Research by Tracy and Clary Selected for Chancellor’s Innovation Fund 

The Chancellor’s Innovation Fund has selected six more research projects to support this coming year.

NC State University research helps turn today’s ideas into tomorrow’s solutions. 

That’s core to our land-grant mission. The Chancellor’s Innovation Fund (CIF), a competitive internal seed fund, has proven to be a powerful way we support that mission. 

Chancellor Randy Woodson established the CIF in 2010 to help more NC State research bridge the gap between public and private funding — and ultimately turn it into technology that both benefits consumers and addresses pressing problems.

Helping Heart Surgeons

If the heart’s mitral valve seal gets loose, blood can leak or pump in the wrong direction. Severe blood leakage, called regurgitation, causes the heart to overwork — and can lead to heart failure. When leaks become severe, many patients opt for a surgically implanted ring or clip that reinforces the “annulus” around the valve, making backward blood flow much less likely. Medical advancements have made these procedures gradually less invasive, but for some patients, surgery is still too risky. 

MSE Professor and University Faculty Scholar Joseph Tracy, a professor of materials science and engineering, might have found a way to make surgery a safer option for many more of the millions of Americans who have mitral valve regurgitation. Together with Dr. Muath Bishawi, a cardiac surgeon and clinical researcher at Duke University’s School of Medicine, Tracy and his now-former student Matt Clary, who recently earned his Ph.D. in materials science and engineering, have developed a magnetic device that could make it simpler for surgeons to anchor a metal ring around the mitral valve’s annulus.  

A large part of open-heart surgery’s inherent risk stems from the need to stop a patient’s heart temporarily. The team’s device is designed to be implanted while the heart is beating.  

With CIF and 2ndF support, the researchers will finish developing a functional prototype and also assess the FDA’s regulatory path to eventual clinical trials. 

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Read about the five other projects supported by the 2024 Chancellor’s Innovation Fund in the original article in Entrepreneurship News.