Ten years ago, two pediatric heart specialists approached USC biomedical engineer Gerald Loeb with an idea for a new pacemaker designed for babies, whose hearts are too small for conventional models.

The tiny device wouldn’t require open-chest surgery, sit inside the heart or have wire leads, which often break. Inserted under the breastbone through a small tube, the miniature pacemaker — a little bigger than a vitamin E capsule — would fit securely between the heart and its surrounding pericardial membrane.

Loeb is no stranger to medical innovation. A biomedical engineering professor at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, Loeb developed and patented an artificial fingertip with a complete sense of touch that was licensed to a successful spin-off company from his USC lab. He specializes in electronic devices that connect with the nervous system.

“My career consists of people coming in with crazy ideas and deciding which ones are practical enough to give a shot,” Loeb says.

The pericardial micro pacemaker is getting its shot. He and Yaniv Bar-Cohen, a pediatric heart specialist at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, developed, patented and successfully demonstrated a working model. Bar-Cohen is in talks with pacemaker companies that can bring their device to market. They envision it being used in babies, children and adults.

From pill-sized pacemakers to stem cell therapies and new cancer treatments, USC researchers are collaborating to advance medical innovations, address complex health challenges and improve lives. Trojan researchers across the sciences are seeking to cure blindness, develop new testing options for cancers such as ovarian and breast cancers, and delay the onset of arthritis. They are also finding new ways to detect and slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.

“At USC, we don’t just imagine the future of medicine; we engineer it, we patent it, we launch it,” says Ishwar K. Puri, USC’s senior vice president of research and innovation. “Our researchers are redefining what’s possible. This is what it means to innovate like a Trojan.”

The USC Stevens Center for Innovation plays a pivotal role in many of these efforts, managing the intellectual property generated from more than $1.2 billion in annual research funding across medicine, engineering and the sciences — a scale that reflects USC’s growing influence in shaping the future of health technologies.

“We’re seeing more faculty startups launch with strong science and real commercial potential,” says Erin Overstreet, executive director at the Stevens Center. “We want to make sure we’re helping them build the right foundation — from patents to partnerships.”

A long lead

The path from discovery in the lab to the marketplace is painstakingly slow. Each promising treatment must go through rigorous scientific review before it can advance to clinical trial and eventually to FDA review and approval. According to some estimates, the cost of producing a single FDA-approved drug ranges from $1 billion to $3 billion over a 10- to 15-year period. The odds of success are slim: Only 3%, give or take, win FDA approval.

USC scientists are on the front line of finding ways to accelerate discovery and compress the timeline. They are launching startups to inspire investment and working closely with private industry.

USC’s Vsevolod “Seva” Katritch is using AI and computational methods to screen billions of compounds to disrupt the earliest — and most time-consuming — phase of drug discovery: the identification of “hits” and development of “leads.” He and Charles McKenna, professor of chemistry and pharmaceutical sciences, host workshops to encourage AI drug discovery. Annie Wong- Beringer, associate dean for research at the USC Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, is using organon- a-chip technology (where cells from specific organs, such as the heart, are grown on silicone wafers) to screen potential drugs for issues such as liver toxicity earlier in the process.

“USC is not only publishing discoveries but actively developing therapies and spinning out biotech companies,” says Steve Kay, who directs the USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience and is the co-director of the USC Norris Center for Cancer Drug Development. “We’re building an ecosystem that turns basic science into treatments — especially for diseases affecting our local population, like pancreatic cancer, leukemia and Alzheimer’s.”

“Historically, universities stopped at publishing discovery research — insights into pathways, cell types, animal models — while pharma took it from there,” continues Kay, a University and Provost Professor of Neurology, Biomedical Engineering and Quantitative and Computational Biology. “What we’re doing now is moving our discoveries further along the commercialization path before handing them off. That means more value retained at USC and more ownership for inventors.”

