AMHERST — A treatment to suppress inflammatory bowel disease and technology to deliver probiotics in gummy form are among intellectual property developed in University of Massachusetts laboratories that are promoting human health and well-being through startup companies.
The Manning Innovation Program, begun in 2019 with a $1 million investment from 1977 alumnus Paul Manning and his wife, Diane Manning, was recently infused with an additional $3 million from the couple. The money will support three more years of bringing science and business together through a commercialization pipeline for UMass research projects.
Paul Manning said in a statement that the program’s goal was to fund brilliant minds in the College of Natural Sciences who are tackling some of the world’s biggest problems.
“But the program’s success has surpassed our expectations, which is why we are investing in its expansion,” said Manning, an entrepreneur with 30 years of experience in the health care industry who founded the PBM Capital Group in 2010 in Charlottesville, Virginia. “We look forward to seeing many more innovative solutions that are sure to make a global impact.”
Based in the Institute for Applied Life Sciences, the program provides grants to promote applied research and development efforts through both the creation of startup science and engineering companies and licensing intellectual property.
With the grants, faculty members can use their research to try and find solutions in areas such as cancer treatment, wastewater treatment, veterinary science and reproductive health care.
“The resources and funding that come with these awards have enabled our entrepreneurial faculty members to pursue areas of research that have real-world implications, and then funnel potentially game-changing solutions into an accelerated pipeline of production, all while training students to be future leaders in their fields,” Tricia Serio, dean of the College of Natural Sciences, said in a statement.
So far, 14 faculty members have received innovation awards, including chemistry research professor S. “Thai” Thayumanavan, who used the grant to focus on life-aving liver disease treatments. That initiative has become Cyta Therapeutics, an early-stage life sciences company developing products to regenerate and restore liver function problems resulting from a variety of liver diseases.
The Manning program has also fostered a stronger culture of entrepreneurship in the College of Natural Sciences and greater collaboration among Isenberg School of Management advisers, science and technology researchers, and industry experts.