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SearchIn the Cleveland Clinic Innovations profile series, members of the Innovations team share their journey to joining the Innovations department at Cleveland Clinic, what they find inspiring about their role and advice for potential inventors.
In the Cleveland Clinic Innovations profile series, members of the Innovations team share their journey to joining the Innovations department at Cleveland Clinic, what they find inspiring about their role and advice for potential inventors. In this profile, Julie Woda, Senior Director, Innovations Technology Development, discusses what brought her to Cleveland Clinic, what she finds inspiring about her role, technologies that she’s excited about, and shares advice for those who are interested in inventing.
Q: What brought you to Cleveland Clinic Innovations? How long have you been with the team?
A: I have a PhD from Harvard in cell and developmental biology and I did a postdoctoral fellowship at Mass General Hospital, working on Huntington’s disease. After I finished my post-doctoral fellowship, I realized I didn’t want to stay in academia, so I moved here to Cleveland for personal reasons. I believe Cleveland has a lot of potential to become a smaller biotech hub and the center of that. There’s Case Western Reserve and University Hospitals, but Cleveland Clinic is really the center of a lot of activity, including with Lerner Research Institute.
Once I moved back to Cleveland, I initially got a job at a local biotech company as a scientist and a senior scientist. A lot of what I did was translational, preclinical work, some manufacturing, and then I was recruited to another spinoff, and I worked there as the Director of Translational Research where we moved the product through phase 1, phase 2 clinical trials and heart failure. Following that role, I moved to an accelerator incubator, Biomotiv. We were the for-profit arm of the Harrington project. I was involved there as the equivalent of a Chief Operating Officer for some of their small companies.
One part of my position was looking for new technologies and how we can invest in companies. So, I did that and then I was recruited to Cleveland Clinic because they were looking for someone who knew the therapeutic space. Cleveland Clinic was traditionally more involved in medical device development, and they were looking to expand their therapeutics capabilities and so I was excited about the opportunity.
About a year into my role the Innovations department was restructured and I ended up as the domain lead for therapeutics and diagnostics. So, unlike most of the people in Innovations who work in one of the verticals, I support across all the verticals almost as a pinch hitter to where we need different support. I work a lot with Ventures now to support the new companies that are coming up. I also have been asked this year to work a lot with Proof of Concept, so I work everywhere from initial ideas all the way through the innovation process towards the path of commercialization.
Q: What do you find most inspiring about your job?
A: The thing that I really do have passion about is moving the scientific discoveries to things that can help patients, I believe that’s the most important thing to do. The advantage of Cleveland Clinic is we have many researchers who are some of the best people in the world in what they do and not just on the physician side. Pretty much everyone is looking at things that are patient-centric. We have the ability to do that because we are in a nonprofit and we have a timeline that is different than a small company or a venture-backed company where they have to come up with something, prove it’s going to work very quickly or you’re just out, or you can have changes in the market, or changes like another product takes off and they can just drop programs.
At Cleveland Clinic, we can look long-term at things that maybe in the short term look like the resources needed might not be quite worth it if you were at a pure for-profit. In the long term, yes, we can see that it could be a profit, but we’re willing to take the risk and time it’s going to take to bring about the things that can improve patient health. It’s important to get the best deals possible for our technologies, but we also have a patient-centric focus and that puts us in a unique position. The idea of being able to develop things that could attract attention doesn’t just help Cleveland Clinic and patients; it helps the region, too.
I love learning about new discoveries too, and new things that we can do that have potential not just to help people but help with understanding more about the world. When solutions have implications that are even broader than what you initially think, that’s when things get really exciting.
Q: Are there any technologies in particular that you’re excited about?
A: One that comes to mind right away is Stanley Hazen’s work for Zehna. What Dr. Hazen’s team has discovered is there’s a metabolite produced by gut bacteria that’s correlated with cardiovascular health. The more you have this metabolite, the worse outcomes you get in all sorts of cardiovascular readouts, so they’ve designed a compound to reduce that. Another is Thaddeus Stappenbeck’s work in Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) with Mobius. They are personalizing IBD therapeutic and diagnostic care through their proprietary AI tool. Their technology can also identify subsets of patients who are likely to respond favorably to an existing arsenal of well-characterized drug candidates. Dr. Stappenbeck is also looking at new therapeutics that can heal wounds in IBD patients. We’re also looking for a partner for a novel sunscreen booster developed by Vijay Krishna’s lab as well.
Another technology I’m excited about and is getting a lot of traction is a discovery by one of our ophthalmologists, Dr. Steve Wilson, who discovered that you can repurpose Losartan, which is a drug that’s currently delivered orally to treat high blood pressure. Dr. Wilson discovered that if you reformulate Losartan into an eye drop and put it in the eye it can reduce scarring in the eye. This received a lot of press recently and I think this is going to be a game-changing for patients because there’s nothing that currently works for corneal scarring. I think that’s one of the more exciting things coming from Cleveland Clinic.
Q: What does your team do and how are they involved in the Innovations process?
A: I work with a lot of different teams, and many people have this concept that Cleveland Clinic Innovations is like a traditional tech transfer office in the sense that we receive ideas and we get patents, and then that’s it, and then we’ll go look for partners or they’ll bring us partners. We do way more than that. We spend a lot of time hearing about discoveries, having discussions with potential inventors, and getting them to think about the research they’re doing. If there is potential open space in the market and the potential patient need is real, then we spend time with them. In the Proof of Concept office, if the technology is a little bit too early, then they don’t have anything patentable yet and it’s not ready to come to our office. We work with potential inventors to think about what experiments need to be done to make this worthy of getting a patent to make it a little bit further. From Proof of Concept to Ventures, there’s no one person deciding. Almost everything has a large team looking at it, making arguments about the commercial potential, looking at the IP landscape to make sure there’s space, looking at the patient need and standard of care, and looking at what the commercial landscape is and if we could find a partner and what would need to be done in order to do so.
Q: What publications and people do you follow?
A: I look at Endpoints News regularly. They share the latest developments in drug discovery, development, and commercialization. I read STAT+, for in-depth biotech, pharma, policy, and life science coverage and analysis. I read a lot of PubMed too, and follow Scott Gottlieb as well. Scott used to work at the FDA as the 23rd commissioner, he’s a physician, investor, and media personality. Joe Thomas on our team, who is a Market Intelligence Analyst for therapeutics and diagnostics, has been great about sending out a lot of valuable resources, too, in terms of the IP landscape. I read a lot of newsletters as well to see what the latest updates are in the space.
Q: What advice would you give to someone interested in inventing who may be intimidated by the process?
A: Cleveland Clinic Innovations is here to help anyone. Even if you just want to brainstorm, everything is confidential with our office. We don’t want caregivers to be nervous about the innovation process or think that anyone is out to take their idea. You can call us just to ideate even if you’re not going to submit anything for a couple of years. I like being available to talk to anybody who wants to talk about anything related to therapeutics. When you work with Innovations, we may have ways of looking at things or be able to put you in contact with other people in our department or in other institutes who might be helpful. I love talking about Innovations, so if you’re interested, please reach out to me or call me at any time, and I’ll be happy to assist and answer any questions!
