VFD Helps UCI Partners Unboil an Egg

Steve Zylius / UC Irvine

Earlier this year lead developers of the Vortex Fluidic Device at Flinders University and their research collaborators at University of California, Irvine (UCI) successfully demonstrated the ability to "unboil an egg" by causing denatured, misfolded proteins to refold into their correct, functional, 3D structure. The UCI press release accompanying the announcement, and the efforts of UCI marketing staff led to the story going viral after being taken up by the media and reshared across numerous popular web and media outlets including Scientific American. 

The primary benefits of this capability are expected to be of interest to the pharmaceuticals industry, primarily for refolding therapeutic proteins and improving the production yield of protein therapeutics. Vortex Fluidic Technology, via its parent Flinders Partners has agreements in place with UCI's Office of Technology Alliances for the commercialisation of this application of the VFD technology with UCI running as commercial lead.