Here’s a sample of USC-licensed startups, drugs and devices:

• Be Biopharma has licensed technology developed by microbiologist and Keck School of Medicine Distinguished Professor Paula Cannon to edit the genes of the body’s own B cells to express therapeutic antibodies for indications including cancer, autoimmune disease, infectious disease and central nervous system applications.
• AcuraStem, a startup co-founded by Justin Ichida, is developing drugs to treat ALS and frontotemporal dementia. In late 2023, AcuraStem signed an exclusive licensing agreement with pharmaceutical giant Takeda to bring the discoveries to market.
• Synchronicity Pharma, a biotech startup co-founded by Steve Kay, has completed early safety trials in humans for a compound that selectively attacks glioblastoma — a deadly form of brain cancer — stem cells. The compound, SHP1705, targets the circadian clock proteins hijacked by glioblastoma stem cells, impairing the cancer cells’ ability to survive and grow. Circadian clock proteins regulate the body’s sleep-wake cycle and other daily rhythms.
• Plurocart, a startup founded by Denis Evseenko at Keck School of Medicine, is developing a “regenerative pouch” to replace cartilage that’s been damaged by a fall, sports injury or other trauma. The pouch contains hundreds of thousands of young cartilage cells derived from stem cells. “It’s a little reparative structure that you can surgically deliver right into the cartilage defect,” Evseenko says.

 

Interdisciplinary Breakthroughs

The famed inventor Nikola Tesla is believed to have said, “Be alone — that is the secret to invention.”

For Trojan inventors like Charles Liu, the opposite is true: Their secret to invention is to work as a team. Even though the process may take years, licensure does not dim Liu’s enthusiasm for helping patients recover function from brain injuries or diseases.

Co-founder of USC’s Neurorestoration Center and professor of clinical neurological surgery, urology and surgery at the Keck School of Medicine, Liu specializes in the creation of implantable devices that respond in real time to abnormal brain activity. His prosthetics for the brain are designed to help patients who suffer from brain conditions such as epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, memory loss and more.

Through a combination of engineering and medicine, he is a healer in the rapidly emerging field of biomedicine known as neuroprosthetics. “The hope is that neuroprosthetics will become an important tool for functional neurorestoration in human patients, which will work in synergy with other strategies such as regenerative medicine and neuromodulation-enhanced learning,” Liu says. “The hope is that all aspects of human neurological disabilities can be restored beyond what conventional healing and rehabilitation can achieve.”

Associate Professor of Neurological Surgery and of Biomedical Engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering Dong Song, who often collaborates with Liu, focuses on addressing brain health issues through engineering.

For instance, he is working on a brain prosthesis to restore episodic memory in patients who suffer from memory-impairing conditions such as neurological disease or injuries.

Using a computational model, his team records neural signals from one part of the hippocampus and stimulates another to rebuild broken memory pathways by using implantable brain devices.

“Within the next five to 10 years, our goal is for this device to transition from proof-of-concept studies to broader clinical trials, ultimately providing a therapeutic option for conditions like traumatic brain injury and early-stage Alzheimer’s disease,” Song says.

Getting to Yes

At USC, some scientists bring their early ideas to the Stevens Center, which helps turn rough prototypes into patented devices. That process often extends to launching a startup company where strong intellectual property can give investors the confidence to fund the testing and development needed to bring an invention to market.

In recent years, the center has refined the way it handles technology transfer — the process of moving university research into the real world. Since joining the center in January 2024, Overstreet has emphasized investing early in high-quality patent applications and being more selective about which inventions to pursue patent protections for.

“We don’t try to patent every idea that comes through our office,” she explains. “Instead, after a careful review, we move forward with patents on about two-thirds of the inventions we see. For those, we put in the work to draft applications that clearly define what makes the invention new and protectable. Strong patents not only stand up if challenged — they are also more attractive to companies and investors, making them far more licensable assets for USC and our inventors.”

The center’s licensing team now numbers more than 20 professionals who work closely with faculty to negotiate startup-friendly agreements. Many deals begin with low-cost, short-term options to reduce risk for early-stage companies. Later, they are upgraded to full licenses once funding is secured.

“Our job is to reduce friction,” Overstreet says. “We want to get to yes, and we want startups to succeed.”

The Stevens Center oversees licensing of all technologies at USC, including diagnostics and medical devices. Companies like CpG Diagnostics and Regenerative Patch Technologies (RPT) — co-founded by Mark Humayun of USC Viterbi, the USC Roski Eye Institute and Keck School of Medicine — are part of USC’s expanding innovation footprint. RPT developed an implantable retinal patch for restoring vision in people with age-related macular degeneration. It remains one of the university’s most cited examples of therapeutic success.

Recent studies, backed in part by the taxpayer-supported California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, indicate the patch appears regenerative, not just slowing the degenerative disease but also reversing its course. Clinical studies are underway.

