AMHERST — The Manning Family Foundation has gifted the University of Massachusetts Amherst $3 million spanning the next three years through the Manning Innovation Program, which has allowed past recipients to progress in their scientific research and provided them the funds needed to commercialize the research to create start-ups that bring their science to life.
The program awards grants through the Institute for Applied Life Sciences (IALS) and has awarded the Manning/IALS Innovation Award to 17 UMass faculty members. Other collaborators are the Isenberg School of Management, Berthiaume Center of Entrepreneurship, UMass Innovation Institute and the Technology Transfer Office.
S. Thai Thayumanavan, a distinguished professor in chemistry and award recipient in 2019, is an entrepreneur for Cyta Therapeutics, a start-up that “was launched in my lab by UMass technology,” Thayumanavan said.
Entrepreneur Minqi Wang coined Nutriply, now known as Ideation Foods Inc., receiving funding from the Manning Innovation Program in 2020 while working under Professor David Julian McClements.
Cyta and Ideation Foods Inc. were able to take the research and transform it into venture concepts.
Cyta research involves nanoparticle technology that directs drug molecules to specific tissue for treatment, Thayumanavan explained. He works specifically with liver diseases, using the therapeutics to deliver specific drugs to the liver to restore its function.
Translating this research to the clinic is “not easy,” Thayumanavan said. Receiving the Manning grant allowed Thayumanavan and his team to get “some really fantastic results” and put knowledge to “practical use.” He said Cyta was able to patent technology so that the scientists could operate under the patent legally.
Ideation Foods Inc. is a start-up that develops probiotics into a gummy that it is more accessible and easier for users to take.
“Although you take a lot from food and supplements, it does not mean you are absorbing a lot,” Wang said. “So, this research allows us to improve the absorption rate.”
Wang says that as a scientist, one has “no idea” what the market needs, but with the help of this grant and other partners through the Institute for Applied Life Sciences, it allows “us to find a way to explore the market” and figure out what a customer would want or need.
Wang also said that the patent under UMass gives support in the sense that “we have some time to think about it (the research) and have peace of mind to develop.”
The funding for both start-ups helps translate research that Thayumanavan and Wang have been conducting into a product for consumers.
“To be a practical technology, the companies require a lot of cost and market needs, it’s a business-driven thing, and this is very science driven,” Thayumanvan explained. “Manning’s investment helps to bridge this valley of death.”
The funding then also allows for the entrepreneurs to work under the UMass labs and “not have to think about legal services,” Wang said.
With a start-up, it’s “almost impossible to get a separate lab,” Wang said. “It will help the start-up grow — we don’t have to think of starting up a lab from scratch or helping the personnel with everything.”
Peter Reinhart, the founding director of the Institute of Advanced Life Sciences, said in a statement that “the Manning Innovation Program is catalytic in that it creates a competitive mechanism for enabling the creation and development of promising start-up companies focused on human health and well-being.”
The Manning/IALS Innovation Awards website states that “these translational grants are designed to advance applied research and development efforts from UMass-based faculty research groups in the sciences and engineering through the development of spin-out/startup companies and the out-licensing of UMass intellectual property.”