Conference Program

FLC Southeast Region Awards

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is the single most important cause of serious lower respiratory tract disease in infants and young children. It is estimated that up to 125,000 hospitalizations occur each year in the U.S. associated with pneumonia or bronchiolitis from RSV infection in children less than 1 year of age, making it a high priority for prevention and treatment. So far there is no RSV vaccine or highly effective antiviral therapy.

Because no vaccine is available, CDC scientists began to investigate the use of therapeutic antibodies for the prevention and treatment of RSV infection.

CDC scientists identified a CRADA partner, Trellis Bioscience, to collaborate on additional studies. Together, scientists at CDC and Trellis identified high-affinity fully human antibodies that mimicked the mouse monoclonal antibodies in in vitro assays and mouse models. Based on the positive results obtained during the collaboration, Trellis obtained an exclusive patent license to take the RSV anti-G antibodies into human trials, and bring a commercial product to the market that shows improved safety and efficacy over the currently available antibodies. These RSV anti-G antibodies have the potential to dramatically decrease the number of hospitalizations and deaths of infants, children, and elderly persons due to respiratory tract disease caused by RSV infection.

One unique aspect of this license for CDC was the inclusion of exclusive option clauses. While exclusive options are common for universities, this was the first time that CDC had negotiated an option agreement. The use of the option agreement was proposed to enable CDC to split the fields of use for potential use of the patent application for therapeutic antibodies and also for potential live or killed vaccines. While the work with Trellis on the therapeutic antibodies was very promising, CDC scientists also wanted to continue working on potential RSV vaccine approaches covered under the patent application. Therefore, certain conditions were attached to the option to ensure that Trellis would be able to bring a vaccine to market, or find a partner able to successfully bring a vaccine to market, in addition to bringing the therapeutic RSV antibody to market.

Despite significant scientific advances in its prevention and control, rabies remains one of the most dreadful infectious diseases affecting humans and animals. The World Health Organization has named rabies a major threat to public health that continues to cause between 50,000 and 60,000 human deaths each year. The rabies virus is the prototype of the lyssavirus genus. Current rabies vaccines cannot protect against most lyssavirus infections. The vaccine candidates developed by CDC scientists provide a potential therapeutic regimen against pan-lyssaviruses and prevent the broad spectrum of rabies infections. The methods and compositions disclosed include an efficient reverse genetics system useful for the design and production of rabies virus immunogenic compositions, including compositions suitable as vaccines for the pre- and /or post-exposure treatment of rabies virus. Specifically, this technology is an improvement over older rabies vaccines because it is safer due to its precise genetic alteration. In addition, these vaccines will be much less expensive due to the 1000-fold increase in vaccine titers over the older rabies vaccines.

The transfer of this technology involved joint research and product development among CDC researchers and BioCambridge Biotech (China) as well as Celltrion, Inc. (South Korea), under two Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs). BioCambridge Biotech in China is currently focusing on the development of this technology for human use, but will also develop an oral vaccine for dogs. Celltrion is focused on vaccines for humans and the combination of vaccines and antibodies for use in treatment upon potential rabies exposure. In addition, CDC scientists are currently working with Universal Stabilization Technologies (California) on a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant to develop this technology in combination with proprietary vaccine stabilization technologies for use in vaccine baits for wildlife such as foxes. Through these CRADA and SBIR collaborations, CDC was able to expand its technological applications and introduce potential commercial products to the human, veterinary, and wildlife vaccine markets.

The successful transfer of this technology from the federal government to the private sector will promote rapid production of a commercial product with multifaceted uses. Due to the increase in economic growth in rabies endemic countries, sales and use of this technology will expand dramatically over the next few years. This technology will provide not only the source of a long-needed vaccine for veterinary rabies, but will provide human vaccines and antibodies that are so urgently needed for future vaccine development worldwide.

