Happy New Year from Northwestern's Innovation and New Ventures Office!

Our wish for you this 2024 is a year driven by innovations - -

Step-change improvements in recycling plastics using

• Green methods for materials such as Nylon-6, polyurethanes, polyethylene terephthalates (PET), and a variety of thermosets
• Waste-eating bacteria and enzymes
• Computational methods to design more recyclable polymers

Destruction of the forever chemical PFAS with a simple process that uses low temperatures and inexpensive, common reagents yielding benign end products

Perovskite-based solar cells with record-breaking efficiencies (NREL certified >25%)

Critical components for next-generation batteries based on iron-air structures, cobalt-free materials, and solid-state lithium-ion systems

Carbon capture via new catalysts, moisture-swing techniques, on-board fuel cells for long-range vehicles, and methods inspired by Earth's natural carbon cycle

Strategies for hydrogen with "superprotonic" materials

New frontiers for treatment of central nervous system conditions based on

• Paradigm-shifting understandings of triggers, therapeutic targets, and dopamine neurons associated with movement for Parkinson's disease
• Novel cellular mechanisms that are involved in two types of genetic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)
• Treatment of glioblastoma with a novel, skull-implantable ultrasound device to open the blood-brain barrier
• Treatment for highly malignant brain tumors
• Gene expression screening that elucidates the best treatment for brain tumor patients

Breakthroughs in oncology such as

• A "QR code" for cancer cells to understand why some cells become resistant to therapies
• Localized genetic mutations  potential biomarkers for a wide range of cancers
• A novel molecular pathway to inform the development of new targeted therapies for uterine fibroids
• A biomarker signature test to predict which tumors in bladder cancer will respond to immunotherapy
• New lines of selective compounds for inhibition of MYC, hyper-expressed in many cancers but difficult to target

Approaches in allergies enabled by

• Detailed understanding of the role of antibodies and tolerance
• Physiological markers to predict treatment response in Eosinophilic Esophagitis



Bioelectronic, implantable devices for programmed drug delivery, monitoring the health of transplanted organs in real-time, bioresorbable cardiac device monitors, and the sensing and treating of cancer

Powerful, targeted drug delivery platforms based on extracellular vesicles, novel self-assembled polymer nanoparticles, and spherical nucleic acids married with CRISPR-Cas9

New diagnostic and drug development tools driven by aptamer engineering, leading initiatives mapping the human proteoform, and optical nanosensing of changes in chromatin structure

New approaches to wound healing using transient electronic bandages and a "super melanin"

Artificial intelligence/deep learning models that spare breast cancer patients from unnecessary treatments, holistically interpret medical images, and improve capabilities for measuring vascular hemodynamics

Intelligently designed robots developed completely by rapid, energy-efficient artificial intelligence algorithms

Brain-like transistors that mimic human intelligence with demonstrations of categorizing data and performing associative learning

Please reach out if you are interested in partnering on any of these innovations

or our MANY others!

INVO | invo.northwestern.edu | invo@northwestern.edu

QUERREY INQBATION LAB | inqbationlab.northwestern.edu | inQbationlab@northwestern.edu