The Business of Research

The story of BioLegacy more-or-less began in 2021 in the Seattle University Mechanical Engineering Department with an orientation mixer shortly before the start of fall quarter.

Vincent Reitinger, ’25, a Redmond High School graduate about to begin his higher education journey, was among that small cohort of students in attendance. There, he talked briefly with one of his soon-to-be professors, Dr. Shen Ren, PhD, an assistant teaching professor in the College of Science and Engineering. They spoke about the project Dr. Ren was working on, a technology he created called SMER, or single-mode electromagnetic resonance. SMER could efficiently and effectively rewarm organs and, combined with Dr. Ren’s other research-refining technologies that have been around for decades involving cooling and freezing, greatly expand the possibilities for organ transplantation. The SMER technology targets extending donor organ’s viability and biological functions from the current 24 hours to months, significantly improving organ transplantation accessibility.

Reitinger was intrigued.

“I spoke with Shen and his project impressed me the most,” he says. “It was the coolest one in the engineering department—the best one in the whole school—and we rolled from there.”

Fast forward a year and Reitinger, a mechanical engineering student with a natural affinity for business and entrepreneurship, was talking with Dr. Ren about his desire to engage in more business development and start a commercialization phase for SMER. Not coincidently, Dr. Ren had been putting out entrepreneurial feelers as well and had started with Peter Rowan, the executive director of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center (IEC) at the Albers School of Business and Economics.

“He (Dr. Ren) was telling me what he was doing and I told him, ‘you have to enter our Business Plan Competition,’” recalls Rowan who, in addition to his role at the IEC, is a clinical professor in the department of management and the Lawrence K. Johnson Chair of Entrepreneurship at Albers. “The way I remember it, Shen was like, ‘yeah, I don’t really have time for that, I don’t have a team, I don’t really know how to do that’ and I told him, ‘well, come to the workshops; we’ll help you organize what you need to do.’”

The IEC has been a jumping off point for many Seattle University students and alumni to launch themselves into the entrepreneurial world for decades and, according to The Princeton Review’s “2024 Top Schools for Entrepreneurship Studies by Region” ranking, the IEC is the 7th best graduate entrepreneurship program in the West.

On Rowan’s advice, Dr. Ren and Reitinger entered the Harriett Stephenson Business Plan Competition (HSBPC), armed with the SMER technology but no business plan. They received in-depth mentorship and tutelage, then a screening round before making it into the semifinals. Workshops and hours of expert coaching from experienced early-stage investors played an integral role in transforming SMER into Biolegacy, a full-fledged life sciences venture. No longer just an idea and patent-pending technology, BioLegacy won the business competition’s $20,000 grand prize in June 2023. The win, along with funding received due to his multidisciplinary work with other STEM scholars at SU, enabled Dr. Ren to further advance the R&D work on this cutting-edge technology.

“The IEC and HSBPC helped us extend our network,” explains Ren. “Not just Seattle, but the entire Northwest region. Like most university faculty, I was very focused on my discipline and research. The HSBPC pulled me into a business and entrepreneurial mindset and got me out of my comfort zone.”

That first win at Albers was just the start of a hot streak of competition victories for BioLegacy.

It won the Regional Hollomon Health Innovation Challenge at the University of Washington. Then Dr. Ren and the team were off to Waco, Texas, to compete in Baylor University’s National New Venture Competition, taking second place. And in May, BioLegacy won the Herbert B. Jones Foundation Grand Prize at the Dempsey Startup Competition, making BioLegacy the first team since 2018 to win the grand prize in both the Dempsey and Hollomon competitions.

With its growing success BioLegacy itself had to expand. Thankfully, Dr. Ren and Reitinger knew where to look for ambitious and talented new colleagues—mostly current SU students

Simon Sharples, ’27, joined the team on the business side, pitching BioLegacy alongside Reitinger in the presentation at Baylor. Then Karin Stoddart, ’26, was recruited by Dr. Ren, followed by Jacob Shinsato, ’25, Justin Lewis, ’24, Sara Rauf, ’25, Michi Tawara, ’27, and Ty Smith, ’26. Grant funding, which helps pay the team of BioLegacy students, is from the Murdock Trust and the Institute of Translational Health Sciences, among others.

To Rauf, the creation and success of BioLegacy is a testament to his SU education and its collaboration with programs and departments.

“The great thing about Seattle University is that you can create your own opportunities, you don’t need to wait for an opportunity to be placed in front of you,” says Rauf.

Tawara agrees.

“When I approached Dr. Ren [about BioLegacy], I just wanted to know what a researcher does day-to-day,” says Tawara. “But the opportunities were so far reaching. I never expected to get this deeply into research this early in my educational career.”

Now, Dr. Ren and his BioLegacy team of students march on, working on ways to grow the company.

Over the summer Reitinger directed Tawara, Smith and Rauf to the National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps (I-Corps) regional hub at the UW, which provides an introduction to integral people and institutions in the life sciences industry. Developed during the Obama Administration, I-Corps is set up to fund companies spun from universities utilizing a lean startup methodology. Importantly, I-Corps gives BioLegacy an opportunity to interface with its two biggest potential stumbling blocks—earning FDA approval (Class III medical device approval) and building support among insurance regulators to obtain a reimbursement code for BioLegacy’s product. The plan is for the work, study and research the team is doing now to ultimately lead to national I-Corps status next year.

Dr. Ren continues to conduct research and oversee funding efforts with federal and private funding agencies while building upon the purpose and mission of making organ transplantation simpler and more efficient, upending the status quo and saving lives.