Date: Apr 03, 2004 Source: NIH Success Stories (
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Technology Developed:
Automated digital video analysis of lab animal behaviors, especially rodents' behaviors. These behaviors include home cage activity, open field locomotion, object recogntion, various mazes, fear conditioning, depression tests, etc.
Uses of Technology/Products/Service:
(1) Developing advanced digital video technologies in behavior analysis that can be applied for behavior analysis for both human and lab animals (2) Automatic analysis of lab animal behaviors (3) Using animal's full body information and identify their body parts to determine their behaviors (4) First time making it possible to exactly measure many novel behaviors and novel parameters that have never been possible before (5) Achieving real time operation and high throughput to meet the demands in scientific research
Benefit to Company:
(1) Company grows from 2 people to 6 persons (2) Establish technology platform (3) One patent issued from USPTO, 2 pending (4) 25 high profile customers in 14 months, including MIT Whitehead, Salk Institute, The Jackson Lab, Johns Hopkins University, University of Cincinnati, University of Florida, Eli Lilly, Merck Sharp and Dhome, Astra Zenica, J&J, Amgen, etc (5) $300K commercial revenue and $35K non-NIH grant (6) Technologies that can be extended to many other fields including homeland security (7) Increasingly large market share and $500K to $1M annual revenue expected.
How Product Was Commercialized:
We have been successfully self-bootstrapping in commercializing our products. We invest our own money and all SBIR fees to attend conferences like SFN. We started to get customers from those tradshows. We use the sales of first few products to attend more tradeshows and visit potential customers for demos. These activities attracted more customers. We also use email, websites, and publications to gain more customers.
Other Comments Related to Company's Success Story:
We are starting to attract interest from Venture Capital companies. However, we need to educate them about the market and we need to increase further our revenues.
Past R&D and/or Sales from this Project: $300K
Estimated Future Annual R&D and/or Sales from this Project: $1M or more
