Unexpected, unique and surprising are just a few of the words that Integrated Biomedical Engineering and Health Sciences (iBioMed) students use to describe their experience in the Entrepreneurship in Biomedical Innovation: Bench to Market course.
This project-based, integrated course tracks the journey of healthcare solutions from the lab to the market, blending essential concepts in biology with clinical and business insights. Its primary goal is to enhance students’ critical thinking, teamwork and project management skills.
In practice, students collaborate in groups to bridge the gap between biology and entrepreneurship in a highly practical manner. They develop ideas or prototypes grounded in scientific principles and attainable business ideals.
To showcase their work, students participate in a Dragons’ Den-style competition, pitching their projects to a panel of judges, including Associate Professor Michelle MacDonald, co-director of iBioMed.
“Bench to Market is designed to help students expand their thinking beyond the work they’re completing in the classroom or lab with their groups and consider commercial aspects,” says MacDonald. “We want students to approach their innovative solutions with big-picture thinking and thoughtful considerations for the market they are targeting.”
Winning groups from each of the four days are invited to participate in the annual iBioMed Showcase – a one-day event featuring displays and presentations of top iBioMed projects from each year of the five-year program. Below are the winning Bench to Market solutions for the 2024-25 iBioMed cohort.
Team ArteMS
Members: Ella Druker, Jack Srb, Katie Millington, Yojith Biradavolu
Solution: An at-home Multiple Sclerosis prognostic device aimed at Relapsing-Remitting Multiple Sclerosis patients, with a focus on making disease progression tracking easy and affordable. With an interface similar to a glucose meter, ARROW (our device) uses an electrochemical aptamer-based sensor to measure neurofilament light chain (NfL) concentrations in the blood collected from a finger prick. NfL is a known biomarker of MS, and its blood levels correlate to disease activity, meaning it can be used to flag early signs of relapse as well as monitor silent disease progression.
Highlight of the course experience: This course is distinguished by its innovative teaching style and structure, placing a strong emphasis on self-directed learning rather than traditional rote memorization. Students were encouraged to conduct independent research and apply their findings to real-world healthcare challenges. Through this approach, they developed essential skills in research, data analysis, and professional presentation. Additionally, participants gained practical experience in the wet lab, working with specialized equipment and techniques—a rare opportunity for first-year students.
The course’s most valuable lessons also proved to be its greatest challenge. For many students transitioning directly from high school, the demands of interpreting scientific literature, designing innovative disease-related solutions, and delivering professional-level pitches were initially overwhelming. Despite the steep learning curve, these experiences fostered significant academic and personal growth over the eight-month program.
Team Plasmark Solutions
Members: Emily Zhao, Amber Spira, Carter Yott, Jessica Tang, Jirehl Villanueva Ngo
Solution: A diagnostic tool that involves a series of several blood biomarkers that can be tested at local clinics. It can predict the likelihood that a person has MS based on how much their biomarker levels deviate from those of a healthy demographic-matched control. There are disease-modifying treatments that can slow the progression of MS, so identifying it early is absolutely crucial. The DC Index can readily test many people, allowing care and resources to be directed to those that have MS.
Highlight of the course experience: The Bench to Market course is a unique opportunity that not many other programs offer. It gave students experience developing solutions for real-world problems. With wet labs, collaborative experiences, marketing opportunities, and personal career development, this course offered such a diverse range of learning styles that catered to all types of people.
Team TauPhinder
Members: Mila Bennett, Archie Bain, Edric Zhu, Ananya Murlidharan
Solution: TauPhinder is a Monte Carlo-based predictive probability model designed for the early diagnosis of corticobasal syndrome (CBS) and its sub-pathologies. Using a modified phosphorus magnetic resonance spectroscopy machine, the model pinpoints free-floating tau and phosphorylated clusters that influence its movement. Predictions are mapped onto a reconstructed patient-specific brain model and compared with established literature on regional tau dynamics to enhance early diagnostic accuracy.
Highlight of the course experience: The Bench to Market course was a mix of niche biology and entrepreneurial content, a combination that was not obviously related at first. Once synthesized, all the content perfectly encapsulated the process of finding a niche in the market and creating a biomedical solution to address it. The key lesson students took away was how fully understanding the mechanisms behind a problem then subsequentially assists generating creative and effective solutions.
Team NeuroBubble
Members: Coco Cao, Brevan Dias, Elara Dahal, Jet Ngo
Solution: NBT-ASO1 is a treatment for Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (CJD), a neurodegenerative disease caused by the misfolding of prion proteins in the brain. The project is designed to extend the lives of CJD patients by using antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) to stop prion production. ASOs are large molecules that cannot pass through the blood brain barrier on their own, so the use of nanobubbles was incorporated into the design to deliver the ASOs to the brain. Nanobubbles can be oscillated, or “popped” by a high intensity focus ultrasound, and this disruption creates openings in the blood brain barrier. These openings allow the ASOs to flow into the brain and bind directly to prions, thus stopping prion synthesis.
The novel therapeutic approach has the potential to extend patient survival and slow disease progression. This would not only offer patients and their families precious additional time and improved quality of life but also give researchers more time to study CJD in vivo.
Highlight of the course experience: Instead of simply memorizing complex biological concepts, students learned to apply them to real-world problems.
The first major project for the course involved developing a novel therapeutic for glaucoma by studying mechanotransduction pathways involved in the disease. In the second semester, students tackled a neurodegenerative disease, creating a potential treatment strategy. These projects were both challenging and rewarding, as they pushed students to translate lecture material into real solutions. Students also participated in hands-on labs every other week, including cell culture, microscopy, and gel electrophoresis, which helped strengthen technical skills and deepen understanding of biological techniques.
