Technology Transfer and the Life-Sciences! By Ron Peterson

Bethesda, MD, USA (240) 308 0337, tarrows@verizon.net

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 Technology Transfer and the Life-Sciences 1.1.08.doc 

The Swiss firm, GeneProt, took technology that was spun-out of the University of Geneva, skipped the venture capital route, and raised $120 million from institutional investors.  Bill Gates licensed the operating system DOS (for $50,000, then QDOS) from Seattle Computer Products in 1981, supplied it to IBM for their new PC, and today is worth roughly $50 billion. Arguably the best way to form a new biotechnology company (or any technology company for that matter) is to transfer a technology that has already been largely developed and form a company by adding management, marketing and other needed talent. Requiring that years be spent in developing a technology before its effectiveness can be demonstrated is generally too risky an undertaking for most of the investment community. TT is the optimal way to develop a new company—let the extensive R&D be performed elsewhere—add the entrepreneurial skills to grow a firm. This is the way to hit the ground running and a proven way to attract good company.

This report is in two sections. The first is a compilation of resources that can be tapped by entrepreneurs seeking to find technologies and other resources as the basis for a company, or larger organizations looking to expand. The second deals with the subject of TT generally. Since knowledge is more and more globally distributed, resources from around the world are noted.

A newsletter on technology transfer is available at www.technologytransfertactics.com, a new and comprehensive source for both interesting technologies that are available for licensing and news for technology transfer executives everywhere. Dr. Leslie Norins publishes the weekly and brings a passion for new tech companies that is transcendent.

Part I Tech Transfer resources.  The organizations that exist to help you adapt life-sciences technology and form new companies number in the thousands. Our intent is to illustrate a small portion of those resources to get you started.

GENERAL INFORMATION

BioCommerce Week (www.biocommerceweek.com) is a weekly that collects business intelligence in the greater molecular biology market. Though pricey the case studies, analyses and constant emphasis on evolving markets make it a good investment. TheChilli.com is a UK-based newsletter that is free and has a terrific mix of business and technology articles. Just a few of the pieces at www.thechilli.com include: Impressing Investors, Strategic Alliances, PR for startups, etc. A list of university startups with a short description of the technology and contact info is maintained at http:ncet2.org by coordinators drawn from three universities and the National Council of Entrepreneurial Tech Transfer.

The World Organization for Collaborations in the Pharmaceutical industry (W.O.C.P.) is a new organization, set up in response to the need in the pharma and biotech industry for alliances, including formal relationships and partnering such as licensing, research collaborations, and technology transfer deals (including university and academic institution - industry collaborations), as well as corporate transactions around the world (www.WOCPorg). TransPharma (www.transpharma.biz) was an international publication focused on the TT process in health and biosciences – how basic research discoveries are turned into commercially valuable products in a multi-billion dollar global industry. The Journal examined the processes that take research from discovery through to commercial application in the bioscience industries, based on basic and clinical research sciences (pharmacology, immunology, genetics, genomics and proteomics), biotechnology, bioinformatics, medical devices and diagnostics. TransPharma’s coverage included: Research and Technology; Government and Regions; Services and Practices; Finance and Investment; and Industry and Markets.

Pharmalicensing is an online integrated tool for future biopharmaceutical deal-making. Information on licensing, funding, and special reports such as evaluating prospective alliances, becoming a partner and special studies for sale are listed at (www.pharmalicensing.com). www.pharma-transfer.com is a collection of pharmaceutical R&D data that abstracts and summarizes drug development and innovations from commercial and academic groups. www.fiercebiotech.com is a news service that also tracks VC investments in life-sciences while www.genomeweb.com provides daily news and analysis on biotech developments along with a set of targeted newsletters. The Journal of Commercial Biotechnology is a scholarly publication for bioscience business professionals, with excellent articles on TT, financing, IP and commercialization, at www.henrystewart.com/journals. www.questia.com has an online library of books and articles including a number on technology and innovation. Yali Friedman’s website http://biotech.about.com has a set of references to biotech business development including classes (mini-MBA in Biotechnology, Strategies and guidance for communicating, etc.) articles (Valuing biotechnology companies; Finding Funding; Biotechnology Business Models, etc.) and links. www.bioportfolio.com is a leading news service for biotech developments including jobs and stocks as well as TT information. www.burrillandco.com is the website of a prominent investment banking firm that helps give you an updated pace of the biotech market and insights into strategic partnerships including thirty leading industry databases with a very active listing service. The searchable databases describe recent deals.

Knowledge Express brings together nearly thirty industry profiles along with life science intelligence, government and university R&D, drug pipelines, FDA approvals, clinical trials, agreements, royalty rates, patents and more at www.knowledgeexpress.com. This subscription-based service is used around the world to permit organizations to list their technologies and profiles without charge, and has become a staple in TT offices. More pricey but with terrific business value is www.recap.com, a service that allows you to search 18,000 biotech strategic alliances, progress of clinical trials, financing, contact information, employment agreements, etc.

