalisations than any other complication of diabetes”, with current healing techniques “not sufficient enough to completely heal the wound”. By completely healing ulcers, the scaffold will reduce the number of patients needing to be hospitalised, McDougall said.

The awards were established in 2007 and aim to identify new technologies, products or services arising from research at Curtin. Prizes for this year totalled more than $40,000 in cash and in commercialisation services provided by the awards’ sponsors.