BME senior’s elevator pitch is audience favorite

Laura Paulsen, a BME senior, won the Audience Choice award and was an overall runner-up at the 2009 MIT $100K Elevator Pitch Competition. Laura pitched a product called “The Apex,” developed in a BME Design Team course, with a catchy Indiana Jones-themed presentation.

Cryoablation, or freezing, is an effective and minimally-invasive treatment for prostate cancer, but one that too often adversely affects the cavernous nerves, or “sex nerves,” leaving the man cancer-free but impotent. The Apex protects those nerves during the procedure. Laura and her colleagues received a provisional patent in March and are now trying to sell or license the device to a biomedical device company. Prostate cancer treatment is a $3.4 billion market.