 BioProcess International bridges the scientific and business worlds at www.bioprocessintl.com. Similarly, Modern Drug Discovery reports on scientific and technical topics as well as recent expansion of coverage on the business of drug R&D at (www.moderndrugdiscovery.com). Nature Biotechnology includes a section on recent patents, at www.bdbiosciences.com, and Genetic Engineering News (www.genengnews.com), Bio-IT World (www.bio-itworld.com), Genome Technology Magazine (www.genome-technology.com) and www.NewScientist.com are treasure troves for developing new bio-businesses that need to be individually checked by any serious researcher. Bioentrepreneur is Nature Publishing Group’s portal dedicated to scientists interested in commercializing their research at www.nature.com/bioent. Some of the recent articles in Nature Biotechnology include: Technology transfer survey reveals disparities but growth at US universities; Convincing a venture capitalist to invest in your idea; and, A new model for technology transfer. The National Association of Seed and Venture Funds (www.nasvf.org) is a weekly newsletter delivering current info on venture financing, entrepreneurship, tech transfer, economic development and other issues of the “New Knowledge-based Economy.” www.biofind.com is an engaging public forum for the biotech industry. BioFind has a section on Biotech Innovations that permits you to outline your research project, with its commercial potential, and display it to interested firms and VCs. www.biotechmedia.com focuses on marketing and media needs with an excellent section on case studies and more info on biotech history, etc. BioVenture View is driven by financial and business professionals who team with scientific community experts in assessing companies, deals, M&A, etc., in a subscription newsletter at www.bioventureview.com. The newsletter BioInformatics at www.gene2drug.com has an extraordinary tool called a Scientific Personality Assessment (SPA) that identifies how researchers make purchasing decisions and otherwise segments the industry in ways no one else has attempted.

http://www.yet2.com is a Technology Marketplace that lists an impressive collection of available technologies, in synopsis form. In addition to technologies for licensing, they have a separate section that notes what technologies companies are looking for. An example from a recent issue read as follows: “Non electrically conductive fluid. A completely non electrically conductive or electrically insulating fluid or fluid like substance is needed. In addition all of the following properties are required: 1. totally benign as to any chemical interaction with a variety of materials it may come into contact with particularly plastics, resins and resin based composites, metals and a variety of surface treatments; 2. must have a particularly strong oil to water like repellent characteristic to contact with these same materials; 3. be completely non-toxic to human unprotected contact and environmental disposal; 4. capable of high heat storage capacity and rapid transfer; 5. viscosity at temperatures varying between approximately 70 to 150 deg. F conducive to transfer by small pumping devices; 6. does not necessarily need to be a typical fluid material but may be a material with fluid like characteristics, and 7. relatively low cost.”

The Web Virtual Library provides a Biotechnology Information Directory Section that links over 2,000 companies, research institutes, sources of information and directories (www.cato.com/biotech). The variety of professional organizations such as those hosted by the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) at www.bio.org are a source for annual events that are billed as TT meetings and specifically invite entrepreneurs to mingle with university TT officials, VCs, etc. BIO itself is a terrific source of information on the industry, including TT in all its forms. www.biotech-info.net deals with agriculture and biotech, with links to Ag and food programs around the world.

Mass High Tech bills itself as the Journal of New England Technology and delivers excellent information on biotech TT. Recent articles included: Biomed Briefs: Avitar signs letter of intent with Immunomatrix; Transform reaches milestone in Roche collaboration; Genome Therapeutics gets milestone cash from Amgen; TKT takes European rights for gene therapy back from Wyeth; Biomed rounds: N.H. bioscience pioneer is an innovator on paper. The display of articles like these plus their links and columns illustrates current information on biomed TT practices, reference www.massthightech.com.

www.GlobalTechnoScan.com is a TT market place that contains a weekly magazine on new technologies, business opportunities with TT, licensing, research, financing, etc. They link with VCs and trade shows while advertising that they have thousands of licensing and TT technologies listed. Their technologies are conveniently and well described in terms of market opportunity but some features require the $100 annual subscription fee. GlobalTechnoScan keeps 200 science and technology articles on the website and has serialized a story by patent attorney Howard Cohn that describes the patenting process from the perspective of the company in The saga of the patented bicycle rack. Members list both their technology requests and offers, although general commercial and trading offers are directed to another site at www.gtsmarkets.com. 

Most labs or institutes publish annual reports or other documents that illustrate the kinds of research they’re undertaking, often constituting an invitation to team with them or consider TT programs that they run. Many of the grants they rely upon require them to consider commercial feasibility of results and otherwise support active TT. The University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute, for example, is an independent research component of the University, and features TT and business development as a core focus of the effort at www.umbi.umd.edu.

