Hank Wuh starts accelerator VC/hybrid as next step

As published in 2010 June 11 Pacific Business News by Nanea Kalani.

Honolulu entrepreneur Hank Wuh has created a company called Skai Technologies to function as a “hybrid” business accelerator and venture capital fund for technology startups in Hawaii.

Initial companies in Skai Technologies’ portfolio will include four startups that have been spun out of Wuh’s seven-year-old company, Cellular Bioengineering Inc., as well as two ventures launched earlier this year.

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“We started with Cellular Bioengineering, and initially we really were very focused on a solution for corneal blindness. But then we were creating new companies just about every year,” Wuh, CEO of Cellular Bioengineering and Skai Technologies, told PBN. “Over the years we evolved and flourished and really started to grow, which wasn’t anticipated. It became obvious that we’re a venture accelerator. We needed a mechanism to spin all these companies out and create new separate entities that can create and generate jobs.”

The name Skai was created as a combination of the words “sky” and the Hawaiian word for sea, “kai.”

“Where the ocean meets the sky is the horizon, which holds infinite possibilities,” Wuh said. “So we invented the word ‘skai’.”

Wuh said to date the spinouts have been internally funded, “but we have plans to capitalize on the products being made through private equity firms on the Mainland and in Asia.”

The forming of Skai Technologies to oversee a portfolio of startups could help facilitate the selling of the startups.

Read more: Hank Wuh starts accelerator/VC hybrid as next step - Pacific Business News (Honolulu) 

New Honolulu spinoff combats counterfeit drugs

As published in 2010 March, Pacific Business News by Nanea Kalani.

Seven years after its founding, a Honolulu-based bioengineering firm is spinning out its fourth biotechnology company. TruTag Technologies is the latest product of Cellular Bioengineering, which founder Hank Wuh describes as a venture accelerator that tries to solve the world’s most significant problems.

TruTag has developed a technology to address the market for counterfeit drugs. Wuh said counterfeit drugs present an $80 billion annual problem worldwide.

The company makes tiny microtags — smaller than a grain of sugar — that can be outfitted with a color-coded bar code. The underlying technology replicates the cuticle structures in the shells of beetles.

The microtags, which are made of nanoporous silica wafers, have been approved as edible by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Each tag would contain a customer-specific code for tracking the authenticity or identity of a product, which could include medicine, foods and other solids and liquids. The codes can be “read” using spectrometer-based readers.

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News Release: Trutag Authentication Technology Wins Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Innovation of the Year Award

Honolulu, Hawaii, March 16, 2010 /PRNewswire/ — TruTag Technologies, a spinout of Cellular Bioengineering, Inc., was selected as the 2010 North American Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Innovation of the Year by Frost & Sullivan. TruTag™ microtags ('TruTags') are secure, optically encoded micro‐crystals made of pure, nanoporous silica, which is deemed "Generally Regarded as Safe, or (GRAS)" by the FDA. Therefore, TruTags are edible and can be used to authenticate and identify medicine, food and numerous other solid or liquid products.

Counterfeit goods and drugs pose a real threat to consumer safety as well as to companies whose brands are compromised and profits stolen. "We are pleased to recognize TruTags as an innovative and comprehensive security solution for maintaining the integrity of drug supplies," said Research Analyst, Misty Hughes of Frost & Sullivan. "Our independent research teams found that the ability of TruTags to integrate security at the pill level by using a spectral signature chosen from over a trillion possible codes was a distinctive and cost‐effective security solution to the problem of fake prescription medicines, which totals $30 to $50 billion annually."

With TruTag technology each tag contains a custom‐manufactured 'spectral signature' chosen from over one trillion possibilities. The unique choice of tag signature and product combination is the TruTag key to confirming the authenticity of the product, yet tagging each item costs less than a small fraction of a penny.

Frost & Sullivan's Best Practices Award recognizes companies in a variety of markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in‐depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.

"The unique properties of the TruTag technology platform—edible, covert, resistant to high heat, and able to be mixed into a coating, dye or ink—lends itself to a wide variety of applications and industries, including medicine, dietary supplements, cosmetics, textiles, electronics and luxury goods," said Michael O'Neill, PhD, CTO of TruTag Technologies.

