When Joshua Phillips' 85-year-old grandmother developed Stage III cancer, she required two surgeries.
When doctors attempted other treatments, she was too frail to handle them. She passed away in 2012, Phillips said.
That memory was a catalyst for Phillips to develop the startup company Rejuvenics Technologies. It wants to commercialize a drug-delivery system designed to reduce the harmful side effects of cancer treatments.
Rejuvenics Technologies of the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville was the winner Tuesday of the graduate category of the 17th annual Donald W. Reynolds Governor's Cup, a business-plan competition. The firm and its executives -- Phillips, Mary Rivard, Amanda Stolarz and Tiffany Jarrett -- won $25,000 in cash.
The idea for the treatment was developed by the University of Arkansas and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Phillips said. The team members, all of whom had personal stories of cancer patients they had known, worked together to start the business.
The startup is working with St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis and hopes to also collaborate with Houston-based M.D. Anderson Cancer Treatment Center.
To become an established business, Rejuvenics Technologies will have to go through an extensive process of receiving approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
"That is part of our goal, to make sure we can get down this long road through these partnerships, so we don't have to do all of the development," Phillips said.
They are looking for investors and pursuing grants to capitalize the company, Phillips said.
Finishing second and earning $15,000 in the graduate competition was Grox Industries of the University of Arkansas. Third place and $10,000 went to RED Biobattery of the University of Arkansas.
AgChron Technology of the University of Arkansas and its team members -- Austin Huett, Emily English and Katie Gairhan -- won the undergraduate category and $25,000.
AgChron plans to sell a glass microchip identification tag that can be inserted into the ear of an animal, such as a cow, swine or sheep, to help a rancher track his animals throughout the commercial production process.
AgChron also will offer a hand-held device that can to store information about the animal and communicate with the tag.
"I thought there had to be a better way to store data from that ear tag," Huett said. "We came up with this idea from our former experience in the industry. We went to trade shows, and there is nothing like what we wanted to do out there in the marketplace."
Easy Dam of John Brown University was second in the undergraduate category and won $15,000, and Pasture Parent of Arkansas State University-Jonesboro was third and won $10,000.
A total of $152,000 was awarded to the top teams Tuesday.
The winners and second-place finishers in the graduate and undergraduate categories will compete May 30 and 31 in the Donald W. Reynolds Tri-State Collegiate Business Plan competition in Las Vegas. They will compete against teams from Nevada and Oklahoma for a total of $188,000 in cash prizes.
AgChron Technology won the Arkansas Farm Bureau Agriculture Award and $5,000. Second place and $3,000 was taken by Ghost Pot Busters from John Brown University.
The Delta Plastics Innovation Award, and $5,000, went to Vitele of Harding University. Grox Industries of the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville was second, winning $3,000.
The winner of the $2,000 undergraduate 90-second elevator pitch award was Easy Dam of John Brown. The $2,000 graduate winner for the elevator pitch award was Ghost Pot Busters, also from John Brown.
Jeff Amerine of Startup Junkie in Fayetteville and Jeff Stinson with the Arkansas Innovation Hub in North Little Rock were winners of the C. Sam Walls Entrepreneur Educator Award. Walls is the retired CEO of Arkansas Capital Corp. Each received $2,500, with another $2,500 going to their institutions to further entrepreneurial education.
A total of more than $2 million has been awarded to teams since the Arkansas competition began in 2001.
Business on 04/12/2017