TECH OFFERS

Despite the increasing prevalence of obesity, all FDA-approved medications, which act indirectly on the central nervous system to suppress appetite or on the gastrointestinal tract to inhibit fat absorption, suffer from poor effectiveness and side effects. Most of these medications have been withdrawn from the market. Although liposuction performed in clinics can effectively remove targeted subcutaneous fat, it suffers from invasiveness, high costs, associated risks, induction of compensatory increase of visceral fat. Although thermal lipolysis induced by high-power laser energy is a non-invasive way to reduce subcutaneous fat, its effectiveness is limited and it often causes skin burning. Both liposuction and laser lipolysis cannot improve whole-body metabolism. The technology owner has developed a transdermal mild photothermal therapy directly acting on the root of evil, i.e. subcutaneous fat, to induce its ameliorating remodelling (browning, lipolysis, angiogenesis, and apoptosis), based on the injectable hydrogel encapsulated with photothermal agent. Browning refers to the conversion of energy-storage white fats into energy-burning brown fats. Further, combining with pharmaceutical therapy by codelivery of pharmacological agent leads to a strong therapeutic synergy. This method not only ensures high effectiveness and low side effects due to localized and targeted application but also remotely creates significant improvements in whole-body metabolism (e.g., reduction of visceral fat, relief of diabetic symptoms). In addition, this technology is applicable for cosmetic purposes, e.g., body contouring and reduction of double chin. The technology owner is seeking potential biotechnology companies, clinicians, and other partners to clinically translate and commercialize this technology. Possible modes of collaboration include R&D, process, and product development.

Singapore is currently only producing 13% of its vegetable consumption. With little farming land available, Singapore relies heavily on imports from other countries. Due to increasing focus on food security, the alternative to solve land scarcity problem is to build greenhouses on concrete rooftop. Although concrete rooftop greenhouse are able to keep pests out, there is a signifcant heating problem which severely inhibits the growth of the vegetables. Therefore, there is a need for a rooftop greenhouse that is able to actively cool itself to avoid such problem. This technology offer is a modular rooftop greenhouse farming system (hydroponics) capable of producing vegetables on concrete roofs to meet the local demand while reducing over-reliance on imports. The design of the greenhouse farming system enables cooling and does not heat up, thus allowing the growth of pest-free vegetables. The system is approximately the size of a typical carpark lot (2.5 x 5 m). The production rate is 30 kg per month (2.5 x 5 m size) and requires minimal human intervention. The technology offer comprises both the farming system and its operation know-how. The modular rooftop greenhouse farming system can be set-up within 3 days or scaled-up when required with guaranteed vegetable growth. The break-even cost of one greenhouse is about 3 years. The technology owner is seeking to out-license their technology.

Graphitic anodes used in present generation lithium-ion batteries are cheap and provide a stable platform for Li-ion storage over low-high current densities over long charge-discharge cycles. However, they are limited to a low Li-storage capacity due to the simple insertion/de-insertion process. This technology relates to a new lithium-ion battery anode with enhanced performance. The technology owner is looking for potential licensees to commercialise this technology.

This technology relates to a lithium-ion battery with an improved electrode with automatic shutdown function. The technology owner has developed a method to generate a 3D printing ink to deposit a layer of thermal sensitive polymer, which can be implemented into the traditional battery production process to solve the thermal failure of the lithium ion battery. The technology owner is looking for potential licensees to commercialise this technology.

With the recent surge in various kinds of pathogens and viruses, there has been a strong demand for hygiene-focused products globally. This is especially true for water, with increasing fear of pathogen being spread via unsanitary water. Ozone dissolved in water, or more commonly known as ozonated water, has been used to produce safe drinking water at water purification plants because of ozone's sanitising properties. However, conventional gas dissolution methods have limited the applications because it is difficult to incorporate both safe ozone production and ozone dissolution into water in the same small product. This technology offer is a modular sanitary device that is able to electro-produce ozonated water for sanitisation. This device can, on-demand, instantaneously generate ozonated water via electrolysis. The ability for on-demand generation circumvents the problem where ozonated water loses its sanitising properties over time. Furthermore, this modular device be easily designed to have variable performance depending on the number of devices connected and the control of current and flow rate. Therefore, they can be easily designed to be integrated into existing products (e.g. household water purifiers etc.) Lastly, this device can efficiently dissolve ozone in water as well which addressed the dissolution problems faced in other systems.

