From Left: Valerica Raicu (cofounder), Jeff Rusinow and Tom Mozer (cofounder)
Skepticism turned into Profits, Patents and Passion
Professor Valerica Raicu was skeptical when others urged him to think about the commercial possibilities of the microscopic tool he developed.
Raicu, an associate professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, is the chief technical officer of Aurora Spectral Technologies LLC. The company started operations in 2010. Raicu is the co-inventor of OptiMiS, an imaging tool that can be added on to microscopes and allow them to rapidly analyze complex multicolor fluorescent images. OptiMiS has a patent pending.
The company says the tool can be used in many markets, including biological research, prenatal and cancer diagnostics and drug screening. “I didn’t think about it as a commercial product,” Raicu said. “I’m a scientist. I built this instrument because I was interested in the science I could do.”
Brian Thompson, president of the UW-M Research Foundation “kept bugging” him to look at the commercial applications of the invention. Thompson suggested Raicu attend a BizStarts entrepreneurial class, and he finally found the time in the fall of 2009. During the class, he was surprised at how much potential others thought the invention had. He polished his idea and learned how to write a business plan. While he didn’t want to launch the business himself, he decided he was willing to work with someone who did.
Thompson introduced him to Thomas Mozer, who has spent the last 25 years transforming university developed technology into independent businesses. He most recently was founder andchief executive officer of Nerites Corp., a medical device company in Madison. Mozer and Raicu clicked, and Mozer is now CEO of Aurora Spectral Technologies.
“It’s exciting now, knowing that I don’t have to run the show. I get to do some exciting stuff on my side, like come up with new ideas, figure out how to make this thing work and see what potential customers want,” Raicu said.
Mozer had been looking for new technologies with potential for start-up businesses and thought Raicu’s work held the most potential for commercialization.
AST has completed a licensing agreement with the UW-M for the technology and has raised $535,000 in start-up financing from seven Milwaukee angel investors. Investors include Jeff Rusinow, who is lead investor and AST’s board chairman.
Mozer works out of an office in his Bayside home, and Raicu works out of the university lab. The company is now working on making the system into a prototype that can be commercialized and duplicated for use in other laboratories. A prototype has been installed at the University ofWisconsin-Madison for evaluation. Once that evaluation is complete, the company will work with Brandt Innovative Technologies, Pewaukee, to create a finished product that can be manufactured by early next year.
“So far we’re staying ahead of schedule, and that’s due to the extra effort that we’ve seen from Dr. Raicu and the extraordinary flexibility that’s been shown by the people that run UW-Milwaukee,” Mozer said. “They have been very flexible in how they can help and deal with small companies and their needs, and that’s been a big asset.”
One of the applications of the device is the detection of metastasizing cancer cells in the blood stream. The system would allow the detection of those cells much earlier than is currently possible.It also can be used in pharmaceutical research to observe protein interactions.
AST plans to seek a second round of financing later this year to raise about $1 million to create the final product. The company also has applied for $850,000 in Small Business Institutional Research grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health for further development of the instrument and the prototype for use in a rapid diagnostic application.
For more information, visit auroraspectral.com.