The new medical device aims to minimise surgery complications and enhance the wound healing process after surgical manipulation.
Device developer Greg Walker, a lecturer at the university's School of Pharmacy, is the 2012 winner of the annual Proof of Concept Grant competition, run by the University of Otago's commercialisation arm, Otago Innovation Ltd.
"This is a real highlight early in my academic career," Dr Walker said.
He was passionate about developing cheaper medical devices to benefit more people.
Neither a detailed description nor a photograph of the device is available, because securing intellectual property (IP) rights and patents are the next crucial steps in the its development.
The device aims to reduce "intimal hyperplasia" - the inflammatory response of a blood vessel to injury - during surgery.
Dr Walker said the development was considered significant because vessel injury was an important cause of vascular surgeries, such as bypass grafts, failing and could lead to a range of other surgery problems.
He said, in an interview yesterday, the $50,000 would go towards more "proof of concept" development before commercial partners were sought. Partners could include government agencies or medical device companies.
He estimated "tens of millions of dollars" could be spent to get the device to market, but highlighted its cost was expected to be about 10% of competing technology. It could potentially be manufactured in New Zealand.
About $10,000 had been spent so far and up to $300,000 would be required to go from the concept stage towards first trials stage.
A "best case" scenario, given international trials and regulatory hurdles, would be to have the first formal clinical trials under way in three to five years, Dr Walker said.
The idea for the device came from the university's Department of Surgery having asked Dr Walker earlier this year to lend his experience to an attempt to minimise post-surgery complications.
The sixth annual Proof of Concept competition is run by Otago Innovation, whose role is to commercialise intellectual property from university research discoveries, to encourage researchers to think about commercial applications of their work.
Chief executive of Otago Innovation Colin Dawson said they were particularly impressed by Dr Walker's idea because it had the ability to tackle a major surgical problem.
"It's also an innovation that could scale easily and be developed cost effectively."
He said New Zealand had an untapped source of leading medical research and biotechnology innovation, with the highest rate of publications per research dollar spent in the world.
Otago Innovation will work with Dr Walker to provide additional resources, including advice on the IP position and the potential path to market.
"Proof of concept trials and experimental surgical models are the first step, with patent protection also a key milestone," Mr Dawson said.
Dr Walker, who was brought up in Southland and Otago, gained his PhD from the School of Pharmacy at Otago University in 1999. He then worked in academic institutes and companies in Austria, Germany and the UK before returning in January this year to Dunedin as a lecturer in the School of Pharmacy. His previous position was research and development manager at a medical device start-up company in the UK.