Signals of Strength

As the life-sciences industry shifts toward personalized and cell-based therapies, Overstreet believes USC is better positioned than ever to rise among the top institutions for innovation. Recent deals with well-capitalized companies, such as Be Biopharma, reflect a maturing pipeline of faculty-led ventures — and illustrate an unrelenting determination that is a hallmark of USC research.

“These are signals of strength,” she says. “They show what’s possible when you combine groundbreaking research with strong intellectual property and the right partnerships.”

With more than $1.2 billion in annual research activity and a sharpened focus on translational outcomes, Trojan inventors are laying the groundwork for a future where USC discoveries save and improve more lives, faster than before.

Since 1929, USC and UCLA have been fierce rivals in football. The famed Bruin football coach Red Sanders once said that the USC-UCLA rivalry isn’t a matter of life or death: “It’s more important than that.”

But when it comes to actual matters of life and death — such as finding groundbreaking cures for disease or recovering from natural disasters — the two athletic adversaries put aside competition to accelerate discovery and confront challenges.

“USC and UCLA have a long history of collaboration in researching and helping to solve the most complex problems facing our city and our world,” says Ishwar K. Puri, USC’s senior vice president of research and innovation. “Trojans and Bruins may be foes on the football field, but in operating rooms, science labs and academic centers across the two campuses, we share knowledge that reflects the innovative spirit and interdisciplinary excellence of these two leading Los Angeles institutions.”

“Los Angeles is a city built on collaboration, where universities, scientists, researchers, doctors, engineers and artists, Bruins and Trojans intersect every day,” says Roger Wakimoto, UCLA’s vice chancellor for research and creative activities. “While there is a fierce rivalry on the field (Go Bruins!), UCLA embraces that spirit to advance research, innovation and public service that saves lives and improves lives across Los Angeles and the world.”

The following USC-UCLA collaborations offer a window into the depth and breadth of cooperative research and other joint activities unfolding on both campuses — and the magnitude of what’s possible when crosstown rivals join forces.

 

1. Performing the world’s first bladder transplant

In May, surgeons from Keck Medicine of USC and UCLA Health performed the world’s first bladder transplant in a human at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. The groundbreaking surgery — a combined kidney and bladder transplant — was co-led by Inderbir Gill, founding executive director of USC Urology, and Nima Nassiri, urologic transplant surgeon and director of the UCLA Vascularized Composite Bladder Allograft Transplant Program.

Gill and Nassiri, who was Gill’s former resident in urology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, worked together for over four years prior to the surgery to develop new surgical techniques and perform preclinical procedures at Keck Medical Center of USC and OneLegacy, Southern California’s organ procurement organization. Their innovations promise to revolutionize the way urologists treat a select subset of patients with debilitating bladder conditions and significantly enhance their quality of life.

“The patient is now over six months out [of surgery] and continues to do very well,” says Gill, chairman and Distinguished Professor of Urology, and the Shirley and Donald Skinner Chair in Urologic Cancer Surgery. “This shows the durability of the operation to date. Dr. Nassiri and I are still collaborating. We are planning to perform the next bladder transplant soon.”

 

2. Predicting psychological distress

Depression has been called a “silent killer” because its symptoms can be masked or hidden from loved ones, sometimes with tragic consequences. Aiming to better identify people at risk of suicide, an interdisciplinary team of researchers from USC and UCLA is working to develop cognitive science tools to detect depression and suicidal ideation using neuro- and biobehavioral signals. The goal is to develop automated screening tools that help clinicians apply precision medicine to address everyone’s unique mental health situation.

Called PRECOG, the project is led by Shri Narayanan, Niki and Max Nikias Chair in Engineering and University Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science at USC Viterbi. Supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the project, initiated in 2023, is inspired by the need to support service members, veterans and the broader public.

“It has been a tremendous fortune to work with UCLA colleagues all driven by the common goal of understanding the human condition across the lifespan and creating veritable means for supporting it,” says Narayanan, who has joint appointments in linguistics and psychology at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and pediatrics and otolaryngology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. “Critically, my colleagues at UCLA, leaders in the domains of mental health and well-being, have not only enriched our interdisciplinary engineering research through keen and deep scientific and clinical insights but have also been wonderful mentors to scores of students on our collective teams.”