Business and technology events around the world are chronicled at www.techvenue.com. If something convenient isn’t listed, a web search will undoubtedly find an organization or connection in biotechnology and TT somewhere in a national or regional organization and your closest university is always a source.

Red Herring catalogued European biotech research centers that spawned start-ups, including:

• University of Cambridge (U.K.), Astex Technology with $38 million and Cyclacel with $66 million in funding.

• EMBL (Germany), Cellzome with $4 million and Sidec Tech with $1 million. (The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg is central to European efforts to develop their biotech industry yet remains unwieldy in its attempts to spin-off new companies.)

• University of Oxford (U.K.), Oxford BioSciences $2.5 million and Oxxon Pharmaccines with $7 million.

• Institut Pasteur, Cellectis with no funding and Diatos with $15 million.

• University of Geneva, GeneProt $122 million and GeneSoft with $20.8 million.

The Technology Transfer Society (www.millkern.com/washtts/docs/national.html) has chapters around the country that sponsor seminars, classes and networking events. Most members are people who participate in some function of TT, manage the producers, develop technologies, develop partnerships, use TT as a strategy, set policies for TT, or do research and development in methods and tools for TT. They publish a quarterly journal, monthly newsletter, directories, papers, a catalog of TT tools and tool providers, and provide definitions, mechanisms, bibliographies and links. The National Society’s e-mail is t2s@t2s.org. The Washington, DC chapter of the Society is an affiliate of the Washington Academy of Sciences, an organization founded in 1898 as an affiliation of eight Washington DC area scientific societies that included Alexander Graham Bell and Samuel Langley, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, as charter members. This chapter works with the U.S.D.A. Graduate School to offer a course entitled Technology Transfer: Issues and Processes.

Help in obtaining federal R&D grants is provided through a lab course run by the Caltech/MIT Enterprise Forum at www.entforum.caltech.edu. Applying for multinational European Union grants is facilitated for Scandinavian companies by the Nordic Medical Research Council, which provides funding for multi-national research collaborations in their host countries (www.forsk.dk/ssvf/medl.htm). The Southern California Biomedical Council website (www.socalbio.org) hosts the Strategic Action Plan report of the Monitor Group for developing life-sciences in the greater Los Angles area—with a particular focus on technology commercialization. An excerpt from that report reads “Effective technology commercialization rests upon highly personal and relationship-driven links between these [research universities, established companies, etc.] spheres, on ready access to capital and the confidence to move ideas through the stages of the process, and on constructive partnerships between the generators of ideas and the businesses that bring them to market.” The report illustrates well thought out steps for a region to take to use TT more effectively.

UNIVERSITY

Boston University’s TT website, www.bu.edu/ctf/transfer has a full set of forms for TT plus a list of policies, technologies available for licensing, and a good overview of the entire process, from a university perspective. Similar information is found at most university offices of research, business development or TT. A list of university TT offices, forms, technologies and other data is maintained at Stevens Institute, http://attila.stevens-tech.edu/tech_transfer along with a huge funding database and a detailed guide to the TT process. The Auburn University (Alabama) Office of Technology Transfer provides a guide to the Bayh-Dole Act and implementing regulations, a reference to sites on patents, copyrights and trademarks, including Ag biotechnology patents, a crash course in copyright, etc., at www.ott.auburn.edu. (See later sections here on the history of the Bayh-Dole Act and its seminal place in fomenting TT and laying some of the base for the technological growth of the U.S. economy.) Case Western Reserve maintains an active technology entrepreneurship education program through the Institute for Integration of Management and Engineering at www.tiime.cwru.edu.

Virginia Tech Intellectual Properties, Inc. (www.vtip.org) was established in 1985 as a university-affiliated, non-profit, private-corporation. VTIP handles, protects, and licenses technologies developed by the faculty, staff, and students at the school. These technologies include new varieties of plants, transgenic technologies, micro-electronics, fiber optics, wireless communications, coal technologies, software and more. Sections on their website speak to: Information for Inventors; Available Technologies; Presentations; How to License from VTIP; Forms and Links; Myths of Technology Transfer; and Business Assistance. The website lists technologies that are available for license including a dozen gifted by Ford Motor and a dozen from Dupont.

The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas has been actively protecting and licensing intellectual property for over 25 years. Invention disclosures have risen from only one or two per year in the 1970s to approximately 100 per year. Recently, the office has expanded its efforts to include developing a biotechnology incubator. Hopes are that this will allow the city to take advantage of the discoveries at UT Southwestern and diversify the local economy by sponsoring start-up companies (www8.ut@southwestern.edu). Also serving the greater Dallas area, the STARTech Foundation (www.startech.org) partners with universities, entrepreneurial centers and others to host camps, workshops, venture forums and entrepreneurial training events.

