Breakthroughs in Surgery & Pain Management: Meet the 2025 Chancellor’s Innovation Award Winners

Established in 2024, the Chancellor’s Innovation Awards recognize UC San Diego’s top innovators in two categories: Faculty Startup of the Year and Student/Alumni Innovator of the Year. With each winner selected from a highly competitive pool of nominees, the awards highlight the university’s ongoing impact on healthcare, technology and beyond. More than 50 innovators submitted applications this year in pursuit of this highly coveted honor. 

This year’s awardees exemplify just two of the more than 1,000 startups that have launched out of UC San Diego since the university’s founding in 1960. Recently ranked No. 8 in the world among universities powering global innovation by Clarivate, UC San Diego consistently transforms pioneering ideas into practical applications, contributing to one in four new inventions across the ten-campus University of California system. The university is ranked No. 1 in invention disclosures and licenses in the UC system, according to the University of California Technology Commercialization Report 2023.

“Innovation is woven into the fabric of UC San Diego,” said Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla during the event. “We take bold ideas and turn them into real-world solutions that change lives. These awards celebrate the entrepreneurial spirit that makes UC San Diego a global leader in research and innovation.”

Learn more about this year’s awardees—visionary leaders who are tackling some of the most pressing challenges in medicine today.

Illuminating the way for precision surgery

UC San Diego’s Faculty Startup of the Year award was presented to Alume Biosciences Chief Executive Officer and Founder Quyen Nguyen, MD/PhD, a UC San Diego professor of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery and Pharmacology who specializes in Otology-Neurotology.

Alume Biosciences is at the forefront of transforming surgical outcomes with bevonescein (ALM-488/Z-Glow™), a first-in-class peptide-dye conjugate co-invented by the late Nobel Laureate and UC San Diego Professor Roger Tsien (Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 2008) and Dr. Nguyen.

This groundbreaking technology aims to address a critical challenge in modern surgery: reducing the risk of inadvertent nerve injury. Loss of nerve function can be catastrophic. As many as 80% of prostate surgeries result in urinary incontinence or erectile dysfunction because of nerve damage, and up to 25% of patients undergoing head and neck surgeries may experience nerve injury resulting in facial paralysis, hoarseness or shoulder weakness.

By enhancing surgeons’ ability to visualize and identify nerves during intricate procedures, bevonescein has the potential to revolutionize surgical practice and significantly reduce these nerve-related complications. Bevonescein is currently being tested in multiple Phase 3 trials of patients undergoing head and neck surgery at top academic centers throughout the U.S. This innovation could usher in a new era of precision surgery, enhancing both patient safety and clinical outcomes.

"It is an incredible honor to be recognized for a discovery that emerged from the vibrant UC San Diego innovation ecosystem," said Nguyen. "UC San Diego's unwavering dedication to innovation has been the driving force behind bringing our vision for real-time intraoperative fluorescence nerve visualization to life. It’s truly inspiring that the first patient to receive bevonescein was treated at Jacobs Medical Center, just a stone’s throw away from where the idea first took shape. I am profoundly grateful for the opportunity to build upon the pioneering work I began with Dr. Roger Tsien here at UCSD, and to contribute to innovations that will not only elevate surgical precision but also profoundly improve patient outcomes.”

Developing a non-opioid treatment for chronic pain

Founder and CEO of Navega Therapeutics Ana Moreno, PhD ’19, received the Student/Alumni Innovator of the Year award for developing cutting-edge epigenetic gene therapies to combat chronic pain associated with severe diseases, including trigeminal neuralgia (TN).

A debilitating condition affecting approximately 400,000 people in the U.S. and Europe, trigeminal neuralgia causes sudden, severe facial pain. Navega Therapeutics' approach targets a specific sodium channel responsible for pain signal transmission, aiming to provide a long-lasting, non-addictive alternative to opioid treatments.

The therapy requires only a single injection to downregulate the pain-related gene, offering patients a potentially life-changing solution for chronic pain. Beyond trigeminal neuralgia, Navega Therapeutics is also developing treatments for other chronic pain conditions, including erythromelalgia—a rare and intensely painful disorder primarily affecting the feet—as well as rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis.

“I am deeply honored by this recognition and excited about the potential our research holds for paving the way to new, safer pain therapies,” Moreno said. “This was further enabled thanks to the vibrant ecosystem of collaboration and support at UC San Diego, which continues to propel groundbreaking ideas from the lab bench to the bedside."