{"id":23,"date":"2022-10-10T13:20:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-10T20:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biology.sdsu.edu\/doctoral\/cell-molecular\/?p=23"},"modified":"2025-02-12T15:30:26","modified_gmt":"2025-02-12T23:30:26","slug":"from-ships-to-syringes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biology.sdsu.edu\/doctoral\/cell-molecular\/from-ships-to-syringes\/","title":{"rendered":"From Ships to Syringes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Imagine a syringe that\u2019s small enough to inject cells with whatever proteins you desire. With the potential to revolutionize scientific experiments in academia and industry, biologist&nbsp;<strong>Nick Shikuma<\/strong>&nbsp;is leveraging an injection mechanism and its ability to genetically modify other organisms to start a biotechnology company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But entrepreneurship definitely was not on Shikuma\u2019s radar when he received a grant from the Office of Naval Research to reduce the more than $180 million they spend on removing marine organisms from ships\u2019 hulls. Upon discovering that ship-sticking tubeworms grow into their adult form thanks to a bacterium injecting its own proteins, Shikuma and his now-graduated doctoral students<strong>&nbsp;Kyle Malter&nbsp;<\/strong>(\u201822) and<strong>&nbsp;Amanda Alker&nbsp;<\/strong>(\u201822) sought resources to help share these findings beyond the lab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/research.sdsu.edu\/tto\">San Diego State University\u2019s Technology Transfer Office<\/a>&nbsp;managed the filing of patent applications based on the results of their research, connected the researchers with expert biotechnology industry mentors, and advised them on business models and product offerings.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cOnce we had the intellectual property, we were interested in figuring out how it could be commercialized,\u201d said Malter, who wanted to become an entrepreneur at a very early age. \u201cWhen the idea came up to do I-Corps, I was like, \u2018Heck yeah! Let\u2019s see what we can do with this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Malter and Shikuma completed SDSU\u2019s semester-long&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.calstate.edu\/impact-of-the-csu\/research\/csuperb\/Pages\/CSU-I-Corps.aspx\">Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program<\/a>, led by&nbsp;<strong>Stanley Maloy<\/strong>, a microbiologist and former associate vice president for innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Something Maloy said stuck with Shikuma: \u201cIt\u2019s great that you\u2019re an academic and that you can make foundational discoveries. But it\u2019s also nice to have some kind of societal impact if you can.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Valuable Help<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hearing from the I-Corps instructors, who themselves were scientists, about their missteps and successes in starting companies was instrumental in helping Shikuma and his team think through the next steps for their venture, Metamorphotech. I-Corps helped them identify the milestones needed to advance their technology toward commercial readiness. Shikuma was awarded funding from the SDSU Pilot Innovation Fund to help them along the road to commercialization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe Metamorphotech team is a wonderful example of how a surprising basic science discovery can be adapted to solve complex problems in a wide variety of areas, from marine sciences to agriculture to human health,\u201d said Maloy. \u201cThis transition from a laboratory discovery to a product that benefits society requires an understanding of how to be a successful entrepreneur, approaches that are taught in our NSF-funded I-Corps program. The Metamorphotech team quickly embraced these concepts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Named after the lab\u2019s initial focus on the biology of transformative processes, the Metamorphotech team continue to hone their initial product offerings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The team plans to provide gene-editing services and custom strains of marine bacteria for fellow academics who are hindered by the challenging, time-consuming process of genetically modifying their own microorganisms besides E.coli and yeast. Further along their journey, they\u2019ll adapt the bacteria\u2019s nanosyringe to inject medicinal drugs into a variety of cell types.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI like the freedom of starting a company,\u201d said Malter, \u201cWhen you have control over what you\u2019re doing, it makes it a lot easier to have a passion for it. It\u2019s easier to steer the ship because no one else is going to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Biologist Nick Shikuma and his former Ph.D. students are set to launch a biotech startup thanks to SDSU\u2019s Innovation Corps program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biology.sdsu.edu\/doctoral\/cell-molecular\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biology.sdsu.edu\/doctoral\/cell-molecular\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biology.sdsu.edu\/doctoral\/cell-molecular\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biology.sdsu.edu\/doctoral\/cell-molecular\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biology.sdsu.edu\/doctoral\/cell-molecular\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/biology.sdsu.edu\/doctoral\/cell-molecular\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25,"href":"https:\/\/biology.sdsu.edu\/doctoral\/cell-molecular\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions\/25"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biology.sdsu.edu\/doctoral\/cell-molecular\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biology.sdsu.edu\/doctoral\/cell-molecular\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biology.sdsu.edu\/doctoral\/cell-molecular\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biology.sdsu.edu\/doctoral\/cell-molecular\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}