We invite you to meet the 2021 Lyfebulb-CSL Behring Innovation Challenge Award winner and members of our esteemed jury as part of Lyfebulb’s virtual Fireside Chat Series.
Join us for a dynamic conversation, lightly moderated by Lyfebulb CEO Karin Hehenberger, MD, PhD, highlighting the importance of entrepreneurship, how lived experience can spark innovation, and the impact of patient-driven innovation on the transplant community as a whole. The discussion will also explore today’s research landscape in the field of organ transplantation, innovations on the horizon, and what looks most promising for patients.
Please register below if you are interested in learning about the impact of entrepreneurship and innovation on the transplant community and how individuals with a personal connection to transplantation have been inspired to help others with innovative solutions for improving patient health and overall quality of life.
Dr. Minnie Sarwal of NephroSant has been selected to receive the $25,000 Innovation Award
NEW YORK, NY, USA – May 14, 2021 – Lyfebulb, a patient-empowerment innovation accelerator that bridges the gap between patient communities and the healthcare industry, and CSL Behring, a global biotherapeutics leader driven by its promise to save and improve lives, are excited to announce that Dr. Minnie Sarwal of NephroSant was selected as the winner of the Lyfebulb-CSL Behring Innovation Challenge: Thriving with Transplantation.
NephroSant will receive the $25,000 monetary award to further develop diagnostic tools for early detection and lifetime monitoring of kidney health and injury, including a non-invasive transplant rejection test designed specifically for kidneys. Biohope Scientific Solutions received an honorable mention for its research and development of precision medicine in vitro diagnostic tools for chronic inflammatory conditions with the goal to optimize the immunosuppressive therapy in patients with kidney transplantation and in the future for other autoimmune diseases.
“It is inspiring to experience the innovation and passion these eleven finalists brought to this event and we look forward to seeing their products penetrate the market and help patients, their care partners, and their care teams generate better outcomes throughout the transplant journey. There is a huge unmet need in this market that patients and care partners know so well – to my family and me, it goes beyond the business and admiration for technology – as a double organ transplant recipient, it is also personal,” said Karin Hehenberger, MD, PhD, CEO of Lyfebulb.
The 2021 Innovation Challenge took place virtually over two days on May 12-13 and was open to entrepreneurs motivated by a personal connection to organ transplantation developing new products and solutions to help organ transplant recipients, donors, care partners, and family members better manage their everyday challenges and improve overall quality of life. Eleven finalists were selected to compete at the Challenge and pitch their companies’ solutions to a panel of independent judges from a range of industries, including experts in the areas of business, technology, healthcare, and patient advocacy. Finalists’ solutions ranged from biotechnology platforms, medical devices to products for consumers and healthcare professionals and were chosen based on their potential to address the unmet needs of the transplant community and how their relationship to transplantation inspired the launch of their ventures.
“One of our core values at CSL Behring is turning innovative thinking into solutions,” said Kevin Kovaleski, Vice President, Global Commercial Development, Transplant, CSL Behring. “That’s the very essence of this challenge and why we are excited about seeing how all of these incredible ideas may someday make a difference for patients.” To continue their commitment to patient entrepreneurship and to raising awareness about organ transplantation, Lyfebulb and CSL Behring will be hosting a Fireside Chat with Dr. Minnie Sarwal and two members of the jury on Tuesday, May 25 at 4:00pm. This virtual discussion is open to all members of the community, and more information may be found on Lyfebulb.com.
About Lyfebulb
Lyfebulb is an innovation accelerator that bridges the gap between patient communities and the healthcare industry by working directly with patients and care partners to generate insights and build new solutions to reduce the burden of living with chronic disease. Lyfebulb operates across 11 disease states and counting. See Lyfebulb.com, TransplantLyfe.com, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Karin Hehenberger LinkedIn.
About CSL Behring
CSL Behring is a global biotherapeutics leader driven by its promise to save lives. Focused on serving patients’ needs by using the latest technologies, we develop and deliver innovative therapies that are used to treat coagulation disorders, primary immune deficiencies, hereditary angioedema, respiratory disease, and neurological disorders. The company’s products are also used in cardiac surgery, burn treatment and to prevent hemolytic disease of the newborn.
