The Center for Education, New Technology and Unifying Research (CENTAUR)
A Whitepaper for the Campaign Steering Committee
THE VISION
To confront today’s health challenges is to stand at the intersection of medicine and engineering. New medical devices are flooding the market, but it will take powerful collaborations between academia and industry to identify the areas of greatest unmet need and unlock new possibilities.
From state-of-the-art bone and cartilage replacement solutions, to wearables that transmit data to an individual’s personal health record, to saliva-activated diagnostic sensors that can read bio-markers for a variety of health conditions, devices are essential to the ways we interact with modern health care. Even medical devices as simple as stethoscopes are becoming more advanced, with electronic versions that can operate remotely or send data to electronic health records.
There is a growing desire within industry to partner with academic institutions to test these new products in state-of-the-art environments and to train users in the safe and effective use of new devices. Recognizing that tomorrow’s breakthroughs will be possible only by harnessing the diverse expertise of interdisciplinary visionaries, UC Davis is leveraging its resources to propel medical discovery forward.
We have a vision to create the premier research destination for faculty, students and industry to accelerate medical device development and clinical solutions. The new Center for Education, New Technology and Unifying Research will be at the nexus between interdisciplinary academia and industry, a magnet center for developing and testing cutting-edge technology. It will be a place where the world’s leading experts in a wide range of fields—from human and veterinary health to engineering and management—will collaborate with industry leaders on breakthroughs in human health, spark life-changing research and train the next generation of multidisciplinary innovators.
Translating research into action has always been part of our culture at UC Davis. A powerhouse for the public good, no institution is better equipped to foster technology development and collaborate with the biomedical device industry to address unmet needs in both the human health and veterinary medical realms. With the combination of a world-renowned health system, the world’s number one veterinary school, a top-ranked college of engineering and a leading school of management, the Center for Education, New Technology and Unifying Research (CENTAUR) will take UC Davis’ important work in device development to the next level.
Acting as an incubator, CENTAUR will bridge the gap between industry and UC Davis’ broad spectrum of medical and veterinary medical expertise and provide unique resources that are not available to private corporations. Close collaboration between healthcare professionals, engineers and entrepreneurs will fast-track answers to some of medicine’s biggest questions—and translate those solutions into commercially viable products and clinical practices. CENTAUR will be one of the world’s leading partnerships between academia and industry, ensuring valuable innovations for patients everywhere.
Promoting comparative medical research and connections between human and veterinary health, the center will transform UC Davis into the leading institution for cross-disciplinary therapeutic device development for both people and animals. Faculty and students will be hands-on participants and health technology innovators—not just responding to the evolving industry, but defining it.
This is an opportunity to create a health technology hub of the future where innovation and education converge to spark dynamic results.
THE RIGHT TIME AND THE RIGHT PLACE
We are at an incredible moment for human and veterinary medicine, one in which rapidly developing technology is quickly changing how we provide care. Establishing CENTAUR will allow UC Davis to capitalize on this shifting reality, positioning the university as a leading innovator in health care.
UC Davis is one of only a few institutions in the nation to house a medical school, a veterinary school, an engineering school and a school of management—a powerful combination that allows UC Davis to provide an infrastructure that exists nowhere else. CENTAUR will be the connecting point between UC Davis’ many strengths in the sciences, medicine, engineering and business. With engineers and industry leaders responding to emerging needs identified by health and veterinary health professionals, CENTAUR will command the expertise necessary to devise solutions to healthcare’s greatest challenges.
Interdisciplinary collaboration between science and medicine is already a part of UC Davis culture. The College of Engineering, for example, provides a robust infrastructure to support device development alongside the Schools of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine. UC Davis biomedical engineers and veterinary surgeons have teamed up to regenerate jaw bones in dogs with tumors. These soft-tissue tumors—including squamous cell carcinomas, which are responsible for 70 percent of all oral tumors in humans—frequently appear in dogs’ mouths and grow into the bone, requiring surgical removal of the tumor and, often, large parts of the jaw. Using special titanium plates and screws, a matrix of bone growth-promoting proteins and a scaffolding material to support the growing bone, surgeons are able to achieve incredible bone growth results. The protein stimulates the remaining jawbone to grow new cells, eventually filling the entire defect and integrating with the native bone.
