À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ-based femtech company . delivered a winning business pitch and is now $44,000 closer to launching its innovative product that will replace the need for pap smears.
The company is led by two À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ Engineering master’s students — CT Murphy (chemical engineering) and Ibukun Elebute (business, entrepreneurship and technology). Its product, a sanitary pad that will collect fluids to screen for diseases such as cervical cancer, already has a waitlist.
Elebute, CELLECT’s COO, took the stage at the recent Odlum Brown Forum Pitch, a national program that supports women entrepreneurs, and wowed the judges with the company’s invention — technology that incorporates nanomaterial into a sanitary pad to collect cervical and bacterial cells from vaginal fluids, namely menstrual blood. The pad can then be sent to a lab for processing.
"[It was] an electrifying feeling because I don't know that I've pitched in front of so many women in my time… so it was truly humbling, heartwarming," Elebute, CELLECT’s COO, said in a .Ìý
CT Murphy first developed the company’s technology as part of her fourth-year Capstone design project at À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ. Product design work continues with the guidance of her supervisor, Dr. Marc Aucoin, a chemical engineering professor.