Funding awarded for inventions by LSU Health New Orleans faculty

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Technologies invented by faculty at LSU Health New Orleans have been awarded funding to help move them into the commercial space.

The funding comes from the LSU LIFT 2 Fund, created in 2014 to help “Leverage Innovation for Technology Transfer” on campuses across the LSU system. LSU Health New Orleans was awarded nearly $200,000 this round, which amounted to half of the grants issued.

The newly funded technologies advance diagnostics for cancer and surgical repair techniques, a news release said.

Dr. Michael Dunham and Dr. Andrew McWhorter developed a system to identify potentially cancerous lesions when looking at a patient’s vocal cords using an endoscope.

Dr. Eugene Woltering, chief of surgical endocrinology, and his team created a non-invasive screening test for neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) of the gut by using stool samples.

Surgeons Dr. Sol Mundinger and Dr. Mandi Lopez designed an improved surgical suture anchor. Surgeon Dr. Ian Hodgdon’s invention improves healing after bowel surgery.

Patrick Reed, director of technology management at LSU Health New Orleans, said institution has “recently seen a sharp increase in medical device-related innovation from the clinical side .. and I’m hopeful the trend will continue. “