CSL Behring operates one of the world’s largest plasma collection networks, CSL Plasma. The parent company, CSL Limited (ASX:CSL;USOTC:CSLLY), headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, employs more than 27,000 people, and delivers its life-saving therapies to people in more than 100 countries. For inspiring stories about the promise of biotechnology, visit Vita CSLBehring.com/vita and follow us on Twitter.com/CSLBehring.
For more information:
Lyfebulb Contact:
Karin Hehenberger, MD, PhD
CEO & Founder, Lyfebulb
Phone: + 1 917-575-0210
Email: karin@lyfebulb.com
CSL Behring Contact:
Jennifer Purdue
External Communications Manager, CSL Behring
Phone: +1 610-306-9355
Email: jennifer.purdue@cslbehring.com
I am a two time Heart Transplant recipient, two time synovial sarcoma cancer survivor and stroke survivor.
I developed dilated cardiomyopathy at the age of 9, was on the transplant list for only 9 hours and received my first heart transplant in 1990. I suffered severe rejection in 1995, my transplant team preformed plasmapheresis and that was able to reverse my rejection. I soon after developed gastroparesis from that rejection episode, which I continue to deal with on a daily basis.
In 2011, I received my second heart transplant 20+ years after my first. I had some complications coming out of surgery, aspirated, suffered a stroke and was put on ECMO. I spent 6 weeks in the hospital, along with some outpatient PT/OT but was able to make a full recovery and was back at work 4 months later.
In 2020, I developed synovial sarcoma lung cancer and underwent a lobectomy to remove the tumor & cancer. In May 2021 I had a reoccurrence of synovial sarcoma, this time on the scalp, and had the tumor remove and again am cancer free.
Professionally, I am a supply chain executive Fortune 500 company and I volunteer with various organizations dealing with chronic illness. Personally, I’m married to my beautiful wife and we have two sons. In my spare time I enjoy anything sports related, especially playing golf, and spending time with my family.
John Ponsoll is the Managing Director at Symbiotix, LLC, the US scientific medical communications flagship agency within Havas Health & You. Since 1999, John has served many roles in agency services, from project management and account services, to business development, innovation, and strategy. He has a proven track record in growing companies, new capabilities, and offerings, and he excels at forging deep relationships with clients and exploring novel technology applications for health-related challenges.
From a scientific medical communications and, specifically, transplant perspective, John has developed a deep knowledge and mastery over his more-than-two-decade career. He has been a key driver for strategy and innovation for clients working in immunosuppression, organ rejection, and efforts to increase awareness of the need for organ donation amongst minority populations. He has participated in more than 20 launches during his career and has had significant experience in hepatology, nephrology, neurology, hematology-oncology, rare diseases, and with complex mechanism of action products in crowded or undifferentiated categories.
Separately, John co-wrote and served as Executive Producer of the award-winning documentary, Honor in the Valley of Tears (2010). His film details the first-person account over 40+ years of A-Company, 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry of the US Army’s 4th Infantry Division—of which his father was a soldier—during their time in Vietnam in 1966-67 and the heroic actions of 1st Sgt. David H. McNerney, who was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1968. The film won jury prizes at six film festivals, was aired on the Documentary Channel, and was enshrined in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Postal Museum along with Sgt. McNerney’s stamp collection upon his death in 2011.
The room was dark. There were no distinguishable sights or sounds. It felt like the beginning, when the earth was formless, the creation story I’d heard over and over as a child in Sunday school. Somehow I’d fallen into the formless void, the black nothingness. I couldn’t tell you where I was or who was there with me, all I knew was that I was there.
I. Was. There.
The last thing I remember before that moment was waiting to be taken into the OR. I’d already crossed the sterile line, through the double doors into the place where I had to do this alone. There was no one to carry me across the threshold, no one to sit beside me and hold my hand as I crossed over from one life to the next. It was only me, alone. I stared at the ceiling and tried not to cry. I concentrated on the sounds of the nursing shift changeover, with the morning nurses shuffling in with their hands full of coffee and the night nurses with their tired eyes grabbing their bags and heading towards the door. Back out of the land of transition, back into the world of the living. Something about waiting in that OR felt like sacred and holy ground. I kept waiting for someone to walk through the doors that I knew, for someone to come and talk to me to relieve my fears, but every moment I waited pressed into me the fact that I was alone for this part.