The University of Texas System Investment Management Co., is investing $25 million in PTV Sciences LP, a venture capital fund that focuses on life sciences technologies emerging from research at UT and other universities. A family that bases its fortune on oil and gas and is now a major donor to UT has provided part of the money. The Texas Healthcare & Bioscience Online website at http://www.thbi.org has a section on TT resources that connects to more than a dozen TT offices around the state (including Baylor, Rice, SMU, etc.), while providing background on business and economic development, clinical trials, education and careers in biotech.

Texas A&M has a Technology Transfer Challenge for MBA students that requires teams to take random technology disclosures from A&M and develop a commercialization assessment of the technology in a week-long competition. Presentations are made to external judges for cash prizes. The purpose is several-fold: a learning experience; to instill a stronger entrepreneurial feeling; give students exposure to prospective employers; and to showcase technologies that are developed on the campus (http://maysbschool.tamu.edu). Rensselaer’s Severino Center for Technological Entrepreneurship offers $50,000 in cash and prizes for a Tech Valley Collegiate Business Plan Competition and their website has a virtual tutorial in how to conduct one of these competitions, with videos of various team presentations, etc. Duke, Case Western, Oxford and dozens of other schools find variations of business plan competitions to be highly useful. www.smallbusinessnotes.com lists 38 of the better known competitions and notes there are many more around the world. Ford partners with the SBA’s SCORE program to offer $100,000 for the best business idea (www.diversityinc.com). The Public Service Company of New Hampshire has put up $250,000 to be awarded in a competition for the best business plans in the state, with details at www.nheconomy.com.

The UK Research Council has a nationally-supported business plan competition for the biosciences that has helped establish over 30 new ventures in the last two years (www.bbsrc.ac.uk). Along with money from the Research Council comes coaching and extensive mentoring in finance, accounting, legal, regulatory, manufacturing and HR sectors. As an example, a couple of the recent UK competition participants included: Biomics, a Glasgow-based optical technology and tissue handling technology that allows automated simultaneous analysis of gene insertion and functional assay for cardiovascular drug discovery; Klenzyme of Northampton, with a new enzymatic treatment for leather production, and; Neurosolutions of Warwick, a CRO characterizing molecules that target the nervous system.

Numerous colleges, schools of medicine and other university facilities have established organizations to fulfill TT needs and instill a sense of entrepreneurship into students. The Johns Hopkins Biotech Network (www.hopkinsbiotechnetwork.org) holds seminars that feature entrepreneurs who have used university-developed technology, begun a company, and raised capital. Oxford University launched Oxford Entrepreneurs in 2003 and had 400 students take part (www.bouncewithit.com). The Harvard Biotechnology Club keeps a website at www.thebiotechclub.org with a connection to TT resources as well as their own business plan competition and seminars, including the Sachs Bloomberg annual Global Biotech Forum for Investing and Partnering. The Harvard Medical School Office of Technology Transfer lists inventions available for licensing, and links (www.hms.harvard.edu/otl/tech). Yale University runs Sachem Ventures, a student-operated VC firm at their School of Management. The $1.5 million fund came from the New Haven Savings Bank, Yale and private investors. Yale’s Office of Cooperative Research, their TT office, is at www.yale.edu/ocr. 

BioEnterprise Corp. is a business accelerator created by Case-Western Reserve, the Cleveland Clinic, and University Hospitals of Cleveland to commercialize promising research (www.bioenterprise.com). The Cleveland Clinic itself received a $5 million donation to its TT office from real estate developer, John Ferchill, to endow the commercialization of new health technologies. The Cleveland Clinic runs an innovation center that disclosed 113 inventions by staff in 2002 alone and generated $3.4 million in revenue.

Project T2 is a national conference on TT conducted in Los Angeles, sponsored by www.larta.org. T2 is a collaborative project with major universities, including Caltech, UCLA, USC, UCSD, UCI, UCSB, UCR, the Claremont Colleges and many of the California State Universities. Founded in 1999, Larta itself offers a variety of business courses with a particular emphasis on TT. Larta’s Research Archives are a rich resource of white papers, reports and briefings on subjects such as biotechnology, TT, IT, IP, sales, nantotechnology, negotiation, terrorism, venture forums, etc. (www.larta.org/research/archive.asp). Sample reports include Building Bio Clusters Part 1; Location Decisions, Building Bio Clusters Part 2; The Relationship of Market Factors and Organizational Profile; and  Life Sciences Industry Council (LINC).

MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory (www.LL.mit.edu/about/techtrans.html) has a long history of promoting TT for the defense and civil sectors. The modern-day computer and computer graphics revolution can be attributed to the invention of the magnetic memory core and the Sketch Pad at the Laboratory. Over 80 high-technology companies have evolved from the Laboratory’s technology development. Laboratory technology has been adapted for medical purposes to include neural network technology, a method based on military target recognition techniques that has been devised to detect abnormal cells in Pap smears. Another neural network application uses image classification techniques to conduct risk assessment for bypass surgery in cardiovascular disease patients. In the area of binary optics, a medical company has been licensed to design and manufacture molds for implantable binary lenses, which make bifocal vision possible with one implanted lens. Adaptive nulling methods for processing radar signals have been used in support of hyperthermic treatment of tumors. A Laboratory researcher’s work on radar technology will be applied in FDA-approved Phase II clinical trials for the treatment of breast cancer. The Whitehead Institute shares a similar relation to MIT with independence for most of its functions, but a strong teaching relationship. Whitehead has helped commercialize dozens of novel biotech developments, reference www.whitehead.mit.edu.

The M.I.T. System of Technology Transfer was described by Lori Pressman, Assistant Director, M.I.T. Technology Licensing Office in Newport, RI, and can be downloaded at (www.mit.edu/tlo/MITsystemstechtrans.pdf.), providing insights into the route that must be plied there. MIT’s separate research corporation, MITRE, has its own TT newsletter and illustrates available technologies at www.mitre.org.work/tech_transfer. MIT has a magazine as well, Technology Review, designed to support and distribute innovative tech information.

An unusual website is found at www.cuug.ab.ca:8001/~fortuned/trans.html as Doug Fortune’s Technology Transfer Compendium. Fortune lists and links you to 43 university TT links, from Baylor College of Medicine’s Office of Research to Washington University in St. Louis—Corporate Research Collaboration. He includes 19 Canadian university TT links, 16 European links and 4 petroleum links. While hardly a complete listing (the largest TT programs in the U.S. are missing, to include Columbia, Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, Harvard, etc.) it is still a good starting point to investigate. Fortune includes a bit about TT education with a link to Franklin Pierce Law Center. This site has TT articles such as Overview of Federal Technology Transfer, Problems with Patenting Research Tools, etc.

Both the University of New York at Albany and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) are building centers focused on biology research. RPI hosted a symposium on Biotechnology: Innovation, Opportunity and Commercialization, to explore the commercial possibilities of biotechnology and nanoscience. Washington University in St. Louis, MO is investing $300 million to convert work from the human genome research project into new medical treatments. In past years such an investment would have been dedicated to research alone, but directing the work towards products for individual diseases is characteristic of the shift to TT generally seen today.

The University of Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) invested in companies that have been spun-out of University of Wisconsin labs, and it has paid off handsomely for them. Instead of requiring hefty up-front licensing fees, the foundation allowed some cash-strapped start-ups the use of patented technology in exchange for partial ownership of the company. More than 100 companies trace their technology to Wisconsin labs and are responsible for the biotech industry in the state. The foundation has used royalty income and investments to build a $1.2 billion endowment and provided research grants of $41 million in the 2002-03 year alone. Jason Gertzen reports that it can be traced back to Harry Steenbock, a university professor, who proved himself a TT innovator long before his methods became standard practice. Steenbock invented a way to enhance the Vitamin D content in food, a breakthrough that virtually eliminated the childhood bone disease of rickets. Seeking commercial gain from an academic laboratory discovery was contrary to a widely held scholarly ideal at that time but Steenbock went ahead anyway, patenting the invention himself when the university refused. The foundation was created after the Quaker Oats Co. offered nearly $1 million—that’s close to $10 million in today’s dollars—to use Steenbock’s technology. The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation was born as nine university alumni kicked in $100 each to establish a non-profit agency to oversee income generated by this patent and support new research. The Wisconsin foundation has been a patent-producing generator that now controls more than 1,700 patents and realized nearly $32 million from TT in 2002, number 7 in the country.

Johns Hopkins University, one of the richest research sources in the U.S., and typically the largest beneficiary of federal research dollars of any university, has been notably slow in TT, even with the appointment of skilled specialists. An aggressive new group under Deb Barbara (dbarbara@JHMI.edu) and the appointment of experienced personnel suggests that we’ll see much more out of this resource. The Office of Technology Transfer at Hopkins, http://jhuresearch.jhu.edu/ott/Inventors has an Intellectual Property Primer that explains what TT is, benefits, protection, laws, tutorials, etc., along with numerous TT links. The Applied Physics Lab (APL) of Hopkins has its own TT office at www.jhuapl.edu/ott. APL recently listed over a dozen biomedical and biochemical technologies available for licensing including Diagnosis of pathogen infections using mass spectral analysis of immune system modulators and Acoustic sleep Apnea/hypopnea detector and classifier along with many more in other scientific fields. The new website at www.ltd.jhu.edu reflects combining these facilities. The school receives an average of 250 technology disclosures a year, and files provisional patents on 80% of those. The availability of life-science R&D at physics and other labs attests to how much research in nearly all areas impacts upon biotech, and the need to be broad-based when searching for useful technologies.

