West Chester University's Inaugural Life Science Innovation Class Wins Big at Wistar Institute's Shark Tank Event
In its first-ever run, West Chester University's new experiential course, MKT440-01 Life Science Innovation, has won two top awards at the prestigious Wistar Institute's Life Science Innovation Shark Tank competition.
Leading the way was the BioXvessel team, composed of WCU junior biomedical engineering majors Tasila Mkwayaya, Davi Saleet, and Sophia Nguyen, who are also all pursuing supply chain management minors. Their innovative pitch on using genetically modified protozoa to deliver therapeutic proteins to treat Gaucher's disease earned them the event's top undergraduate award. BioXvessel's approach offers patients a revolutionary, low-cost treatment alternative, cutting both costs and treatment burdens dramatically.
"At first, we were nervous," said Nguyen of presenting in front of judges, investors, and academics during the competition. "It was my first time presenting in front of that many new people.”
The students said they shone during the question-and-answer section of their presentation. They were able to fall back on their months of research and practice.
“We managed to answer everything that they asked us confidently, and I think that’s where we gained a lot of points,” Saleet said.
The Wistar Shark Tank competition featured 15 teams from institutions like the University of Pennsylvania, PCOM, La Salle, Lincoln University, and Leiden University in the Netherlands. WCU fielded three teams, more than any other school. Beyond BioXvessel's top judged prize, another WCU team — Amanda Branscome, Kristen Kuniegel, and Laci Mahoney — won the coveted People's Choice Award, securing the highest percentage of more than 700 votes for their Syntria concept, an innovative treatment for Triple Negative Breast Cancer.
Earlier in the week, the Cell-U Therapeutics team of WCU students Chris Needham, Nathan Barker, and Josh Pitts took top honors at WCU's Business Idea Competition, winning $6,500 for their work on a universal allogenic T-cell therapy for multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer.
The success marks a huge achievement for WCU’s Cottrell Center’s entrepreneur-in-residence Marc Duey's newly launched Life Science Innovation course. The class is designed to merge science, business, and entrepreneurship through real-world biotech commercialization projects. Students worked with actual patents, were mentored by industry experts, and pitched to top investors and venture capitalists at the Shark Tank event.
“This class represents the best parts of both our major (biomedical engineering) and our minor (supply chain management),” Mkwayaya said. “We had a great experience and an amazing opportunity to build our professional development. It’s been a very good bridge between the two disciplines.”
The interdisciplinary makeup of the class – blending biomedical engineering, pharmaceutical development, cell biology, and marketing students – was key to WCU performing so well, Duey said.
“Our success proves to students that teamwork and diverse ideas bring the strongest results,” he said. “Bringing these students together with regular cadence to cooperate and bring ideas together to develop an argument for why their technology deserves support was an experience they could not have gained in the classroom.”