The winning team of Penn Engineering’s annual award for entrepreneurial technology have created a noninvasive mechanism to adjust medical stent positioning using magnetic reconfiguration.
Every year, Penn’s Y-Prize competition challenges students to build their entrepreneurial skills by creating business plans for technologies invented by Penn researchers. This year’s winning team, Stentix, proposed a bile duct stent that can be adjusted noninvasively, helping to maintain bile flow without additional surgeries.
The Stentix team (top) Summer Cobb and Amanda Kossoff, (bottom) Aarsha Shah and Elizabeth Jia, with judges (descending left) Matt Fitz-Henry, Jason Smith, Jennifer Gilburg, and Sasha Schrode, and (descending right) David Hsu, Gerald Lopez, and Dean Miller.
(Image: Courtesy of the William and Phyllis Mack Institute for Innovation Management)
A biliary stent is a small, tubelike device inserted into the bile ducts to keep them open and allow bile to flow from the liver to the small intestine. These stents are used to treat blockages caused by conditions such as pancreatic cancer, gallstones, or complications from liver transplants.
However, biliary stents can easily become blocked or dislodged. Doctors typically replace or reposition them through invasive and uncomfortable procedures like endoscopy. Stentix addresses this problem by allowing noninvasive adjustments to the stent’s position and diameter using magnetic reconfiguration.
The team members awarded the $10,000 grand prize are Summer Cobb, Amanda Kossoff, Elizabeth Jia, and Aarsha Shah. Stentix makes use of MORF, a magnetic, self-reconfiguring “origami-style” material invented in the Sung lab in the School of Engineering and Applied Science.
For over 10 years, the Y-Prize competition has challenged students to build their entrepreneurial skills. The team with the best commercial application wins $10,000 to help make their idea a reality. It is cosponsored by the Mack Institute, Penn Engineering, Venture Lab, and the Penn Center for Innovation.
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