"We are spinning out TruTag Technologies as an independent company in order to focus on developing a full spectrum of market applications for the TruTag platform," said Hank Wuh, MD, MPH, CEO of Cellular Bioengineering, Inc., the parent company of TruTag Technologies, "TruTag™ microtags will have a fundamental impact on optimizing product safety and integrity for the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and functional foods industry."

TruTag Technologies joins other prestigious and innovative 2010 Frost & Sullivan award winners, such as Covance Inc., Game Ready, Immunomic Therapeutics, ISTA Pharmaceuticals, Millipore Corporation, Molecular Biometrics, MannKind Corporation, Oridion Systems Ltd., Positron Corporation, and ResMed.

About TruTag Technologies

TruTag Technologies is a new life sciences technology company spun out from Cellular Bioengineering, Inc., and is focused on applying its unique, edible spectral microtags for physical verification of authentic products. TruTags are edible and biologically inert, inconspicuous (50‐ 100 microns), require no energy input or output, and are resistant to high heat (melting point above 1600 C). Please go to www.trutags.com for more information. To read the independent research paper prepared by Frost & Sullivan as part of the award selection process, go to http://trutags.com/news.php.

News Release: Use of DeconGel® for Beryllium Cleanup Wins Department of Energy’s Environmental, Security, Safety and Health (ESS&H) Achievement Award

Honolulu, Hawaii, February 9, 2010 /PRNewswire/ — CBI Polymers, a subsidiary of Cellular Bioengineering, Inc., is pleased to announce that National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) and Safety and Ecology Corporation (SEC) have won the Environmental, Security, Safety and Health (ESS&H) Achievement Award in recognition of their innovative use of DeconGel® as a beryllium decontamination technique for the mitigation and abatement of hazardous particulate.  DeconGel® is a proprietary hydrogel used to efficiently and safely decontaminate surfaces of radioactive isotopes and other hazardous chemicals and toxins.

NETL, part of DOE’s national laboratory system, is owned and operated by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). A DOE-NETL project manager stated in a letter to SEC, “In all my years with the federal government, I can honestly say that this has been the best project I have worked on.”

Led by Mr. Hector Rodriguez of NETL and Mr. Stace Johnson of SEC, NETL testing and use of DeconGel® in beryllium decontamination reduced labor costs by a reported 70% compared to traditional methods due to decreased labor requirements, and significant reductions in the volume of waste generated.  Using DeconGel® SEC decontaminated 48,500 square feet of surface area, including office material, and laboratory equipment of significant value, historical artifacts and various items considered irreplaceable. Approximately 250 tons of beryllium-contaminated equipment was removed, making 27 laboratories and three high bay areas in 12 buildings become reusable.

In addition, DeconGel® reduced harmful potential exposure to workers.  Beryllium and beryllium compounds are classified as Category 1 carcinogens by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Traditional beryllium decontamination methods include the wet/wipe method, high detergent application and scrubbing technique, organic solvent application and removal, particulate vacuums, and sticky cloths. These methods are expensive, time consuming, and can be a safety hazard due to prolonged worker exposure and generation of airborne particles.

“I am extremely pleased that these two organizations have been singled out for exceptional performance while using our product.  DeconGel® has been proven effective on a wide variety of decontamination problems, and we have received requests from organizations to keep an 'at the ready' stockpile of DeconGel® handy for emergency situations,” said Larry Stack, President and Chief Operating Officer of CBI Polymers. “The problem with beryllium and other toxic substances is that traditional cleaning methods simply don't work well on rough porous surfaces to remove contaminants from microscopic pores.  However, DeconGel® works effectively on both smooth and rough hard surfaces, even with complex three dimensional structures, and can generally reduce contamination to  below safe levels with one single application, ” ended Stack.

DeconGel® is a safe, non-toxic, peel away hydrogel that requires minimal training to use and has a stable shelf life.  While DeconGel® is gaining in use within the Department of Energy sites for remediation of radiological, nuclear, and hazardous chemical substances such as beryllium, it's also an essential product to keep on hand for hazardous materials (HAZMAT) or Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) first responder units concerned about immediate clean up after a major incident from accidents or acts of terrorism such as a dirty bomb.

“Normal chemical cleaning solutions, power washers, and wipes simply will not be able to remove radioactive isotopes from sidewalks, buildings and streets in the case of an RDD or dirty bomb incident, not to mention the huge amount of contaminated waste such methods generate,” Stack said.

