Congratulations to Our 2024 Grand Prize and First Place Winners!

NETrolyze, a novel immunotherapy for triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), was named the $25,000 grand prize winner at a live finalist round held November 15 in New York. The first-in-class therapeutic injectable gel prevents the spread of TNBC, one of the most aggressive cancer types, enabling patients to avoid toxic chemotherapy and expensive treatments – potentially transforming their lives. Click here for the full list of 2024 winners. Also see the Top 100 highest scoring entries.

Special thanks to our esteemed panel of judges.

Help build a better tomorrow

Since Tech Briefs magazine launched the Create the Future Design contest in 2002 to recognize and reward engineering innovation, over 15,000 design ideas have been submitted by engineers, students, and entrepreneurs in more than 100 countries. Join the innovators who dared to dream big by entering your ideas today.

Read About Past Winners’ Success Stories

Special Report spotlights the eight top entries in 2023 as well as past winners whose ideas are now in the market, making a difference in the world.

Click here to read more

A ‘Create the Future’ Winner Featured on ‘Here’s an Idea’

Spinal cord injury affects 17,000 Americans and 700,000 people worldwide each year. A research team at NeuroPair, Inc. won the Grand Prize in the 2023 Create the Future Design Contest for a revolutionary approach to spinal cord repair. In this Here’s an Idea podcast episode, Dr. Johannes Dapprich, NeuroPair’s CEO and founder, discusses their groundbreaking approach that addresses a critical need in the medical field, offering a fast and minimally invasive solution to a long-standing problem.

Listen now

Thank you from our Sponsors

“At COMSOL, we are very excited to recognize innovators and their important work this year. We are grateful for the opportunity to support the Create the Future Design Contest, which is an excellent platform for designers to showcase their ideas and products in front of a worldwide audience. Best of luck to all participants!”

— Bernt Nilsson, Senior Vice President of Marketing, COMSOL, Inc.

“From our beginnings, Mouser has supported engineers, innovators and students. We are proud of our longstanding support for the Create the Future Design Contest and the many innovations it has inspired.”

— Kevin Hess, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Mouser Electronics

Follow Create the Future

Applying Stress to Cells under Microscopy

Votes: 0
Views: 5930
Medical

Cells of the body are under the continual forces of compression, tension and shear (collectively, strain.) These mechanical forces play important roles in the regulation of various biological processes such as gene expression, adhesion, migration, and apoptosis. These forces, and the cellular responses, determine the efficacy of medical interventions including pharmaceuticals, tissue implants or external treatments such as physical or laser therapies. The field of Mechanobiology addresses this reaction of cells to applied forces and has been cited in the literature for over 30 years. However, it is just beginning to find its fit in applied healthcare.

To date, there have been limited ways to study the behavior of cells under strain. Academic researchers have developed their own ‘one-off’ devices specific to their experiments. Commercial entities have developed products to measure strain but such devices fail to allow for the measurement of particular forces. These approaches have also been expensive and difficult to adapt to a variety of experimental settings.

Researchers at Montana State University have developed an inexpensive, versatile and robust device, mountable on a microscope stage, to apply compressive loads to biological samples. Strain is applied via a rotational stepper motor and actuation of the device is controlled by a TTL signal which enables actuation control in conjunction with image acquisition.

Features
• Sterilizable cassette with a disposable cartridge
• Capable of loads up to 150 pounds
• Designed to work with a wide range platforms

Benefits
• In-vitro setting for live cell imaging mimics in-vivo environment
• Inexpensive to manufacture, low cost of ownership to end users
• Wide viewing angle

Uses
• Applying compression to tissue samples or cell seeded constructs – applications in cancer diagnosis, stem cell analysis, cell sorting, osteoarthritis diagnosis
• Live tissue research, development of artificial tissue
• Testing of pharmaceuticals on cells under stress
• Studying the roles of mechanical forces in cellular biology

Technology Transfer and Development Status: A patent is pending and research is ongoing.

This technology comes from the Osteoarthritis and Mechanobiology Lab of Dr. Ron June http://www.mbprogram.montana.edu/faculty.asp?per_id=181&in_id=9

  • Awards

  • 2012 Top 100 Entries

Voting

Voting is closed!

  • ABOUT THE ENTRANT

  • Name:
    Gary Bloomer
  • Type of entry:
    team
    Team members:
    Ronald June, Ph.D.
    Kyle Gunnarson
    Jeffrey Runia
  • Software used for this entry:
    Solid Works
  • Patent status:
    pending