The Office of Technology Management is pleased to announce four new Washington University Gap Fund awards. The Gap Fund, operated by the Washington University Office of Technology Management (OTM), provides support to help de-risk and mature technologies created by WashU researchers and facilitate their commercialization.
The WashU awardees and their technologies include:




Kevin M. Bennett, PhD, Associate Professor of Radiology
Bennett and team’s technology, called RadioCF-PETTM, is a precision imaging tool to detect early loss of kidney function. It is the first-ever tool to measure nephron number in humans and offers clinicians the ability to identify patients at-risk for chronic kidney disease.
Rajat Dhar, MD, FRCPC, Professor of Neurology
Dhar and team’s technology is an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm that determines the risk of developing malignant edema post-stroke by analyzing routine computed tomography (CT) images and clinical variables.
Michael Waters, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology
Waters and team’s technology includes a suite of products that utilize AI based technology to predict a response to nonoperative management of rectal cancer.
Justin M. Sacks, MD, MBA, FACS, Shoenberg Professor and Chief, Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery in the Department of Surgery
Sacks and team’s technology utilizes a surgical adhesive as a better solution for surgical tissue closure that is non-tissue damaging, provides cohesive tissue interface, and enhances healing.
The awards will be used to perform customer discovery to validate the value proposition of the above technologies with the target users and determine the minimum feature set for the envisioned product. The results of customer discovery will dictate how each technology needs to be further developed toward commercialization. Additionally, the awards will be used to conduct regulatory analysis on all four technologies to determine the most appropriate and efficient regulatory strategy and inform the design of studies needed to obtain the necessary regulatory approvals. Finally, the Gap Fund awards will enable healthcare economics analyses to be done for three of the technologies (i.e. Drs. Bennett, Dhar and Waters) to help OTM determine the chances of obtaining payer approval to reimburse for use of those technologies and the probability of the technologies being adopted by healthcare providers.
Interested in learning more about the WashU Gap Fund? More information is available on the OTM website or contact Malcolm Townes, innovation fund manager at townes@wustl.edu.