A list of university venture arms for supporting spinouts begins with Purdue in 1974 and ends at Tel Aviv in 2003, provided by Shreefal Mehta in his article in Nature Biotechnology (1/04). Colorado State University’s Technology Transfer Office (http://www.csurf.org) is under the direction of the vice president for research, a title that is often used to identify university efforts.

The Capital Formation Institute (CFI) provides a broad range of information on the essential ideas and tested techniques for starting and growing entrepreneurial ventures, including technology commercialization and research with methodologies for funding new companies (www.cfi-institute.org). Supported by the Office of Science, Technology Transfer and Economic Outreach of the University at Buffalo in Amherst, NY, the website connects you with short articles and on-demand online audio discussions by the nation's leading seed and early stage investors and enterprise development professionals, many available for no charge.  The Web site includes ViewPoints, VC Online, AudioBlog and two journals, Entrepreneurial Strategies and The Journal of Seed and Early-Stage Investing (JSESI). 

Technology commercialization services from Morgan State University in Maryland are designated for new companies that can create jobs in economically constrained regions. Numerous funding and other programs for technology companies are available throughout the U.S. if you can demonstrate that good-paying manufacturing and other jobs in areas of high-unemployment will come from successful commercialization of new technologies. A $15 billion tax credit program for investors in these same areas is now available through The New Markets Tax Credit, so larger companies may be attracted to technical employment in high-unemployment regions.

Ohio-based Battelle Memorial Institute and the Morrison Institute for Public Policy at Arizona State University in Phoenix, AZ both concluded in separate reports that the generation of high-paying jobs in the state will require universities to focus on high-tech strengths. The reports were delivered to the Governor’s Council on Innovation and Technology and complement Arizona’s investment in biotechnology through the Translational Genomics Research Institute and related organizations. In particular, the Battelle report suggested that one of the key areas is “Bioengineering. This field taps nearly all the core competencies, plus Arizona’s strength in biosciences, and could develop the use of optics in medicine, implantable devices and neural engineering.” Battelle noted the state would have to beef up its TT as well as business development and marketing. The president of ASU, Michael Crow, is dedicated to TT and suggested that “evolve or die” is the choice facing universities today. Crow established a $300,000 Innovation Fund to fund six to twelve faculty projects in the first year. Nearby, the University of New Mexico created the Science and Technology Corp. as a non-profit to patent and license technology coming out of university-funded programs, although they know it takes some years to get a real program started and to have deans and faculty members feel comfortable with this direction (http://stc.unm.edu). 

The University of California San Diego’s Technology Transfer & Intellectual Property Office, puts on a free half-day conference on starting a life-science company. They bring speakers to a mixture of venture capitalists, researchers, entrepreneurs, attorneys, etc. in hopes of getting their TT message across, (http://invent.ucsd.edu). There are few organizations anymore that don’t include TT as a formal program within their overall operations.

The Georgia Institute of Technology operates an Advanced Technology Development Center that has graduated more than 100 companies over the last 20 years. When teamed with Georgia’s VentureLab, they operate to pair potential university research with the resources necessary to grow a company. www.smartGeorgia.org has the details.

            Representative statistics of TT offices can be found at www.techtransfer.umich.edu along with examples of agreements and an explanation of the Principles of Licensing, an insight into the thinking of most academic organizations. Michigan’s TechStart internship program matches students from the business school, medical school, college of engineering, school of information, law school and other areas with technology projects managed by their TT office.

At www.sul.stanford.edu/depts/swain the Swain Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Library at Stanford University has a section on Selected Resources for Patents, Inventions, and Technology Transfer including extensive background on the entire patenting process as well as inventions and TT. One section alone on Internet Guides on Patents, Inventions, and Technology Transfer could save you a lot of time. The Technology Ventures Program Stanford operates is a pioneering effort to introduce entrepreneurial skills to computer scientists and engineers (http://stvp.stanford.edu). Stanford’s Bioinnovation Design Program was begun by Paul Yock and Tom Fogarty, two faculty members who regularly spin-out medical device ideas. Fogarty basically invented the balloon angioplasty catheter. Their program combines the strengths of the engineering and medical schools as an effort to teach the process of innovation. Much of the funding for companies that have come out of Stanford has been from former medical entrepreneurs themselves, attesting to how rich TT assets are and how closely followed a number of programs have become.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has its own Biotech Business Interest Group with regular meetings to help promote new biotech companies at http://www3.cancer.gov.bbig. Jonathan Sorger formed the group and now Val Bliskovsky and Gil Ben-Menachem run it. GENL 313 is a two-credit TT course taught on the campus of the NIH in Bethesda, MD under the Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences (FAES, www.faes.org). Steve Ferguson and Carole Kirby teach 313 as a broad survey course with specialized modules in biotechnology, natural products and technology assistance programs, using a 1997 text by Albert Muir, The Technology Transfer System, Latham Book Pub. A separate course on forming new life-sciences companies is taught on the NIH campus by Jerry Feigen, Linda Powers and John Holaday.

