Home >  Business

Friday, March 15, 2002

Four entrepreneurs have won $115,000 in awards as part of the Pittsburgh Technology Council's Enterprize Business Plan Competition.

The grand prize winner of $25,000 for the first tier of the competition was MRK, Molecular Innovations, which proposed a biotech start-up that developed a family of small molecules that consist of peptides that specifically target the blood supply of tumors but not that of healthy tissues.

The runner-up and winner of $15,000 for the first tier was Fi-Solutions, which provides financial organizations with a suite of technology solutions that enable them to design, sell and fulfill their core banking services through electronic channels.

The second tier winner was ALung Technologies, which won a $50,000 grand prize. Developed over the last 12 years at the Artificial Lung Laboratory of the University of Pittsburgh, it has 19 patents issued with no comparable product on the market or in development.

The second tier runner-up was Cepstral LLC, which received $25,000 for providing text to speech software to the speech application developers market.