Another event highlight of the GLEQ Awards Event on June 10, was the presentation of eight Best of Biotech Awards, sponsored by Michigan Economic Development Corporation and presented by Greg Main, president and CEO.

The top winner, receiving the $40,000 1st Place Award, was Royal Oak-based Innovative Surgical Solutions, LLC. The award was received by Stephen Bartol, M.D., CEO, and Christopher Wybo, vice president. Innovative Surgical has developed a fast, safe, effective surgeon-driven nerve monitoring system for minimally invasive surgical procedures, making possible the implantation of lateral lumbar devices. The NeuralMAS™ system is an access tool that stimulates the sale of related implants while allowing surgeons to safely avoid injury to nerves.

The 2nd Place Award of $25,000 was presented to Bloomfield Hills-based Angott Medical Products, LLC. Paul Angott, founder and president, received the award. Angott Medical is developing a multi-modality breast cancer test with higher sensitivity and positive predictive value than clinical breast exams.

The 3rd Place Award of $10,000 was presented to Ann Arbor-based Tangent Medical Technologies. Receiving the award was Hank Brown, president and CEO. Tangent is a medical device company addressing health and safety shortcomings of existing peripheral intravenous (PIV) fluid/medication delivery systems with a newly developed proprietary PIV system.

The five Best of Biotech Awards winners in the New Business Idea category, all in the earliest stages of business development, received $5,000. Winning these awards were:

MitoStem, represented by James Eliason, PhD, president and chief scientific officer. Detroit-based MitoStem is a research reagent and instrument company with rights to a novel method to create pluripotential cells from adult cells and sales rights to an instrument to improve freezing of stem cells for storage.

Synaptin, LLC, represented by Greg Merriman, general manager. Ann Arbor-based Synaptin has develop a system for addressing person-to-person communication among medical care team providers in hospitals, larger private practices and other markets and reduces gaps in electronic medical records.

POLY Bioinformatics, represented by Michael Conlin, director of business development. Ann Arbor-based POLY Bioinformatics offers automated chemical and pharmaceutical database annotation, search and discovery.

Therapy Charts, represented by Mark LeBay, director of marketing. Ann Arbor-based Therapy Charts is a software as a service provider offering a system for secure and accurate electronic patient records for independent and small-office therapists.

SanoBio Therapeutics, LLC, represented by Zubair Ahsan, CEO. Ann Arbor-based SanoBio is a biopharmaceutical company commercializing a therapeutic peptide for the treatment of diabetic ulcers.