Jim DeLeo heads an amazingly fecund group at NIH that is oriented towards the use of computers and communications to enhance medical initiatives everywhere. The website www.NIH-BCIG.org takes you into the Biomedical Computing Interest Group and provides both an intellectual and a practical menu of interesting life-sciences avenues.

If you can’t identify technology that could be successfully marketed perhaps you aren’t motivated enough. The Nobel Peace Price Laureate in 2006, Muhammad Yunus, stated, “All poor people are entrepreneurs.” Yunus, of course, is the originator of the phenomenon known as “microfinance” and the founder of the Grameen Bank, birthing a multi-billion dollar business from a $27 loan he made to some impoverished women stool makers in the mid 1970s. Are you talking to people who are just too comfortable instead of those who need to do something?

INTERNATIONAL

World incubators and centers at www.zurichmednet.org/incubatorsworldwide.html is a good starting point to take a global perspective. The site provides five centers of business to include 86 U.S. incubators (a small fraction of the total), and link to incubators in another 21countries including Pakistan and the Ukraine. Many of the incubator links lead to others in the same country, as well as countless added sources of information on funding, education, technologies, facilities, etc. The Worldwide Universities Network seeks to connect schools with similar interests such as bio-informatics, stem cells, green chemistry, etc. at www.wun.ac.uk. Managing Resources, founded in 1988, keeps contact with funding and other resources throughout the world that have an interest in the life-sciences at www.managingresources.com. Managing Resources specializes in cross-border TT and business opportunities by focusing on US and other firms who wish to develop European connections.

The Association for University Technology Managers keeps a list of, and links to, international TT societies including those in India, the Netherlands, U.S., Japan, etc., at www.autm.net. The links section alone runs 25 pages and includes companies, states, and an amazing variety of information, and technologies, at www.autm.net/scripts/TTOffices/all.cfm. AUTM publishes a pricey TT Practice Manual in four volumes as well as a journal, surveys, proposals, and information on developments overseas. International societies are listed at www.autm.net/members/international/intrdir.htm.

The Association of University Research Parks (AURP) lists these valuable and growing physical facilities for new companies, often nesting right next to the schools themselves. Averaging roughly 100 acres in size (but with wide variation), over 100 exist in the US and Canada and many more are on drawing boards. Not only do they house companies but they are active participants in forming industry and university partnerships and indeed for promoting technology-led economic development for the entire community or region (www.aurp.net).

Euroscience has 1,500 members in 40 European countries and bills itself as the “voice of scientists in Europe” and “the working group for technology transfer in Europe.” They have an active program to work with businesses and research institutions and operate a separate Biotechnology Transfer Initiative at www.bio.technology-transfer.net. The site has a 45-page report on the status, mission and organization of TT in Europe, with important links to other sites related to biotechnology transfer such as Scitrax—Biotechnology Development Company; Gate2Growth—European Portal for Growth Businesses; Biopartnering; Techvision; and the IRC Network. Since biotechnology has become such a priority for policy makers, academics and the private sector due to its importance to economic development and prosperity, various workshops in Europe and elsewhere seek to address issues surrounding TT within biotechnology. Their website is www.euroscience.org. www.europabio.org is the European Association for Bioindustries with a heavy corporate membership as well as associations (they also have an explanation for the European characterization of red, green and white biotech—the first is for health, the second is for agriculture, and the third is industrial). A network for professionals in TT operates as the Association of European Science & Technology transfer Professionals (ASTP) at www.astp.net. 

The Organization for European Cooperation and Development regularly fosters new enterprises. The OECD publishes a program and recommendations for promoting new companies in a $35 book at www.oecd.org/publications. The European Association of Development Agencies at www.eurada.org promotes regional economic development with 150 development agencies throughout Europe along with links to financial engineering services and support for regional infrastructures. INSME targets TT and other services for SMEs with a view to making them globally competitive and innovative, at www.insme.info/page.asp. The Network of Innovating Regions in Europe (IRE) aims to enable regions to access new tools and processes fro innovation promotion and to create an inter-regional learning process, at www.innovating-regions.org. Since 1994, more than 100 European regions have received support from the European Commission for the formulation of regional innovative strategies through RTTS (Regional Innovation and TT Strategies and Infrastructure) and RIS (Regional Innovation Strategies) projects managed by Enterprise DG and Regional Policy DG, respectively.

