2007 RBPC Participants

Grand Prize

Company Name:	ResuRx Pharmaceuticals
University:	Johns Hopkins University
Contact:	Curtis Chong; crchong@post.harvard.edu
Prize(s):
The GOOSE Society of Texas	Grand Prize Equity Award	$100,000
Shell Technology Ventures	Grand Prize Cash Award	$20,000
Murphree Venture Partners	Wildcard Round Award, 1st	-

The 2007 Rice Business Plan Competition Grand Prize was awarded to ResuRx Pharmaceuticals from Johns Hopkins University. ResuRx Pharmaceuticals reduces the cost and time for drug discovery by determining new uses for existing drugs and re-introducing them to the market.

ResuRx will collect existing drugs and identify new uses and, because the collection is FDA approved, they can bypass clinical trials which cost over $300 million and take an average of six years. Through the company’s published and patent protected drug pipeline, ResuRx will commercialize successful research conducted at Johns Hopkins Medicine. By lowering drug development costs, the company’s business model targets diseases considered unprofitable to large pharmaceutical companies.

According to Curtis Chong, a member of ResuRx’s management team, “The RBPC was one of my most valuable learning experiences, teaching me not only about business but how to speak in public, present ideas in a compelling way, and network with others. I will always remember the warm hospitality the Houston business community showed us and hope to start our company using the office space provided as part of the Grand Prize package.”

Second Place

Company Name:	SteriCoat
University:	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Contact:	Christopher Loose; crloose@mit.edu
Prize(s):
Finger Interests	Second Place Winner	$15,000
Essex Woodlands Health Ventures	Life Science Award	$2,000
Houston Private Equity Association	Written Business Plan Award	$2,000
Andrews Kurth	Semi-final Round Flight Winner	-

The Second Place Winner at the 2007 RBPC was SteriCoat from MIT. SteriCoat has created the first implantable and permanently antimicrobial coating, targeting the $10 billion medical device market. The company will have a hybrid model of contract manufacturing commodity products and licensing our coating for high-tech applications. The firm’s value proposition to hospital purchasers is to directly reduce the enormous costs of treating infections associated with medical devices and improve patient health.

Each year, bloodstream infections associated with medical devices cost hospitals $9 billion and cause 70,000 deaths in the US. They lengthen patient stays by an average of two weeks at a treatment cost of $50,000 per infection.

SteriCoat’s first product will be central venous catheters (CVCs), plastic tubes that deliver drugs directly to the bloodstream. The $350 million CVC market is growing 10% annually, and future growth will be accelerated by an aging population. CVCs will demonstrate the safety and efficacy of SteriCoat’s coating technology and fund the development of additional products.

Third Place

Company Name:	Precision Surveying Solutions
University:	Brigham Young University
Contact:	Adam Robertson; adam@pssllc.com
Prize(s):
Sirius Solutions	Third Place Winner	$7,500
Palo Alto Software	Executive Summary Award	$2,000
Bank of Texas	Semi-final Round Flight Winner	-

Precision Surveying Solutions from BYU was the Third Place Winner at the 2007 RBPC. Precision sells a data collection instrument to civil engineers and land surveyors engaged in all forms of land measurement.

Careful measurements and detailed records are essential in construction projects and in establishing property rights. Precision’s data collector, the DC50, controls robotic measurement tools and Global Positioning System (GPS) equipment and stores the collected measurements for later use in the generation of property deeds, maps and construction plans.

Adam Robertson, Precision Surveying Solutions’ CEO and CFO, said “The RBPC helped us focus the way we communicate our value proposition and now we describe the opportunity to investors.”

The company believes its DC50 is more efficient, flexible, user friendly and cost effective than any alternative currently on the market - with over three years of actual field usage and refinement, it has consistently increased productivity of field crews 20-40% over competing products.

Fourth Place

Company Name:	ImagineOptix
University:	University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill
Contact:	Erin Clark; erin@imagineoptix.com
Prize(s):
Sirius Solutions	Fourth Place Winner	$2,500
DFJ Mercury	IT Award	$2,000
Main Street Capital Partners	Semi-final Flight Round Winner	-

ImagineOptix from the UNC Chapel Hill was the 2007 RBPC Fourth Place Winner. ImagineOptix is focused on enabling new uses of video display that make everyday life better.

By their very nature, handheld devices need to be small and have a long battery life. Paradoxically, this dictates tiny visual displays that limit the richness and usefulness of these devices. This is the problem that ImagineOptix is solving with its innovative HoloBright™ platform technology to create a new class of Personal Projectors™.