The Rolling Assisted Biaxially Textured Substrate (RABiTs™) technology portfolio (a portfolio of more than 50 patents), developed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is a metal-foil-based technology platform that underpins an entire generation of today's high temperature superconducting (HTSC) materials and products. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has developed a number of techniques and materials associated with hot-wire deposition of extremely efficient, thin layers of crystalline silicon onto various substrates as light-harvesting layers for photovoltaic devices. The marriage of these two technologies offers the promise of flexible, highly efficient, low-cost, durable photovoltaic materials to enable a whole new generation of devices for the solar market. ORNL and NREL have teamed to license these technologies to Ampulse, Inc., a venture-backed startup in Golden, Colorado, for commercialization.

Today, silicon remains the most heavily researched and understood material system in the world; it is nontoxic, abundant, and ideal for use in photovoltaic power generation. However, present-day c-Si solar materials, while high in energy conversion efficiency, involve silicon production processes that are complex, wasteful, energy-intense, and not optimized for large-area applications like solar panels. Ampulse's c-Si thin-film, a revolutionary thin-film PV technology, optimizes c-Si energy conversion efficiency while lowering manufacturing costs dramatically in comparison to existing silicon wafer-based technologies. Leveraging patented technologies, processes, and material expertise developed at ORNL and NREL, Ampulse's c-Si thin-film technology takes advantage of HW-CVD techniques to directly deposit a very thin layer of c-Si onto a uniquely textured and flexible metal substrate. The HWCVD process for creating hetero-epitaxial silicon minimizes energy input, and eliminates several material wasting steps, resulting in lower overall module cost.

The Ampulse manufacturing process is roll-to-roll, taking advantage of low-cost thin-film manufacturing techniques. Beginning with the rolling and texturing of the metal substrate, through the application of buffers, to silicon deposition via HW-CVD, the resultant material stack emerges with its back-reflector and back-contacting surfaces monolithically integrated with the crystalline silicon. From this point, it can be finished into working cells and modules with PV industry-standard fabrication techniques. Unlike many other thin-film technologies where multi-junction cell architecture must be used to achieve incremental improvements in efficiency, Ampulse utilizes a simple and elegant single-junction cell architecture, made highly efficient by the N-Epitaxial silicon produced in the HW-CVD process. It can be tuned in thickness to achieve a range of efficiencies from 12% to 18.5%, packaged into a flexible and lightweight module form factor, and at a fraction of the cost for traditional c-Si wafer-based PV products. While other emerging thin-film technologies claim lower manufacturing cost, they remain challenged by low efficiency and higher total system cost.

Diabetes is now an epidemic expected to affect 380 million people worldwide by 2025. Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is the leading cause of blindness in the industrialized world today. If DR is detected early, treatments can preserve vision and significantly reduce the incidence of debilitating blindness. ORNL researchers, in partnership with researchers from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC), have created TRIAD, a system that utilizes a web-based telemedicine approach, to provide low-cost, high-throughput screening for DR by primary care providers (internists, family practitioners, and endocrinologists) who diagnose and treat diabetic patients. The patent-pending CBIR/Bayesian technology supports a telemedical network approach using the Internet, commercial server technology, and commercial retinal cameras to provide near-real-time reporting (~90 seconds from the time of image submission) of the presence and severity of DR and other blinding eye diseases. Currently, the technology has been patented by ORNL and licensed unique aspects to AMDx. Initial clinical testing of a telemedicine network has been completed in primary care clinics in Tennessee, North Carolina, and rural Mississippi.

The TRIAD telemedical network enables automatic diagnosis by providing real-time, remote disease detection and stratification at low cost to a broad population of at-risk diabetic patients. Outside of the primary application of TRIAD to the detection and stratification of DR, preliminary studies have demonstrated that the TRIAD technology is applicable to other blinding eye diseases and other retinal imaging modalities. While retinal photography is suitable to detect the manifestations of DR in diabetic patients, other modalities such as stereo imaging, fluorescein angiography (FA), and optical coherence tomography (OCT) reveal additional information about retinal anatomy and disease. Conditions such as age-related macular degeneration are visible using the same technology being applied to DR, but stereo imaging, FA, and OCT imaging modalities provide other indicators of the presence and severity of additional eye disease, e.g., retinal vascular disease, inflammatory and infectious disease, and congenital disorders.