In recent years, there has been an increasing demand for carbon dioxide (CO2) adsorbents due to climate change. These materials can be used for CO2 capture in both flue gas and directly from the air which can mitigate and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The current conventional CO2 adsorbents includes alkaline salts, aqueous amine solution and metal organic frameworks (MOF). However, these materials are expensive (MOF) and suffers from problems such as heat generation (alkaline salt) to energy intensive post-adsorption recovery (aqueous amine solution) which severely limits its wide scale adoption. This technology offer is an amino-based resin adsorbent for low concentration and ambient temperature CO2 adsorption and desorption. This adsorbent is capable of adsorbing low concentrations of CO2 in air at room temperature and generates little heat when adsorbing CO2. It is also possible to capture CO2 from flue gas in the same manner as well. In addition, the regeneration (release of CO2) of the adsorbent can be performed at low temperature with significantly less energy consumption than existing materials.

Having the correct lighting is an important aspect of video production, not only does it allow video creators to light the subject of the video correctly - ensuring the absence of distracting shadows or unnecessary reflections on reflective objects, it also allows content creators to convey the right artistic expression. The requirements of selecting the correct lighting temperature, strength (light intensity), and lighting effects are determined by the lighting arrangement and the way lighting is applied at the location, making it difficult to modify what has already been shot in post-production. Therefore, lighting modifications require reshoots, which require a lot of effort and cost. For a typical video production involving a single subject, the lighting set-up is typically a three-point lighting arrangement to produce a three-dimensional (3D) lighting effect. This three-point lighting comprises the main light, fill light, and finally, background light. This technology offer comprises a specialised lighting apparatus that constitutes a set of light emitters and light receivers, and matching/modelling software that maps the reflectance of the object and the background to allow lighting conditions to be changed post-production in a realistic manner, preserving the texture and natural lighting effect between the foreground and background. This technology makes it possible to create images as desired by the creator without the need for special equipment or knowledge of lighting, from a single specialised light.

Microalgae has been successfully cultivated at a large scale commercially to produce nutraceuticals, pigments, and aquaculture feed. It can also be used as an alternate protein source and biofuels. However, conventional open pond microalgae cultivation methods are susceptible to contamination by undesirable organisms from the environment and the cost of production can be relatively high. Many microalgae species are surrounded by a rigid cell wall which requires energy intensive mechanical methods to disrupt the cell wall to access the cellular contents. The degree of algal biomass utilisation is largely dependent on ease of access to the cellular contents. A unicellular red algae strain (Cyanidium & Galdieria from the Cyanidiales class) found in sulfuric hot springs worldwide was developed to overcome these issues. These red algae strains contain thermostable phycocyanin (blue colorant) and higher concentrations of proteins, Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) and Vitamins C, E & K compared to other commercially available microalgae strains. This technology relates to a method of cultivating cell wall-less red algae strains at densities 50 times higher than commercially cultivated microalgae in an open pond. This also drastically reduces the cost of cultivation by 10 times (USD 1/kg vs. USD 10/kg by conventional methods). Through self-cloning, the algal cellular contents can be altered. Alternatively heterologous proteins such as peptide vaccine can be accumulated in the algal cells for animal health applications. The technology provider is looking to license the high intensity red algae farming method. They are also interested in co-development of nutraceuticals and functional animal feeds.

Bovine colostrum, a highly nutritious food has high concentration of immunoglobulins, antimicrobials lactoferrin, lysozyme, lactoperoxidase, growth factors and other bioactive components. Immunoglobulins, a major immune fraction, are natural antibodies which boost immunity against a wide range of bacterial and viral infections. Immunoglobulin G (IgG) constitutes about 80 to 90 percent of immunoglobulins in bovine colostrum. Thermal treatment of colostrum causes a significant loss in the immunity boosting property of IgG due to its denaturation. A novel technology has been developed to protect immunoglobulin G (IgG) against heat, thereby enabling retention of about 65 to >90 percent of its bioactivity in dairy and related products after heat processing. The patented technology uses powder formulations having “heat stable” colostrum. These are reconstituted in water for the manufacture of bioactive “Ready to drink” (RTD) UHT (long life) beverages and “Ready to eat” (RTE) products on a commercial scale. The powders can be used with other naturally occurring bioactive ingredients to get additional health benefits. The long-life beverages do not have added preservatives, have a shelf life of 3 to 9 months under ambient conditions. These can be made with different flavours and enjoyed by both adults and children. The technology employs low-cost heat processing which can be used by manufactures of dairy products and beverage / juice manufacturers, including small scale manufacturers.  The inventor of this technology would like to collaborate with manufacturers of dairy products / beverages / juices/ nutritional supplements and license the technology for manufacturing immunity boosting products.