Project summary

We are a 100% volunteer student team from Texas A&M. We are building CardioGel, a new injectable smart gel for heart attack survivors.

After a heart attack, the heart gets weak. Current treatments use static fillers. It's basically like putting a rigid cast inside a beating heart. It stops the heart from relaxing and honestly makes things worse.

CardioGel adapts to the heartbeat. It stiffens to support the heart, then softens in under 0.5 seconds to let blood in. We already have free lab access at our university. We just need $15,000 for raw materials to prove this works in the lab, which will help us get bigger grants later.

What are this project's goals? How will you achieve them?

Our goal is simple: get into the lab and prove our smart gel works within 6 months. If we prove this concept, it's our ticket to start animal trials and eventually partner with big medical companies.

We have 3 main hurdles:

1. Nailing the recipe: We need to make sure we can produce our gel consistently. If we can't make it reliably, it can never be manufactured at a large scale.

2. The physical tests: We need to prove the gel softens in under half a second, and that it sticks firmly to wet tissue without slipping off.

3. Proving it's safe: We will put the gel directly on living heart cells to make sure it is completely non-toxic.

As for the money: because we have free lab access at Texas A&M, our overhead is basically zero. 100% of the funding goes straight into buying the chemical reagents and test kits for these steps. We don't have fancy offices.

How will you know it worked?

We'll know we nailed it if our lab tests prove three specific things:

• It has to beat the clock: The gel must soften in under half a second once the pressure is off. If it does that, it means we fixed the main physical flaw in all the current treatments.

• It can't slip: It has to stick firmly to wet, slippery heart tissue. We'll literally test this by pulling on it to see how much force it takes to detach.

• It has to be safe: We'll expose the gel to living heart cells. If the cells survive (we're aiming for over 90% survival), that proves it's non-toxic.

If we hit these 3 targets, we'll have the hard data we need. That data is the key to unlocking huge NIH/SBIR grants and getting meetings with major medical companies. Basically, it's how we turn a cool idea into real, proven science.

How will this funding be used?

Just to be completely clear: none of us take a salary. Every single penny goes straight into the lab.

Here is exactly where the $15,000 will go:

• $4,500 for raw chemical ingredients. This is enough to make over 10 test batches so we can nail down the gel recipe.

• $4,000 for testing supplies and sensors. We use these to measure how fast the gel softens and how hard it grips the tissue.

• $3,500 for safety kits. We use these to test the gel on living heart cells to make sure it's non-toxic.

• $3,000 for basic lab gear. This covers things like sterile medical syringes, petri dishes, and vials.

Bottom line: no overhead costs, no fancy offices, and no executive paychecks. Your money literally just buys the physical materials we need to prove this technology works.

Who is on your team? What's your track record on similar projects?

We are a 6-person student team at Texas A&M. We don't run this like a school club. We treat it like a real startup. Everyone has a specific job, and we don't step on each other's toes.

Here is the breakdown:

• Kai-Wen Liu (CEO): That's me. I handle fundraising, IP strategy, and partnerships. I don't touch the lab equipment. My job is to build the machine that funds the science.

• Stephen Sam (COO): He runs the business side, handling our financial models, contracts, and licensing plans.

• Aurora Jiang (CTO): She calls the shots in the lab. She designs experiments, writes protocols, and leads regulatory planning.

• Angelina Nguyen & Kael Stafford (Chemical Engineers): Angelina handles secret synthesis, while Kael runs physical testing. They actually work under a blind testing rule. Kael tests the gel by sample number only, so he never sees the secret formula.

• Abhisri Dasari (Computer Engineer): He builds the data tools and AI models to make sure our research is efficient and looks good for investors.

Our track record: We move fast. Even as students, we already filed our U.S. Provisional Patent Application back on October 18, 2026. We were also accepted into the NSF I-Corps program for Spring 2027 to help push this toward the market.

We're not doing this alone. We have heavy hitters advising us: Prof. Akbulut and Prof. Monroe (for cardiac research), Richard (our entrepreneurship VP), and Finberg (our SBIR grant advisor). We've already written all our lab plans. The second we get funded, we are ready to start.

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails?

We are an early-stage biotech project. Failure is a real possibility, and we aren't going to pretend otherwise. Here is what could realistically go wrong, and how we handle it:

1. The gel just doesn't work in the lab. If our formulation fails the lab tests, we fail. But the outcome isn't a total loss. We will have generated highly specific data on what doesn't work. We will use that data to pivot to different chemical ratios. Even a failed experiment saves other researchers time.

2. The team falls apart. We are students. People graduate, and classes get hard. This is our biggest non-technical risk. To mitigate this, we already brought our faculty advisors (Prof. Akbulut and Prof. Monroe) on board. If we lose team members, they can take over lab oversight. Plus, we already filed the patent, so the IP is protected no matter what happens to us.

3. Big MedTech companies say no. If we get the data, but companies like Medtronic decide to build their own gel, we pivot. We can take our data to completely different markets (like veterinary heart repair or orthopedics), or focus on selling directly to smaller hospitals.

The Bottom Line: The financial risk here is incredibly low. Because Texas A&M gives us free lab space and we take $0 in salaries, this $15,000 goes 100% into physical materials. Worst case, the experiment fails but the scientific community gets valuable data. Best case, we find a cure for heart failure. It's a very low-cost bet with a massive potential payoff.

How much money have you raised in the last 12 months, and from where?

Honestly? We've raised exactly $0 in outside money over the past 12 months.

So, how have we survived? Three simple reasons:

1. We pay for it ourselves. We've been scraping together our own personal savings to cover the patent filing and basic costs. We haven't given away a single piece of equity to anyone yet.

2. Texas A&M gives us free lab space. We have free access to university labs and equipment. This saves us tens of thousands of dollars in rent and machine costs.

3. We are grinding on grants. Instead of burning investor cash, we literally built a tracker of 108 non-dilutive grant pipelines (like SBIR) and we are applying to them every single week.

Basically, we aren't a bloated startup. We are a bunch of broke students who just want to build this. A $15,000 grant from Manifund won't pay for some fancy office or salaries. It goes straight into buying the exact chemicals we need to run the tests.