CENTAUR will make possible more advances like this. The Graduate School of Management will help to define CENTAUR’s entrepreneurial core and facilitate partnerships with industry, guiding solutions like the bone growth-promoting proteins to market. With support throughout the entire product life cycle—from ideation to prototyping and testing to connecting with venture capitalists and other investors—UC Davis innovations will be connected to some of the world’s top entrepreneurial strategists.
These powerful collaborations between the Schools of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine, the College of Engineering and the Graduate School of Management will better enable UC Davis to address critical healthcare needs and accelerate biomedical discovery, changing the field of medicine.
THE OPPORTUNITY
By leveraging UC Davis’ unique combination of assets, CENTAUR could lead to targeted, personalized cures for cancer in the next fifteen years instead of thirty, or to the discovery of new methods for vaccine delivery, or to the application of nanotechnology to detect and treat incipient cancer and infectious disease at the atomic scale.
Imagine entrepreneurial engineering faculty and students partnering with biomedical and corporate engineers to develop improved materials for minimally invasive and personalized hip replacement surgery. The interdisciplinary group meets in a CENTAUR design lab and prototyping studio to 3D print and test the strength of new materials. Using an ultrasound simulator and other tomography tools available in the lab, they model several test patient’s hip joints and upload the scans to interactive and responsive whiteboards that help them match the patients to individualized surgical compounds with the least chance of rejection. CENTAUR has all the tools the researchers need to develop proofs of concept, prototype their technology and file intellectual property protections, accelerating the time to market for their new polymer solutions.
CENTAUR will be a hub for industry collaboration and innovative technology transfer. Pioneering a dynamic new academic research model, CENTAUR will house industry partners within academic research labs, ensuring that research and development are translatable and accelerate time-to-market for new technology and devices.
While growing market demands are well recognized by medicine, the biomedical industry has not developed the same collaborative relationship with the world’s leading veterinary medicine institutions. Device development aimed at the veterinary medicine market has considerable overlap with development specific to human medicine—particularly pediatric surgery, where veterinary patient size is often comparable to that of neonatal and pediatric human patients.
For example, cats and dogs can suffer a type of congenital heart defect also found in children, requiring specialized miniature catheters and balloons to treat congestive heart failure. Other congenital and acquired cardiovascular disorders commonly encountered in veterinary patients can also serve as excellent models for stent and other implantable device development. School of Medicine and School of Veterinary Medicine faculty and researchers will identify areas of unmet need, like these tools needed for intensive, open-heart surgery, and collaborate with engineers and industry to develop appropriate technology for both animals and children.
While engaging with industry pushes our research to action and connects us with cutting-edge technology, it also fulfills UC Davis’ teaching mission by equipping our graduates with the skills and experiences necessary to be leading physicians, veterinarians and engineers in a quickly changing world. CENTAUR will provide a qualified, cutting-edge center for industry leaders who are looking for a top academic laboratory to advance technology and train new users.
Imagine veterinary medicine students practicing robotic techniques in a surgical simulation suite before equine surgery. Until now, simulation has been underutilized in veterinary medicine, and UC Davis is the first school to incorporate this type of training into its curriculum. Modeling different scenarios for the reconstruction procedure, the students are able to simulate a range of possible outcomes. Experience in CENTAUR’s simulation suites will further strengthen our professional pipeline and prepare students and faculty to continue their careers trained in the most up-to-date devices and procedures.
In today’s environment, where funding mechanisms and business strategies are fluid and quickly changing, CENTAUR will prepare aspiring student and faculty inventors with the industry connections and entrepreneurial skills they need to succeed. CENTAUR will enable biomedical projects developed at UC Davis to compete on a global scale, inspiring and innovating a healthier world for all.
MOVING FORWARD
Creating a state-of-the-art health innovation hub will require capital, start-up and long-term funding. Investigators will need to be appointed, and a shared resource core of facilities and research equipment will need to be established. Space will also be required for administrative and support staff, who will need to be hired.
The current large animal facility on the main UC Davis campus could be converted into an integrated facility, with costs in the $50 million range. The new center will require tools and equipment to support rapidly changing needs, including flexible simulation suites, visualization walls and software.
The total cost is estimated to be at least $75 million in start-up funding and $2 million each year for personnel costs for faculty, veterinary staff and administrators. Five to ten years of support would be ideal, with a total cost of up to $100 million.
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