The most obvious application of the HoloBright™ imager is in a small, battery powered, handheld device that connects to mobile devices (wired or wireless) and projects the video output of the mobile devices onto any flat surface. As HoloBright™ becomes more established, it will not expand into just one large existing market but will expand into many existing markets, fundamentally changing the way in which players compete in each market.

The company’s Vice President of Business Development, Erin Clark said, “The Rice Business Plan Competition was an invaluable experience. The feedback we received from the judges and reviewers was tremendously helpful, honest and thoughtful. Every team that goes through this competition walks away with feedback that is, in many ways, more helpful than the prize money.”

Fifth Place

Company Name:	EyeLight
University:	University of California, Los Angeles
Contact:	Gregory Samson; Gregory.samson.2007@anderson.ucla.edu
Prize(s):
Administaff	Fifth Place Winner	$2,000
SimplexityMD	Medical Device Award	$2,000
Locke Liddell & Sapp	Semi-final Round Flight Winner	-

EyeLight from UCLA was the Fifth Place Winner at the 2007 RBPC. EyeLight is developing a new, minimally invasive system for the treatment of open-angle glaucoma, which accounts for 60% of all glaucoma cases worldwide. Glaucoma is a disease that affects 65 million people worldwide and is the leading cause of preventable blindness.

The Company is developing a second generation Excimer Laser Trabeculostomy (“ELT”) system for the treatment of glaucoma, building upon the success of the first generation of ELT technology that was developed and patented by EyeLight and Michael S. Berlin, M.D.

Second generation ELT will be a “smarter” system that will enable more consistent outcomes, and allow the procedure to be standardized. Effectively a larger population of surgeons (who already specialize in cataract surgery) will be able to perform the ELT procedure successfully and efficiently.

Sixth Place

Company Name:	Feed Resource Recovery
University:	Babson College
Contact:	Shane Eten; Shane@feedresource.com
Prize(s):
The Dow Chemical Company	Dow Sustainability Award	$20,000
Administaff	Sixth Place Winner	$2,000

Feed Resource Recovery Inc. provides the food industry cost-effective waste disposal solutions that capture and reuse valuable nutrients and energy from previously discarded food waste – mirroring nature’s regenerative cycles. In nature, there is no such thing as waste. Our earth’s energy and nutrients are cycled and recycled

Feed Resource Recovery provides supermarkets and restaurants onsite waste conversion systems that produce renewable energy and organic fertilizer from their own food waste, employing the intelligence of natural systems to redefine the meaning of waste.

Initially, the business will leverage a North American exclusive licensing agreement for an innovative exclusive anaerobic digestion technology – proven to be more efficient in processing food waste streams than any other current technology. The first solutions will provide supermarkets and restaurants onsite waste processing systems that convert food waste into a free source of electricity and heat while drastically reducing waste volume. The waste that is remaining provides local farmers nutrient rich organic fertilizer.

Seventh Place

Company Name:	NANOTaxi
University:	University of Texas - Austin
Contact:	Jakub Felkl; jfelkl@gmail.com
Prize(s):
Administaff	Seventh Place Winner	$2,000
Vinson & Elkins	Semi-final Round Flight Winner	-

NANOTaxi is an early stage targeted, disease-responsive nano-drug delivery system (figure 1). It is a platform drug delivery system that can package a wide variety of drugs and deliver them to specific cell types in the body. The container is fabricated from biodegradable biomaterials. Targeting ligands are located on the on the side of the container and cause the container to target and attach to specific cells within the body. The container has a disease-responsive lid that acts as sensor to release the therapeutic agent only in the presence of a large quantity of enzymes found only in diseased cells. In addition, the device encapsulates and protects the drug from the body’s environment until a target tumor site is reached.

NANOTaxi offers a significant improvement to traditional methods of chemotherapy, which kills both the healthy and diseased cells in the body leading to deadly side effects. While the next generation of cancer therapy involves new biologics, many of these therapies are only effective for some patients and some types of cancer. NANOTaxi offers the newest generation of targeted cancer therapies that can deliver new, highly effective agents to all types of cancer. Initially, NANOTaxi will be engineered to target Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC). NANOTaxi’s competitive advantage lies in its ability to target diseased cells and its stimulus-responsive lid that dissolves with specific enzymes present in cancer cells (figure 1). This is the key to reduced side effects and increased efficacy of treatment.