SIB Medical Technologies took second place in the student portion of the Accelerate Michigan Innovation Competition last month.
It's a win that brought $15,000 in seed capital to the Wayne State University spin-out, among other things. The startup's co-founders made a large number of contacts at the event, which was held in downtown Detroit. Contacts that helped get the word out about the up-and-coming biotech firm.
"There was a marketing aspect as well," says Adham Aljahmi, co-founder & COO of
SIB Medical Technologies.
The 1-year-old company is developing a medical device that its co-founders hope will become the simpler and cheaper option for colon-cancer screening that will eventually open the door for home screenings. The technology preserves tissue samples in a liquid solution rather than with heavy, bulky cryogenic materials. Check out a video explaining it
here.
"Our device allows for a cleaner-and-simpler approach to collecting stool samples for testing," Aljahmi says. He and Sagor Bhuiyan, seniors at Wayne State University, created the technology. They have been working with
TechTown and the
Blackstone LaunchPad business incubator at Wayne State to develop the technology.
They are using the prize money from Accelerate Michigan a $5,000 grant from the
Warrior Fund to launch a second pilot study next year.
"We hope to get it started by at least the beginning of the summer," Aljahmi says.
Source: Adham Aljahmi, co-founder & COO of SIB Medical Technologies
Writer: Jon Zemke
Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.
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