Development of DeconGel® was funded by the Hawaii Technology Development Venture (HTDV) / Office of Naval Research (ONR). Additional R&D funding was secured through the USAF Force Protection Battlelab, the National Defense Center of Excellence for Research in Ocean Sciences (CEROS) under its contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the Department of Energy.

CBI Polymers is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cellular Bioengineering, Inc., (www.cellularbioengineering.com) with a focus on developing easy-to-use and "green" peelable polymers for use in radiological, nuclear, chemical, and biological decontamination.  CBI Polymers specializes in technology to clean nuclear power plants, research labs, decontamination and decommissioning sites, hazardous chemical spills, mold, and more.

In 2005, CBI was named a winner of the R&D 100 Award and was nominated for The 2009 National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the highest honor for technological achievement bestowed by the President of the United States on America 's leading innovators.  In October, CBI was honored as one of three National Finalists for the Christopher Columbus Foundation Homeland Security Award for 2009.

About CBI:  CBI invents, develops, and acquires disruptive technologies to transform novel ideas and innovations to commercial products.  The Company has an Intellectual Property portfolio of over 25 patents and patent applications.  Other divisions of CBI include:

1.      Eyegenix™ is developing a bio-integrating artificial cornea which holds the promise of returning sight to 10 million people worldwide who are blind from corneal disease.

2.      TruTag™ is a nanoporous silica microtag which can be used to authenticate valuable assets, from organic foods to pills and capsules to be ingested, protecting consumers from loss and the health risks of counterfeit products.

3.      E Canary is a bio sensor comprised of living cardiac cells on a CCD chip which can detect both known and unknown harmful threats in the environment such as chemical contaminants and biologic weapons.

CBI websites include: http://www.cellularbioengineering.com
http://www.decongel.com
http://www.trutags.com

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Innovative Use of Decon Gel™ as a Beryllium Decontamination Technique

As published in 2009 Fall Best Practices Newsletter by the Department of Fossil Energy:

The Office of Fossil Energy's (FE) Office of Environment, Security, Safety and Health (ESS&H) (FE-7) has sponsored the Excellence in ESS&H Awards since 1995. Over the years the Excellence Award has evolved along with FE's mission, and continues to be one of the greatest honors FE has to bestow upon its dedicated employees both federal and contractor....At the culmination of a vigorous debate, the judges settled on two Best Practices: Innovative Use of Decon Gel™ as a Beryllium Decontamination Technique...

...Decon Gel™ is a nonhazardous epoxy material with a limited curing time. In most testing at the NETL-ALB site, only one application of Decon Gel™ was needed, reducing worker exposure and generating no measurable airborne hazards. Additionally, studies have indicated that using Decon Gel™ can generate a cost savings of up to 70 percent compared to traditional methods. Another advantage of using this gel is it reduces the volume of waste typically generated from traditional decontamination methods.

Read full article here.

Sliming the World Clean with Blue DeconGel™

As published in December 2009, Hawaii Business Magazine by Beverly Creamer: 

The Problem

How do you decontaminate military aircraft after they’ve collected dangerous air samples from nuclear tests? The prime method — pressure-washing with soap and chemicals — leaves thousands of gallons of contaminated water to dispose of. 

The Solution

Hank Wuh’s Cellular Bioengineering Inc. says it experimented for two years and created a bright-blue gel capable of sliming the worst hazardous waste and picking up every speck of residue.

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Painting and Peeling Contaminants Away at EM Facilities

As published in 2009 November U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Environmental Management  Update Newsletter:

A gel that can be painted or sprayed on a wide range of surfaces and then peeled off after it dries—pulling radioactive and chemical contaminants with it—could be a huge help in completing many of the cleanup jobs on the Office of Environmental Management (EM)'s agenda.

That's why EM's Office of Deactivation and Decommissioning and Facility Engineering is now testing and evaluating a product called DeconGel™ made by Cellular Bioengineering Inc. (CBI) (www.cellularbioengineering.com) of Honolulu. 

Conventional methods of decontaminating the interior walls, floors and other surfaces of contaminated buildings often rely on liquid "detergents" or physical methods to remove the contamination. But these approaches may require scrubbing or wiping that can spread contamination over a larger area. 

