The researchers’ stated goal is straightforward and ambitious: to affect the lives of 1 billion over the next decade

This week’s news that scientists figured out how to “unboil an egg” almost broke the Internet. Perhaps most surprised when the story went viral was the ChemBioChem paper’s co-author, University of California Irvine chemist Gregory Weiss.

“My lab’s research was trending on Facebook,” he laughs.



Unboiling a hen egg — that is, pulling apart tangled proteins and allowing them to refold — has some fairly broad implications. Other methods of refolding proteins can take days. By contrast, the newly proven method takes just minutes, saving scientists what has traditionally been a frustrating amount of both time and money.



The most radical benefit could lead to earlier and cheaper detection of cancer molecules. Detecting cancer as early as possible not only vastly improves treatment and the chances of survival; it also lowers costs considerably. The same process could also lower the cost of producing expensive therapeutic proteins used to treat diseases, such as cancers and brain injuries.

And it could reach sectors of agriculture and even molecular gastronomy, with additional research and development supported by corporations.

Weiss has a personal stake in improving cancer molecule detection. Shortly before Greg Weiss completed his postdoctoral work, his father, Arthur Weiss, a former Navy doctor and tumor surgeon, lost his battle with lung cancer. Greg’s wife is also a breast cancer survivor after receiving her diagnosis and undergoing treatment last year.

Weiss notes that taking lab research to market is anything but easy. The process, he adds, can be the “valley of death for great ideas”. Proteins are expensive to manufacture, and research like Weiss’s is just beginning to scratch the surface in terms of industrial uses.

“Getting from small scale to big scale is a major challenge for a lab like mine,” he says. “You start talking to companies, and they want to know: how many hundreds of liters can you do this on?”



Fortunately, UC Irvine is a university that recognizes the value of supporting that process from theory to small-batch application to large-scale production and impact. In 2013, it opened its Institute of Innovation, which specializes in bridging the gap between research laboratories and companies poised to implement the technology on a wider scale.

Grace Yee, one of the Institute’s licensing officers focused on biomedical engineering, notes that there’s been significant interest from major companies (which she’s not allowed to name) since Weiss’s paper was published.



The Institute doesn’t exist to rush a product or application to market just to monetize research. It’s about supporting researchers to continue their necessary, important work while interfacing with investors and commercial partners to transition small-scale concepts into truly groundbreaking innovation.

“These are things that I, as a chemist, don’t consider, the market dollars and cents,” says Weiss. “Do we license the technology? Start a company around this? The Institute for Innovation is trying to figure that out.”



Weiss is hesitant to elaborate on untested applications but adds that agriculture companies have expressed an interest in making eggs, just one of what he predicts will be many agricultural innovations related to his findings. He’s especially excited about how introducing energy to molecules in a purely mechanical way could impact molecular gastronomy. “I’d love to do that, but I’m pretty busy. Cancer is more important to me than a soufflé,” he says, noting he’d welcome collaboration ideas from creative chefs.



His previous research into more efficient, cheaper cancer-detecting technology is already making its way to market. Last year, with fellow UC Irvine chemist and professor Dr. Reginald Penner, Weiss founded PhageTech, a company that uses the duo’s patented technology to develop products to better and more quickly detect specific disease biomarkers.

Their goal is straightforward and ambitious: to affect the lives of 1 billion over the next decade.



If Weiss’s research can lead to early cancer detection and treatment, he notes the benefits could ripple across the healthcare system, saving time, money and lives. “The patient wins most of all,” he says.



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