b'metformin proved to benefit breast cancerOther possible applications include moni-in clinical trials, United States Food and Drugtoring for sleep disorders (the bodys tem-Administration (FDA) approval would comeperature drops during sleep), early detection faster and at less cost than with a new drug. of inflammation and infection, monitoring Greene, who came to CU Anschutz fromheating of cancer tissue during hyperthermia the University of Pennsylvania, cited worktreatment, traumatic brain injury detection, by the Colorado Center for Personalizedand tracking the temperature of organs Medicine, a CU School of MedicineUCHealthbeing shipped for transplant, she says. Early collaboration, as another example of howwarning of heatstroke among military per-bioinformatics can help patients. Those whosonnel, firefighters, and athletes remains a consent and provide a blood sampletenskey focus, she adds. of thousands have done soreceive alerts ifColorado has been good for LumenAstra in their genes metabolize certain drugs fastermany ways, but, in particular, CU is a very or slower than usual, which can help avoidZoya Popovic, Ph.D., Co-Founder, LumenAstra good place to recruit excellent students, dangerous (or ineffective) dosing. Greene saysPopovic says. Case in point: The companys this sort of focus on using data to improvethan those of the infrared light that foreheadnew Vice President of Engineering, Rob clinical care was a big factor in his decisionthermometers detect. The idea was to ulti- Scheeler, is a Popovic Lab Ph.D. graduate.to move west. mately create a small, wearable, battery-op- He, Popovic, and colleagues have work to do, I feel like its a place where you can dream big,erated sensor to keep tabs on soldiers bodybut if their technology turns out to be a better but not forget the why, Greene says. Thatstemperatures in hot environments and undermousetrap for measuring body temperature, what brought me here. heavy activity, where heat stroke can be atheir efforts could save lives and notch yet mortal threat. another Colorado life sciences success story.LUMENASTRA: MEASURING BODYOur bodies emit radiation across the entire TEMPERATURE FOR SAFER SURGERIES electromagnetic spectrum, Popovic explains,PHARMAJET: VACCINATING THE and a sensitive-enough detector of longerWORLD WITH COLORADO-BUILT Zoya Popovic, Ph.D., exemplifies the breadthMEDICAL TECHNOLOGYof scientific and engineering expertise con- wavelengths (in the gigahertz range) can tributing to bioscience innovation in Colorado.receive power that is proportional to tem- The toddlers mother had brought him in She is a Distinguished Professor and holdsperature from well below the skin.for a vaccination, and his face expressed the Lockheed Martin Chair in RF EngineeringThe fruits of several grants have Popovic andthe familiar fear that this was going to hurt. intheUniversityofColoradoBouldersLumenAstra Co-Founder Jim Pollock shootingBut rather than a syringe, the woman doing Department of Electrical, Computer, andfor a commercial product sometime next yearthe honors held a plastic device designed in Energy Engineering. RF stands for radiofre- and FDA 510(k) approval sometime after that. Golden and manufactured in Singapore. With quency, and her research groups work hasa click, the spring-powered PharmaJet Tropis involved sensors for radio telescopes; trans- That product could well launch far from theID pumped a 0.1 milliliter stream of fluid, the mitters, and receivers for military and spacebattlefield. Popovic is working with CU Schoolwidth of a couple of human hairs, into the radar and communications equipment; andof Medicine cardiac surgeon T. Brett Reece,lower layers of the childs skin. It took less than even a way to use microwaves to turn trashM.D., in developing a forehead sensor that canone-tenth of one second. into fuel, among other projects. measure brain temperature. It would be usedThe look on his face was: Thats it?during aortic repair surgeries, where the brain The story of LumenAstra began a decade ago,is cooled to 15 degrees Celsius (59 degreesThe boy was one of seven million people in when Popovic created a prototype device forFahrenheit) to cut blood-oxygen needs duringPakistan who received needle-free polio vac-the U.S. Department of Defense to measurethe procedure and limiting surgical time tocines via PharmaJets system prior to 2023. body temperature using microwave radio-30 minutes before bringing the brain back toThis year, theyll deliver another five million frequencies, those of radar and microwavenormal temperature. Knowing precise brainpolio vaccinations there. And polio is just ovens. Microwave wavelengths are longertemperature can extend surgical time and alsothe start, says Chris Cappello, the companys provide insights into the best way to warm theCEO. Since its founding in 2005, PharmaJet brain back up after the surgery, Popovic says. has sought to solve the problems posed by 8 BIOSCIENCE COLORADO 2023-2024'