DeconGel™ can be cheaper to use than other decontamination methods because it can be applied faster and typically generates smaller volumes of waste. 

It also offers certain technical advantages. It can be applied to rough and smooth, painted and unpainted concrete surfaces as well as aluminum and steel. It fixes surface contaminants immediately and then penetrates into the pores and cracks and locks the embedded contamination into a polymer matrix as it dries. 

When dry, the film resembles and has the consistency of a "thick Saran Wrap" says Andrew Szilagyi, EM's Project Management for the development of new D&D technologies. "You peel it off and crumble it up like aluminum foil or Saran Wrap then put it in a bag or a drum and there you go."

Depending on the contaminants involved, Szilagyi says it might be possible to dispose of the dried DeconGel™ through less stringent and less expensive disposal options than other cleanup methods would require. That could mean using an industrial landfill instead of a radiological disposal facility.

With more than 3,500 contaminated facilities, including nearly 1,000 buildings with radioactive contamination, EM has plenty of places to put DeconGel™ to work. 

EM field tested DeconGel™ in January and February of this year at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, where paintable and sprayable versions were applied to the floor and walls in a hot cell area of Building 2026. The main contaminants of concern were americium and plutonium. Removal efficiencies ranged from a high of 90 percent to lower levels in areas previously treated with sealants or fixatives. 

Paula Kirk of EM, who managed the field test at Oak Ridge, says the product has two distinct advantages over conventional methods of cleanup. "When DeconGel™ is applied, it strongly holds the airborned contaminants which become fixed under the gel. This is important when dealing with plutonium and other contaminants, as the radioactive particles can easily become airborned and can be spread by people walking across a floor."

She also noted that “If a floor needs to be ‘scrabbled’ [by mechanically removing surface layers of concrete to eliminate contamination] one could be looking at a signifi cantly larger secondary waste stream as opposed to the dried DeconGel™.”

DeconGel™ took a winding road to the gritty world of decontaminating concrete floors, says Michael Coy, CBI’s vice president for operations. 

Hank Wuh, a former orthopedic surgeon with what Coy describes as “an innate interest in problem solving,” founded the company in 2003 and then set about finding a new way to treat corneal dystrophy, a set of conditions in which cloudy material builds up in the cornea and clouds vision.

The conventional medical approach had been to use corneal transplants to treat the condition. But Wuh wanted to find a different approach for the many parts of the world resist transplants because of religious and cultural taboos against taking tissue from another person.

So he set out down two roads—one was to find a way to grow new corneal cells from a small sample of cells taken from the patient’s own eye and the other was to create an artificial cornea from a polymeric hydrogel.

While testing polymers, one of the scientists on Wuh’s team discovered that the material they were working with might be able to remove radioactive isotopes from human skin.

After the company successfully tested the polymer’s radioactive removal properties on mice, it got a request from the Air Force, Coy recalls, to see if the polymer could be used to remove transuranic elements from the aluminum skin of an aircraft that had been contaminated.

It was while doing that testing, Coy says, that some of the polymer spilled on a laboratory floor. “We let it dry and we peeled it,” he says, “and there was this fairly white looking area in contrast to the surrounding floor. We said ‘what if we did this deliberately?’ and from that point on we started refining it.”

CBI, which has adopted the corporate motto of “Invent, Disrupt, Inspire” is still developing an artificial cornea. But DeconGel™, the product based on the accidental spill, is speeding ahead. 

CBI began selling a commercial version of DeconGel™ last year to nuclear power utilities, hospitals and research laboratories that generate or use radioactive materials. 

Coy says CBI now has “40 plus customers” and is “at an advanced stage of startup” in its commercial business.

EM has provided CBI with grants of $1.47 million in Fiscal Year 2009 and $1.59 in Fiscal Year 2010 to support testing of DeconGel™ at contaminated facilities and help the company develop and improved version of the product.

By the end of FY 2010, EM’s goal is to have a strong technical package—including case studies— in place to provide guidance on whether DeconGel™ is the right product for a particular cleanup need.

In addition to DeconGel’s™ use during deactivation and decommissioning of structures, Szilagyi hopes further testing may show the product can also be used by DOE’s research laboratories to clean up spills and treat contaminated tools and equipment. And, he says, it’s possible that use of this peelable gel might allow some contaminated buildings to be saved from demolition altogether and used for other purposes. 

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