Automated image analysis is being applied to other areas of medicine today, such as computer-assisted diagnosis of breast tumors shown in digital mammograms, characterization of lung tumors revealed in digital X rays, and analysis of cytology and histology samples to achieve automation in the field of pathology. The use of TRIAD technology for providing potential diagnostic capabilities to these fields is of great future interest to the ORNL-UTHSC team.

A problem exists in sugar production when dextran, a polysaccharide produced on the deterioration of sugarcane by Leuconostoc bacteria, is present. Dextran is gummy in nature, slows down the production process, and factory processors are penalized by refiners for high amounts of dextran in raw sugar. An enzyme, dextranase, is used to break down dextran during sugar production and make it more manageable. Dr. Eggleston developed and transferred multiple technologies to enhance dextran breakdown, resulting in significant cost savings for the sugar factories.

The transferred technology consisted of a multi-step process that included:

1. A simple titration method for measuring the activity of dextranases at the factory was developed so that the activities of different commercial dextranases could be economically compared, the activity of delivered batches could be assessed, and changes in activity during factory storage could be monitored.
2. Introduction of classifications of traditional dextranases as "non-concentrated" or "concentrated."
3. Elimination of the uneconomical application of dextranases to syrups and instead applying dextranases to the juice.
4. Convincing the suppliers of commercial dextranases to U.S. sugarcane and sugar beet factories to add "concentrated" dextranases to their product lines.

The technology, by 2008, has been successfully transferred to at least 7 of the 11 Louisiana sugarcane factories and to at least 1 of the 4 Florida sugarcane factories. The technology has also been successfully transferred to the sugar beet industry in Utah and in Europe. The transfer was accomplished by working closely with multiple sugarcane factories, demonstrating the method for assessing activity and all the steps in the novel factory application of "concentrated" dextranase to the juice versus the syrup, along with the monetary benefits to be derived from adoption of the enhanced process.

It has been conservatively estimated that the domestic value of this technology during an average year and based on present levels of utilization is approximately $1.4 million. This figure could easily increase to well over $4 million per year if a major freeze or other devastating source of deterioration were to occur in sugarcane or beets, as happened in 2009/2010 U.S. and European sugar beet campaigns.

The peanut root-knot nematode (PRKN) and tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV) are peanut diseases that result in large yield losses in the southeastern U.S. Peanut varieties were available that had resistance to either PRKN or TSWV, but no varieties were available that had resistance to both pathogens. One objective of the ARS peanut breeding program in Tifton, Georgia, was to combine resistance to both pathogens in a single variety. Dr. Holbrook led a team consisting of Patricia Timper of ARS, along with Albert Culbreath and Craig Kvien of the University of Georgia, in developing "Tifguard," a new peanut variety. Tifguard has high yield and excellent resistance to both PRKN and TSWV. This variety, for which a Plant Variety Protection Certificate (No. 200800404, filed 09/18/2008) is pending, is particularly valuable for peanut growers who have to deal with both diseases.

The Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) developed a new class of materials: hollow glass microspheres (HGMs) with unique porous walls. The new material combines existing technology of HGMs with basic glass science knowledge in the realm of glass-in-glass phase separation, a precursor to producing the unique wall porosity making the SRNL microspheres "one-of-a-kind." Conceptually, the development of an HGM with porous walls (referred to as a PWHGM) provides a unique system in which various media or filling agents can be incorporated via transport through the porous walls, and ultimately has the capacity to serve as a functional storage and/or delivery system in various industrial/scientific applications. Applications of these types of systems range from hydrogen storage, molecular sieves, drug and bioactive delivery systems, CO2 sequestration and global warming abatement, chemical and biological detectors, as well as improving battery performance.