Desert Tech last week has decided to pursue its first project: a kit that will test for E.coli in food and water.
As featured in an article in the Nov. 26 issue of Inside Tucson Business, the nearly 30 members of Desert Tech are part of a first in the nation three-way mechanism that can take tech transfers developed at the University of Arizona with funding from the Kauffman Foundation and evaluate them for commercial marketability.
 Jerry Gonenblick, founding member of Desert Tech. |
At last week’s meeting, Bob Morrison, one of the Desert Tech managers, provided the group with a due diligence report about the E. coli test kit process developed Olin Feuerbacher and Alicia Reeves.
"Currently, it takes anywhere from six to 96 hours to get the results from a test back on whether there is this strain of E. coli in the source or not," Morrison said. "And six hours is with scientists working on it with the most sophisticated equipment out there."
The proposed process detects the presence of the strain in minutes, but takes only three hours for the results to become clearly visible. Morrison said the group was also working on the process to make results visible within 10 minutes.
"It is cost efficient and anyone can do it," Morrison said.
The process involves SEquence Enabled Reassembly or SEER, technology developed at the UA by Professor Indraneel Ghosh. The original technology developed by Ghosh is used to detect for a urinary tract infection.
Feuerbacher and Reeves are taking it a step further.
"It will be a great opportunity to work with Desert Tech," said Reeves who primarily manages the business end of the enterprise while Feuerbacher will be developing the kit.
Desert Tech figures development should take no longer than six months and has set up benchmarks accordingly.
"The five benchmarks give us a chance to pull the plug and cut our losses if the product isn’t panning out," said Morrison.
The funding was approved for $35,000 toward development. Desert Tech will look for someone to buy the license once the product is developed.
Reeves hopes her company will be the one to receive the license once they complete the process with Desert Tech.
"That is what I am working on right now," she said.
While Desert Tech works to make professors’ ideas a reality, it could take them a little while to show the process works to get more ideas coming.
"The first deal is always the hardest," said Patrick Jones, director of the Office of Technology Transfer. "Not only are you testing the concept of what the deal is, but you’re also putting together the structures of how you evaluate the deals. With one done, this will make subsequent easier. And I think more ideas will come. Because this is such a new idea, we can’t look to Boston and say, see how well it has worked there."
Desert Tech will hear another idea at their next meeting in December.
"In this first go around of effort, if we can get six to 10 good projects running in the next year to year and a half, it will be great," Jones said.
Contact Joe Pangburn at jpangburn@azbiz.com or at (520) 295-4259.
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