Biomedical and Entrepreneurship Training for Aging (BETA)

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The proportion of the US population of ≥65 years of age is expected to reach 22% by 2050. Healthcare innovations have played a crucial role in improving the health and well-being of the elderly population. Nevertheless, a major gap persists between academia and industry that must be bridged to drive innovation and commercialization of new drugs, devices, and technologies to combat age-related disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Alzheimer’s Disease related dementia (ADRD). Graduate students and post-doctoral trainees pursuing advanced training in age-related diseases constitute a vital work force capable of filling this gap; however, current training programs do not provide the business and communication skills needed to empower these trainees to fill this void. The overarching objective of the application is to grow the scientific work force promoting healthy aging through the creation of the Biomedical Entrepreneurship Training for Aging (BETA) program. MU is ideally suited to serve as the hub of an educational program focusing on graduate students and postdoctoral fellows pursuing careers in aging-related disciplines, as it co-localizes on one campus a school of medicine, college of engineering, school of health professions, college of nursing, school of journalism, and the comprehensive UM Health System. MU has outstanding programs that support entrepreneurial education, including the Life Science Innovation & Entrepreneurship Graduate Program, the Midwest Biomedical Accelerator Consortium, an NIH-funded Research Evaluation and Commercialization Hub (REACH), a Coulter Biomedical Accelerator, and the MU Life Science Business Incubator. The UM System, with >70,000 students and hundreds of graduate programs, provides a robust source of BETA trainees, including the MU Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Graduate Training Program, University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) Doctoral Program in Applied Cognitive &Brain Sciences, University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL) Behavioral Neuroscience PhD program, and the Missouri S&T (MS&T) Graduate Program in Biological Sciences. MU also has a long-standing partnership with Lincoln University, an HBU that will source students to enable diversity and inclusion. BETA leverages the commercialization and educational expertise of the statewide UM System to create a network that recruits and mentors a diverse array of trainees and provides them with the biomedical innovation and communication skills needed to become highly productive members of the scientific work force devoted to improving the health and wellbeing of the aging population.