Innovation centers request $50 million for research

Two centers of innovation in Kansas — one focused on making biomaterials and the other looking to use technology to enhance plants — are asking the Kansas Bioscience Authority for a combined $50 million in funding.

Both centers presented their requests Thursday to KBA’s investment committee. The committee wanted a few more details before passing along funding recommendations to the entire board.

The committee will meet next Friday to make a decision.

The Kansas Innovation Center for Advanced Plant Design is asking for $20 million to help fund a center that would use advanced technologies to enhance plants, in particular wheat and milo. The center’s goals include developing varieties of wheat and milo that would be more drought-tolerant and high-yielding. It also is looking to develop new foods rich in antioxidants and with fewer allergies. And the center hopes to create plants that will reduce the environmental impact of human waste or require less fertilizer.

The Center of Innovation for Biomaterials in Ortho-paedic Research is requesting $31 million.

The Wichita-based center will look at how aviation composite material can be combined with human tissue to create medical implants used in joint replacements.

The partnerships will draw from people in the aviation industry who are experts in composite materials and a team of researchers lead by Paul Wooley, director of the orthopaedic research institute at Wichita State University.

In his presentation to the committee, Wooley said as the number of joint replacements continue to grow and the age of those receiving implants get younger, the material used is suboptimal. The devices the center would design would replace the solid metal implants currently used and help grow new bone cells.

The KBA can fund five centers of innovation over five years to the tune of $75 million.

In March, KBA approved two centers of innovation. One was for drug delivery, which will receive $5 million over two years, and the other one was for bioenergy, which will receive $4.1 million over two years.