SIU School of Medicine strongly supports the development and formation of new business ventures that might spawn out from the intellectual property successes. Several faculty members have already actively engaged with the Technology Transfer Office and have made significant contributions to the University and the community.  

Dr. Brewer is one outstanding example of an innovation success story that has made an impact on the benefit for the public good.   His research has produced a novel means of storing brain tissue for up to a month with refrigeration and standard pressure (see PubMed).   This novel solution makes handling, storing and testing brain tissue much easier than what has been previously used.   With Dr. Brewer's intellectual property protection, he founded BrainBits, LLC, a medical supply company based in Springfield, IL that ships BrainBits™ and Hibernate™ for research purposes.   He is now looking for interest in preclinical studies for using this technology for faster recovery from brain surgery, spinal cord injury, head trauma and brain cancer. Dr. Brewer has several issued and pending patents on his discovery that can be found with the following links.

Nutrient Medium for maintaining neural cells in injured nervous system, US Patent Application 20050208028

Nutrient medium for maintaining neural cells in injured nervous system, US Patent Application 20030077564

Cultural Medium for Maintaining Neural Cells in Ambient Atmosphere, US Patent # 6,180,404

Alternating Lysine-Alanine Copolymer Substrate for Promoting Neuron Survival and Axon Growth, US Patent #5,908,783

Dr. Campbell’s research has always been focused on improving patient care that is a direct result from being a full time clinician for 12 years. Dr. Campbell believed that the key to bringing her drug to market was through patent protection. Dr. Campbell states, “I knew that unless I obtained patents, no one would ever invest the millions required to take my new drug therapies through FDA approved clinical trials. Thus the only way my research would ever really help patients was to obtain the drug patents, get the patents licensed and through clinical trials, and hopefully have a new FDA approved drug therapy for patients in the future. Through this process I can potentially improve patient care in many thousands of patients every year, far more than I ever could in my clinical practice.”