Our laboratory is focused on enabling patients and groups outside our University medical center to potentially benefit from our research. A critical step has been to early-stage technology transfer, to catalyze rapid development while maintaining quality control to apply for FDA clearance.  These are critical steps for wider patient testing at multiple centers.

For instance, technology transfer for the science of mapping atrial arrhythmias was funded by the NIH (SBIR). The startup, Topera Inc, obtained initial FDA clearance in 2011 for a non-commercial prototype for limited testing at some U.S. laboratories, followed in 2013 by FDA clearance (and CE mark) for the first commercial mapping system (FIRM), and a dedicated basket mapping catheter (FIRMap) used by external companies.  Multicenter studies from independent centers were reported in 2013-14. Topera was acquired in 2014 by Abbott Laboratories inc.  This acquisition foreshadowed the current field of computational tools to map complex arrhythmias to guide ablation, leading to both mechanistic and clinical insights.

Other start-up endeavors in which CARL faculty have been associated include LifeSignals Inc., PhysCade Inc and BeyondLimits.ai.

Click here for a list of patents from CARL faculty.

BIODESIGN and INNOVATION

The laboratory enjoys close collaborations between a disease-focused group of clinicians, computational physicists, bioengineers and outcome specialists. We have successfully translated our innovations to patents and novel therapy that has been commercialized by startup companies.  Fellows in our Lab have enrolled in the Biodesign program, in which our collaborators (such as Dr. Paul Wang) are leading teaching faculty, and have conceived and submitted applications to the U.S. patent and trademark office.