 

3. Rebuilding after the wildfires

Following the devastating January wildfires in Pacific Palisades and Altadena, the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate partnered with the UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate and the nonprofit Urban Land Institute Los Angeles to create a comprehensive plan to help guide rebuilding efforts and strengthen the region’s long-term resilience. The partners convened approximately 100 leading experts — including faculty from USC and UCLA — specializing in land use, real estate, infrastructure and economic development to develop a roadmap for recovery.

In March, they published the report Project Recovery: Rebuilding Los Angeles after the January 2025 Wildfires. Continually updated to reflect new developments, the report addresses everything from labor and supply chain issues to the troubled property insurance market and offers strategic recommendations for helping affected areas to rebuild faster, more affordably and with greater climate adaptations.

“Faculty at USC and UCLA are citizens of Los Angeles, and when tragedies happen, citizens come together,” says Richard Green, a team lead on Project Recovery, professor at the USC Price School of Public Policy and the USC Marshall School of Business, director of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate and chair of the Wilbur H. Smith III Department of Real Estate Development at USC Price. “Both universities have great strengths that complement each other.”

 

4. Evaluating health in an aging population

How do life circumstances and environmental exposures affect our biology and our health as we age? That’s one of the central questions that researchers at the USC/UCLA Center on Biodemography and Population Health seek to answer. Founded in 1999 and sponsored by the National Institute on Aging, the center is a partnership between the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology and UCLA Health Geriatric Medicine.

One example of the impactful population health research is a recent study led by the center’s co-director Jennifer Ailshire, professor of gerontology and sociology at USC Leonard Davis, which found that greater exposure to extreme heat may accelerate biological aging in older adults.

“USC and UCLA have collaborated for more than 25 years and have changed the field of demography of aging,” says the center’s co-director Eileen Crimmins, University Professor and AARP Chair in Gerontology at USC Leonard Davis. “We will continue to be stronger together as we have been in the past.”

 

5. Cooling the city with shade

In Los Angeles, where the number of extreme heat days is projected to increase 31% by 2050, strategies to cool the hottest neighborhoods are urgently needed. Shade — whether from a tree, canopy, awning or bus shelter — is one of the most effective, low-cost ways to reduce heat risk.

ShadeLA, led by USC Dornsife Public Exchange in collaboration with UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, unites civic, academic and community partners to expand urban tree canopy and shade infrastructure in key public and community spaces. Launched in July with participation by the city of Los Angeles, County of Los Angeles Chief Sustainability Office, L.A. Metro and the Los Angeles Organizing Committee for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games (LA28), the campaign aims to build lasting heat resilience for Angelenos as major sporting events like the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games approach.

“ShadeLA is stronger because USC and UCLA are working side by side,” says Kate Weber, executive director of USC Dornsife Public Exchange. “UCLA’s research depth, especially on urban heat and shade mapping, complements USC’s strengths in applied problem-solving and urban design innovation. A regional effort of this ambition is only possible because two major universities are joining forces — aligning research, data and design to deliver real benefits for the communities we call home.”

 

6. Immersing in digital humanities

Earlier this month, the third annual Immersive Technologies and Cultural Heritage (ITCH) Symposium took place in Leavey Library. The symposium, co-sponsored by USC Dornsife and the Ahmanson Lab at the USC Libraries, features presentations of immersive digital humanities projects created by scholars in archaeology, urban history, ecology and other disciplines. Attendees also discuss the promise and challenges of using technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and extended reality (XR) to reimagine cultural heritage research, teaching and engagement.

In previous years, the event has gathered scholars from around the globe. But this year, presenters came exclusively from USC and UCLA, and the UCLA XR Initiative served as a co-host. “The goal for this year was to strengthen the ‘crosstown’ pathways for conversation and collaboration,” says Amy Braden, director of programs for the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute, the USC Mellon Humanities in a Digital World, and USC Mellon Humanities and the University of the Future grants. She is one of a team of co-organizers that includes Ahmanson Lab Director Curtis Fletcher, Ahmanson Lab Project Coordinator Mats Borges and Sean Fraga, assistant professor of environmental studies and history at USC Dornsife. They work in partnership with UCLA colleagues Francesca Albrezzi and Joy Guey.

“The UCLA XR Initiative shares our goals of fostering AR/VR/XR projects that bring together collaborative groups of students, faculty and staff for creative solutions, new forms of storytelling and research engagement,” Braden says. “AR/XR/VR technologies advance rapidly and projects require collaboration, so working with partners at UCLA is essential to keeping pace and maximizing the potential of our resources.”

