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A team of students that developed a technology that automatically regulates glucose levels in the bloodstream of diabetic patients walks away with the $30,000 prize in the annual MIT entrepreneurship

Diabetes Tech Is Good Biz Cents

Diabetics endure painful and frequent finger pricking to stay healthy, but such practices may be a thing of the past if a new, award-winning technology comes to market.

By Katie Dean

A team of students, called SmartCells, won the $30,000 grand prize earlier this week in the annual MIT $50K Entrepreneurship Competition for its work on a new monitoring device.

The team hopes its work will simplify life for diabetics who must monitor their blood sugar meticulously on a daily basis. The team developed a product called SmartInsulin which automatically regulates the blood-glucose levels in diabetic patients.

The five-member SmartCells team, made up of students from MIT and Harvard Business School, beat out a field of 118 teams, which had submitted plans on subjects including vehicle safety devices, semiconductors and alternative fuels.

SmartCells team member Todd Zion invented the technology as part of his Ph.D. research in chemical engineering at MIT. He’s been working on the project for about four years.

The product is a once-a-day injection. Currently, monitoring glucose levels can be cumbersome and painful for diabetics who prick their fingers multiple times daily to test blood-glucose levels. Those who depend on insulin — Type 1 diabetics and a small percentage of Type 2 diabetics — must give themselves shots several times a day.

"It’s well known that you can measure your blood sugar and then monitor your diet to control your blood sugar, but that whole process is not nearly as good as (how) a nondiabetic controls their blood sugar," Zion said. "You really need that real-time response to fluctuations and changes in blood sugar. That’s essentially what we’ve built into SmartInsulin."

SmartInsulin contains nanoparticles that release insulin in proportion to blood-glucose levels, according to team member John Hebert, a second-year student at MIT Sloan School of Management.

"These particles will start to slowly break down and release insulin into the bloodstream, regulating (the) blood-sugar level," Hebert said. "Once the blood sugar is at normal levels, the particles close back up, resolidify and then stop releasing insulin."

Zion had an additional incentive for researching this disease.

"Type 1 runs in my family. There’s a genetic predisposition for it," Zion said. "I also have family members who have Type 2 diabetes. It hits home a little bit closer when someone you know has the disease."

The SmartCells team members will use their winnings to help launch the company. They have filed a preliminary application for a patent.

Hebert said that throughout the competition, which starts each fall, the team received invaluable feedback from the judges on how to structure their financials, how to focus on the market and how to proceed with product development.

"We’re very honored to be chosen among so many great teams and so many great technologies," he said.

"We don’t know how to cure diabetes so it’s a market that is going to be there for the foreseeable future," said Joe Hadzima, an MIT Sloan lecturer and venture capitalist at Main Street Partners who has served as one of the judges each year since the contest began in 1990. "Now the question is can they take it from the lab to clinical trials."

Hadzima said the strong lab research seems to indicate the product could make it to market within a few years. Of course, there’s no guarantee, he added.

Medically based teams have dominated the prestigious entrepreneurship competition for the past five years.

Hadzima said this area "pulls disciplines together to solve problems" and that often these team members have been researching these areas for many years.

Medical technology "is a big space and the population is not getting any younger on average," he said. "These are big recurring problems and a large market. It won’t just be a fad."

The competition has sparked the success of more than 60 companies including Akamai Technologies and others acquired by Cisco Systems, Broadcom and Ask Jeeves.

This year’s runners-up, the NeuroBionics and Brontes teams, collected $10,000 apiece for their business plans.

NeuroBionics submitted a plan to build neuromodulation devices that would work like "a pacemaker for the brain." The team, which built a prototype of the implanted, self-regulated electrical stimulation system, would help treat epilepsy, obesity and depression.

Brontes developed a low-cost camera system that transforms 2-D instruments like cameras and microscopes into 3-D devices.

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