Date: May 20, 2013 Author: Mark Anderson Source: bizjournals (
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ViVita Technologies won the 13th annual Big Bang! Business Plan Competition at the University of California Davis Graduate School of Management.
The ViVita team won both the $10,000 first place prize and also won the $2,000 People's Choice award at the competition.
The event was Thursday at the UC Davis Conference Center.
ViVita has a new approach to heart valve replacement, which nascent company says is less likely to rejected by the immune system. The ViVita team is made up of three biomedical engineering doctoral students and Leigh Griffiths, assistant professor of cardiology at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine and a cardiac surgeon and Chief of the Cardiology Service at the UC Davis Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital.
"Unlike with current heart valve transplants, the patient would be free from a lifetime of drugs," Maelene Wong, CEO of ViVita, said in a news release.
ViVita processes replacement tissue to remove substances which trigger immune responses. The technology has been tested successfully on small animals.
Second place went to Davis Chem, a team working to commercialize a replacement for petroleum-based isobutryaldehyde. The base is a common chemical used in paints and cosmetics, and Davis Chem is deriving the chemical from genetically modified E. coli bacteria.
"Every year the quality improves -- and it's not just the business plan, it's the quality of the people and their projects. It's wonderful to see," said Roger Akers, managing director of venture capital firm Akers Capital, in a news release from the university. Akers is one of the judges of the competition.