7. Relieving pain without drugs

Chronic pain has a severe impact on quality of life, often leading to reliance on addictive painkillers with severe side effects. Surgically implanted electrical stimulators offer an alternative by stimulating the spinal cord to block pain signals from reaching the brain. But these devices can be bulky and are often hardwired to batteries that must be replaced frequently, requiring invasive surgeries.

Researchers in the Zhou Lab at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, teamed up with the Jun Chen Group at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering to develop a groundbreaking wireless implant for personalized chronic pain relief that sidesteps these problems. The new device is designed to bend and twist with the spine’s movement and has a wireless power supply, eliminating the need for batteries. It also harnesses machine learning algorithms to customize treatment for each patient.

Led by Qifa Zhou — Zohrab A. Kaprielian Fellow in Engineering and professor of biomedical engineering at USC Viterbi, and professor of ophthalmology at Keck School of Medicine — the research group’s study published in Nature Electronics in May demonstrated that the implant provided effective pain relief in rodents.

 

8. Finding a path forward on homelessness

Los Angeles County has the nation’s largest unsheltered homeless population: approximately 47,000 people, according to official estimates. The instability of their housing can make it difficult to track individuals over time and assess their needs and the risks they face.

An ongoing research partnership between the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work and the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health uses mobile phone surveys to monitor the health, housing and service needs of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness in Los Angeles County. Data collected by the project, known as PATHS (Periodic Assessment of Trajectories of Housing, Homelessness, and Health Study), is used to inform policy decisions and interventions that improve outcomes for this vulnerable population.

Led by co-principal investigators Benjamin Henwood, Albert G. and Frances Lomas Feldman Professor of Social Policy and Health at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, and Randall Kuhn at UCLA Fielding, the team was recently awarded $3.4 million by the NIH to expand their study. With the new funding, the researchers will use PATHS to examine the impact of encampment resolution programs that connect people living in encampments to interim housing such as hotel rooms and offer pathways to permanent housing.

 

9. Extending years spent in good health

As scientists seek to prevent disease and prolong the human lifespan, a pressing challenge has emerged: helping people live not just longer lives, but healthier and more independent ones. In October, the National Institute on Aging awarded a $6.5 million, five-year grant to USC, UCLA and Cedars-Sinai to create a new Los Angeles research hub where extending “healthspan,” the portion of life spent in good health, is a core part of the mission.

The Los Angeles Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center will focus on “translational geroscience,” research that turns discoveries about the biology of aging into practical treatments that prevent disease and increase healthspan. Pinchas Cohen, dean of the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology and Distinguished Professor of Gerontology, Medicine and Biological Sciences, serves as a co-director of the center alongside fellow co-director Jonathan Wanagat, a geriatrician at UCLA Health. The center is led by principal investigator Sara Espinoza, professor of medicine, director of the Center for Translational Geroscience, and co-director of the Diabetes and Aging Center at Cedars-Sinai.

Combining the expertise and resources of these three institutional partners offers a significant advantage in improving the quality of life of older adults. Their collaboration will also be part of a national consortium of 15 research institutions across the country conducting trials on aging.

 

10. Playing games for glory

The gridiron isn’t the only place where Trojans and Bruins face off each fall. They also compete on the gaming screen. Established in 2020, E-Conquest is an annual video game tournament hosted by USC Games, the university’s game design program, in collaboration with UCLA ESports.

“It’s Trojan pride on the line in electronic format,” says Jim Huntley, associate professor in the USC School of Cinematic Arts’ Interactive Media & Games Division and head of marketing for USC Games.

Traditionally, E-Conquest is held during Conquest Week, the Thursday before the USC-UCLA football game, though this year’s event was held early on Friday, Nov. 21, due to the Thanksgiving holiday. Around 50 players from each school converged on the USC University Park Campus to compete across eight esports titles in front of hundreds of in-person and livestream spectators on the USC Games and USCesports Twitch channels. The competition titles included PUBG Mobile, League of Legends, Marvel Rivals, Overwatch, Rocket League, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Tetris and Valorant.

The USC team led the UCLA team in three of the eight titles and tied them in Valorant. Though it wasn’t the sweep USC hoped for, Saturday’s football game offers the chance for Trojan conquest on the field.