I-Corps Program | Where Ideas Meet The Marketplace
As a pain researcher, the ultimate goal is always to try to see if you can come up with a novel type of treatment.
The problem with opioid drugs is these are drugs that you take systemically that goes into the whole body, gets into the brain, and then inside the brain is where addiction starts. What we were interested in is targeting right at the site of injury. Can we change those pain neurons locally? I knew that we had these molecules and I had no idea what it would mean to commercialize. We are totally naive. We are scientists, we have no clue about what it is, what it takes to build a business.
Participating in I-Corps started to open our eyes. You think that you have something great, of course. You believe in your product, but you still have to look around what is there, who you are competing against. The I-Corps Program pushes us to go out and reach out to people, ask people for their feedback and listen. Incorporate that feedback and improve your technology, improve your way of thinking.
When we understood the market that actually allowed us to make the decision to continue and to form a company, we are very fortunate to have at UB a great ecosystem for business entrepreneurship, for faculty who want to try, who want to pursue the development of that technology. That's why we feel we can move forward, because we have that support.
Innovation happens with you. Here, we help bring innovation to the marketplace by moving ideas and research forward. To learn more about our I-Corps Program, visit http://www.buffalo.edu/icorps.