ElutInc, a start-up orthopedic device company, wins this year’s Rice Business Plan Competition
April 1, 2009 – A team from the Lassonde New Venture Development Center at the University of Utah was chosen from 339 business plan teams from around the world to compete in this year’s Rice Business Plan Competition. Charity Williams, graduating in May with juris doctorate; Sean Mills, graduating with an MBA and Justin Baker, a second year bioengineering Ph.D. candidate, make up the three-student team competing with a business plan they developed for ElutInc, a start-up orthopedic device company.
The orthopedic device company will improve orthopedic surgeries and bone healing by creating implantable devices that can release ( or elute ) antibiotics and various drugs directly into a surgical site. The technology was developed by David Grainger, Ph.D., from the U of U’s Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry. The technology will reduce surgical site infections and promote bone healing.
The team will go to Houston for the April 16-18 competition. The Rice Business Plan Competition ( RBPC ), hosted by the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship ( Rice Alliance ) and the Jones Graduate School of Management at Rice University, will again be the largest and richest graduate-level competition in the world with more than $800,000 in prizes and 36 teams from around the globe. This is the ninth year for the competition. In that time it has grown from nine teams competing for $10,000 in prize money in 2001.
