In June 2024, The Mid-Atlantic I-Corps Hub hosted its first ever industry-specific cohort designed for therapeutics and diagnostic-related technology teams.

The training and guidance in this cohort was specifically tailored to the needs of researchers planning to serve the complex ecosystems surrounding therapeutic innovation.

There were 17 teams in the cohort, each of whom completed an average of ten customer discovery interviews. All teams were developing different therapeutic drugs or diagnostic tools that would support discovery and development. Many teams will be eligible for the National I-Corps Teams Program, where they receive $50,000 dollars to continue conducting customer discovery.

All cohort teams gained an understanding of the therapeutic industry ecosystem, and used customer discovery to identify customer needs in therapeutic development, production, and delivery. This included identifying common business development pathways for servicing the pharma industry and bringing a therapeutic to market.

Cohort mentors included: Elizabeth Goode Mazhari, investment and DEI consultant, TEDCO; Chirs Morrison, I-Corps instructor, University of North Carolina; Glenn Watson, NSF I-Corps lead instructor, Carnegie Mellon University; Judy Prasad, associate director, KickStart Venture Services, University of North Carolina; Julie Collins, I-Corps instructor, Georgia Institute of Technology; Edmund Pendleton, Mid-Atlantic I-Corps Hub lead instructor and NSF I-Corps instructor; and Dan Kunitz, Mid-Atlantic I-Corps Hub director and Maryland Innovation Extension director.

The hub will continue to assess demand for specific verticals that will aim to better support teams working on various technologies.