From what I know now, I was taken from that waiting room to the operating theatre. I was given a liver transplant, reconstructive surgery, a second liver transplant, all within a 4 day window. The liver ultimately inside my body now didn’t belong to my brother, like we’d all originally planned, but had formerly lived inside the body of a stranger who lived across the country from me. I spent weeks on a ventilator, fighting for my life in the subtlest and most obvious of ways.
And then I remember waking up. For all intents and purposes, I was alone for this part too. I had to carry myself over the threshold. I had to cross over all on my own, from one life to the next. The act of healing is a solitary journey. Doctors and nurses and loved ones cared for me but in the end this work was the kind I needed to do alone. And so I woke up, in this formless nothing, and I don’t remember much except that I felt new life stirring inside me. There’s no good way to describe it except for I felt like I was alive again. Right where my liver rests, I could feel what felt like a glowing, amber light that cradled my body from the inside out.
The 23 years I lived with Glycogen Storage Disease — a rare condition where my liver was missing the enzyme needed to turn glycogen into glucose — everyone always told me it didn’t hurt. My body wasn’t in any physical pain from the missing piece of my liver, that only the effects of this deficiency caused trauma. I believed them, after all they were the professionals and I was only a child. I didn’t know what it felt like to be in a body, didn’t know that this constant level of resonance and vibration wasn’t normal. But when I woke up after that surgery, my body still buzzing from all the pain killers and medications they had given me, I knew right away they had been wrong. There had been pain, I had distinctly felt the lack of that existed inside of me up until this point. And I didn’t feel it anymore. I woke up and without even knowing the outside world existed, I knew I existed. I knew I was alive, and I felt light and nothing hurt anymore.
It was like death, but better. It was rebirth.
Mary H. Wu is an ABC (American-Born Chinese) who was born, raised, and still lives in suburbia Westchester County, NY. She graduated with major studies in Psychology and Communications and minor in Sociology from Manhattanville Collegein Purchase, NY.
She enjoys working with people, and has an extensive professional background that includes working at a nursing home, a non-profit Medicaid agency that services children with severe medical illnesses, and presently at one of the regional sites of Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Mary was born with renal agenesis, which caused chronic kidney failure and the start of dialysis at 3-years-old. Her parents, who were immigrants from China, were told that kidney transplantation was the only option to save her life. No one, including her parents, were a viable match as a living kidney donor.
At 10-years-old and as a consequence of lifetime immunosuppressant medication of the transplanted kidneys, Mary was told she had osteoarthritis and avascular necrosis of the left hip, mild scoliosis of her back, and osteopenia of the lumbar spine. It was suspected years later that the core diagnosis leading to bone problems was left hip dysplasia congenital defect, secondary to renal agenesis and chronic kidney failure. She was told that she must undergo a total left hip replacement by the time she was 18-years-old.
Mary is presently 33-year-old and a two-time kidney transplant recipient from deceased donors, receiving her first transplant at 5-years-old and then her second at 12-years-old. In Spring 2013, Mary finally underwent a total left hip replacement surgery by means of an anterior procedural approach. She sought out and is a great supporter of alternative treatments, particularly osteopathy, due to the chronic arthritic pain that was dealt with for twenty years and especially in the last two to five years. In September 2014, she also underwent anpartial hysterectomydue to a suspicious for cancer rapidly growing mass in her uterus.
As a result of her personal experiences at a young age, she has a unique perspective and interest in both the organ donation/transplant and arthritis communities. Mary is greatly involved with various organ donation/transplant organizations, The Arthritis Foundation, and female physical body awareness and issues. She focuses on counseling and supporting organ donor families, pediatric or young adult recipients/candidates and their family/friends, and transplant recipients/candidates of various ethnicities and cultures.
Primarily in the organ donation/transplant community, Mary is always working to increase education, awareness, and especially registration through eclectic and published written articles, connections with political and celebrity figures, and mass and social media outreach. She was sponsored by the Los Angeles-based kidney research organization, UKRO, as their Donate Life Float Rider at the 2012 Rose Bowl Parade in Pasadena, California. Secondary to the organ donation/transplant community, she is active in the OB/BYN and arthritis communities.
In her free time, Mary enjoys swimming, traveling, politics/religion, writing, arts and crafts, and anything food and tea related.