Date: Sep 21, 2013 Source: (
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Dr. Shyam S. Mohapatra and Dr. Subhra Mohapatra, both USF faculty and the co-founders of TransGenex Nanobiotech, Inc. (TGN), Tampa, were honored last night at the TiECON 2013 Celebration of Entrepreneurship, held at the Safety Harbor Resort, Safety Harbor, Florida. TiE Tampa was established in 2012 as a Florida organization formed to help experienced business owners provide funding and mentoring to young entrepreneurs by Dr. Kiran Patel, a local businessman and philanthropist. It is the newest chapter of a global (TiE Global) organization that started in Silicon Valley in 1992 and has 25,000 members in seventeen countries today.
Dr. Shyam Mohapatra is a Distinguished Health Professor at the University of South Florida (USF) College of Medicine and directs the USF Nanomedicine Research Center. He also serves as the President of the USF Chapter of the National Academy of Inventors. Dr. Subhra Mohapatra is an Associate Professor in the Department of Molecular Medicine at USF. They co-founded TransGenex Nanobiotech, Inc., in 2004 to commercialize some of the technologies produced at USF.
In accepting the award, Dr. Shyam Mohapatra said, "we were honored to be among four finalists in this highly contested Up-and-Coming Entrepreneur category and are really pleased and excited to have this award of excellence in entrepreneurship." To its existing platforms, such as ULTraPID™ for diagnosis and TARGET™ for nanopharmaceutics, this year TGN has added a three-dimensional multi-cell tumor spheroid (TDMTSTM) platform, which aims to facilitate cancer drug discovery, drug development and personalized cancer treatment. TGN is collaborating with USF on this latter platform and has recently obtained a federal (National Cancer Institute) SBIR Phase I contract to further develop this project. This is the 7th federal contract that TGN has been able to procure. The company is exploring opportunities in US, India, Latin America and China and aims to commercialize products from this and the other platforms within the next 2-3 years.
