New Ventures

CERES is actively working with entrepreneurs and their investors to create, grow, and finance early stage ventures. 

Label-Free Multiplexed Immunoassay Platform

This company is developing a multiplex immunoassay platform for life science research and clinical diagnostics.  Immunoassays that identify the presence of specific protein biomarkers in blood, urine, or saliva constitute a vital tool in modern health care.  Its technology enables many immunoassays to be multiplexed on to one small disposable chip. While multiplexed immunoassays are emerging in life science research, existing techniques require a labeling step that adds significant variability, inhibit high density arrays, and provide a less quantifiable signal.  Existing label-free detection technology is too costly and complex for many life science research labs let alone clinical use.  With simple, inexpensive, label-free protein array detection, the Company expects to make a strong impact in molecular in vitro diagnostics with tests that provide far more information than is currently feasible.  www.zoiray.com 

Green Energy Highway^TM

This company's proprietary photonics and informatics platform products support clean technology infrastructure. Green Energy Highway Management System (GEHMS) is a network of integrated information systems and Optical Neural Sensors designed to maximize security, efficiency, utilization, and management capability of natural gas, wind, and solar energy resources worldwide. 

Phosphor Nanoparticles

This company provides nanocrystals that absorb electromagnetic energy at specific wavelengths and convert it to photons at different energy levels. Their micron sized particles have been used for security applications for many years. Their ability to produce the particles on a nano-scale opens endless possibilities in medical therapeutics, medical and environmental diagnostics, solid state lighting, and solar energy.  www.sunstones.com

Preventative Diagnostics

This company provides a means for healthcare service providers to identify, prioritize and target critical health issues before symptoms occur or before commercially available screening tests can detect disease.

Although more people than ever will be living longer, the incidence of cancer, heart disease, and other chronic diseases is expected to increase at a faster pace. The number of cancer cases is expected to more than double and the number of Alzheimer's cases is expected to triple in the next 25 years. The estimated cost of hospitals and nursing homes, lost productivity, drugs, physicians and home care due to stroke and cardiovascular disease in the US in 2005 is $394 billion. There is a tremendous market opportunity to target critical forces of illness early, promote health, and prevent disease altogether.

Unfortunately, symptoms are proven inadequate indicators of disease. Chest pains occur only when extremely advanced blockages of more than 70% exist and memory loss from Alzheimer’s disease occurs only after irreversible scarring in major areas of the brain. Furthermore, current state-of-the-art screening is insensitive. CAT scans only detect tumors present for years and heart scans only see plaque in arteries already calcified. In addition to opportunities for devices and drugs to treat disease, there is large, under-served opportunity in health promotion and disease prevention. Typically, years before disease is detectable, biochemical imbalances exist that eventually lead to illness. By identifying and correcting these imbalances early, nutritional and lifestyle changes can be successful in preventing the disease development.

A critical component of the solution is providing physicians the tools to formulate a patient-focused and holistic health program that identifies and eliminates the cause of disease - tools with greater accuracy, precision, specificity and sensitivity than exist today and tools that are easy-to-use and inexpensive. Sources of today's most common illnesses are:

• Inflammation
• Impaired detoxification
• Malnutrition
• Impaired metabolism
• Oxidative stress

Screening for these early imbalances and inherent genetic risk factors enable a whole new definition of good health.  

Fluorescence Standards and Phantoms

This company provides standards, phantoms and software to calibrate fluorescence imaging instrumentation.

Small animals represent vital model systems for studying efficacy and toxicity of novel cancer therapeutics. Until recently, however, the significant potential of animal studies for studying efficacy and toxicity of novel cancer therapeutics was untapped, because it was necessary to sacrifice the animal to perform tissue or molecular analysis. Today, functional, molecular, and morphologic quantitative small animal fluorescence imaging enables observation of the natural and perturbed evolution of the biochemical, genetic or pharmacological process under investigation – non-invasively, real time, in-vivo, and repeatably in the same animal.

A lack of calibration standards, however, significantly reduces the value of these techniques as discovery tools and makes clinical use impractical. There are many versions of small animal imagers and all face complications associated with imaging through a medium that is simultaneously absorptive, scattering, and fluorescent. The solution is to employ a standard schedule of validation and reproducible, informative phantom reference standards as is done with clinical medical imaging modalities such as X-ray, CT, PET and ultrasound.