Treating Paralysis

In a recent interview, Frank Reynolds, President and CEO of InVivo Therapeutics describes the company’s strategy of bringing its unique spinal cord injury products to market.

In the interview, Frank discusses InVivo's FDA application for a novel technology that addresses the cause of 90% of paralysis cases that occur as the result of a traumatic spinal corrd injury. Frank anticipates FDA approval in the coming months followed by a human study to commence in fourth quarter of 2011 or early in 2012.

Read the entire interview.

Challenge to Solve Polio

During the polio epidemic in the 1950’s, Jonas Salk developed a vaccination that quickly eliminated the disease in North America. While most countries are today polio-free, wild polioviruses still circulate in a few less-developed countries, where more than 1,000 new cases of paralytic polio are diagnosed each year.

Spencer Trask and the Jonas Salk Legacy Foundation formed BeyondPolio, an effort to help permanently eradicate polio. The partnership recently launched the first in a series of online Challenges designed to find a lower cost application of the inactivated poliovirus vaccine. The Challenge was launched on InnoCentive, the pioneer in open innovation and crowdsourcing.

Additional information is available on BeyondPolio.org and Innocentive.com.

Crowdsourcing Company Growth

To help early-stage companies get the advise and support they need, Spencer Trask has launched a series of Value Creation Challenges. These Challenges are designed to help individual companies find the people and corporate relationships they need to get to the next level.

    InnoCentive Founder Alph Bingham on Challenge Driven Innovation

Using Open Innovation, Spencer Trask hopes to fuel company growth smarter, faster and better, and its portfolio companies offer cash incentives to Challenge solvers.

Read more about Challenges here.