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FibrinX Wins
Wharton Business
Plan Competition
Grand Prize with
Wound Care
Derived from
Fish Plasma
Student team FibrinX,
whose tissue sealant provides
a safer and cheaper adhesive to prevent excessive
bleeding during surgery or
after traumatic injury, won
the $20,000 grand prize
of the Wharton Business
Plan Competition (BPC).
The prize was awarded at
the School's annual Venture
Finals in April 2005, when
student finalists received a
total of $75,000 in combined
cash prizes, access to
capital and in-kind legal/accounting services.
This year's Venture Finals,
the culminating event of the
year-long Wharton BPC,
attracted scores of venture
capitalists, business leaders,
faculty and students. The
Venture Finals judges who
selected the winning teams
represented a range of organizations
including First Round
Capital; Perseus Group,
LLC; Arzu, Inc.; Arboretum
Ventures; Sienna Ventures
and Johnson & Johnson
Development Corporation,
a Platinum Sponsor of the
Wharton BPC.
The students of FibrinX
include Dhaval Gosalia, a
University of Pennsylvania
School of Engineering PhD
candidate from Bombay,
India, and Jonathan
Goodspeed, WG'05, a
second-year Wharton
School MBA student from
Greenwich, CT. They say
that unlike traditional mammal-
based sealants, their
proprietary application of
Atlantic salmon blood plasma
is less expensive, reduces
blood loss and decreases the
risk of mammalian-borne
viruses. The team's technology
is protected by six patents
and has already received U.S.
Army and Navy funding for
pre-clinical trials. In fact, use
in combat situations is one of
the market segments FibrinX
is targeting. Others include
emergency rooms, hospital
surgeries and dental offices.
Second-place team
IntuiTouch, which was
marketing a handheld device
for portable, at-home
breast cancer detection,
not only won $10,000 for
their overall finish, they
also won the Frederick H.
Gloeckner Award of $5,000
for the highest-ranking
Wharton undergraduate
team in the Wharton BPC.
The winner of the $5,000
third prize was Dynamic
BioSystems, a developer of
fast, "scarless" wound healing
without special storage
requirements targeted for
military, travel use.
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