Commercializing tech: turning an invention into a small business meant navigating the world of grants, patents and partnerships.

• Position: Xona Microfluidics

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

With a gadget invented in California and funded by grants in North Carolina, Brad and Anne Taylor believe they are on the verge of helping scientists decipher neurological conditions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's with a tool so small it can fit in the palm of your hand.

Anne Taylor, 43, is an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her husband, 52, is a lawyer. While they were living in Southern California 10 years ago, Anne Taylor invented a neuron microfluidic device in the University of California-Irvine laboratory of Noo Li Jeon, a former professor now working at a university in Seoul.

Made from a silicone compound called polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), the device is 1 inch square with two tiny chambers connected by microgrooves. "It's like an artificial brain on a chip," Brad Taylor says.

Neurons, the nerve cells that are the functional unit of the nervous system, are added to the chambers. Cell bodies grow and send out axons, the neuron appendage that transmits impulses away from the cell body, to channels 10 micrometers wide--"Just wide enough for an axon to get itself into," he says. "It allows the axon to grow and be isolated and be studied for neuroscientific research purposes."

It's virtually impossible to study the axons in a laboratory vessel or experimental environment, he says, but Xona's device provides an ideal study environment. Alzheimer's researchers have, for example, used the device to see how Alzheimer's goes from neuron to neuron.

One of the first to use the neuron microfluidic device was fellow UC-Irvine lab technician Joseph Harris. "He was given the device to study neurons, and it became apparent there was a demand for it," Brad Taylor says. "So in 2008, we formed a company to sell the product."

The tJtree held their first business meeting at a Starbucks. Xona Microfluidics, LLC--"xona" is a rearrangement of a-x-o-n--was formed, and the device was patented. Noo Li Jeon remains a member, or partner. Carl Cotman of UC-Irvine is a scientific adviser.

As company manager, Harris manufactured the device as rapidly as possible at his home in Temecula, Calif., and began selling them in the U.S. and Asia. "It becomes part of a neuroscientist's tool box. Joe becomes the workhorse, and I have to give him all the due credit, because he starts making the device and maintaining customer relations, and he still does that," Taylor says. "We signed...