The European Investment Fund makes equity investments in VC funds and business incubators that support SMEs, particularly those that are early stage and technology-oriented, while guaranteeing financial institution credits. The European Business Angel Network (EBAN) promotes and encourages the formation of business angel networks (www.eban.org). Other elements of the European Commission responsible for European entrepreneurship include: DG Research, http://europa.eu.int, DG Regio, DG Enterprise, through the European Information Centres (EIC) and Business Innovation Centres (BICs) at www.europa.eu.int. 

The Georgian Branch of the Euroscience Working Group of Technology Transfer is strapped for funds, but still details the flow of intriguing technologies that are coming from former states of the USSR (www.stpetersburg.technology-transfer.net) such as Georgia (www.georgia.technology-transfer.net) and Ukraine (www.kiev.technology-transfer.net). Other Eastern Europe TT groups are found in Romania at www.bucharest.technology-transfer.net). 

Science Alliance (www.science-alliance.nl) is a Dutch intermediary organization that stimulates collaboration and knowledge transfer between universities and external parties and is part of the European Association of Research Managers and Administrators (EARMA at www.earma.org). The European Technology Facility (ETF, www.europa.eu.int) is affiliated with the Amsterdam Special Action Programme (ASAP) launched in 1997 by the European Investment Bank. ETF aims to provide venture and equity capital for high-technology and fast growing SME (small and medium enterprise) projects by taking equity participations in specialized venture capital funds. The High Tech Federation is a network of SMEs seeking to incorporate new technologies (www.hitech-sme.com). The Bio-Venture Academy provides a one-day intensive coaching session for the CEO’s of Europe’s most promising private biotech companies. Bio-Venture provides introductions to VCs, feedback on business plans, and network opportunities with management candidates, etc., at www.e-unlimited.com.

An especially rich resource for TT is found among the “hai gui,” the Chinese-born researchers who study abroad and return home (also referred to as “sea-turtles”). Certainly mainland China and Taiwan both intend on building biotech hubs and this group forms an intellectual backbone for their amazing productivity. The Chinese Biopharmaceutical Association (CBA, http://cba-usa.org) in Washington, DC is a source of information as well as national biotech associations. “This is the best time to be in China since the Tan Dynasty,” says Leo Yuxiang Liu, the head of market development at Shanghai New Summit Biopharma, referring to a historic period of progress that lasted from the 7^th to 10^th centuries. Singapore pledged $4 billion over a five-year period to the biotechnology industry and the combined five-year government and private industry investment in Taiwan is about $4.3 billion for the period ending in 2007 (home to the Development Center for Biotechnology in Taipei, Taiwan). The Sino-American Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Professional Association, San Diego (SABPA) acts as a forum to bridge scientific and commercial relationships between Chinese-Americans as well as China and the U.S. at http://sabpa.org.

A newsletter on innovation from the European Commission’s Enterprise DG, Innovation & Technology Transfer, illustrates the problem of entrepreneurial innovation in a set of discussion pieces at www.cordis.lu/itt/itt-en/or-5/index.htm. “Europe’s big problem with innovation is the reluctance of its entrepreneurs and its investors to take risks.” is a quote from Jean-Noel Durvy, head of the Innovation Policy Unite in the European Commission. Durvy noted “The poor interactions between universities and industry, is also widely criticized, so we have created a network, ProTon Europe, to lower the barriers between the two worlds” (www.cec.eu.int and http://europa.eu.int).

Cordis (Community Research and Development Information Service) Partners runs InnovationOnline, a project investigating virtual support for communities of practice and clusters, particularly those that involve the innovation process and TT at (http://dbs.cordis.lu).

The Cordis website lays out several networks including incubators, I-TecNet and entrepreneurship education, while publishing TT newsletters such as Focus, Innovation & Technology Transfer, RTD Info and Euroabstracts. Gate2Growth is a multi-faceted initiative to promote technological growth in Europe at www.gate2growth.com. This site lists tools for business plans, identifying potential investors, access to expert advice, networks, discussion forums, etc., offering entrepreneurs a short cut to local help, and access to services required to set up a full-fledged company. Gate2Growth is targeting US companies wishing to expand in Europe, and offers access to its extensive financial network to firms needing resources. ProTon Europe is a pan-European network of TT offices lined to public research organizations and universities and I-TecNet is a European network of early-stage VCs, both at the Gate2Growth website. Zurich MedNet and the University of Minnesota/s MBBNet.umn.edu is the largest linked, regionally-based, medical/bioscience web portal in the US. The combination represents the first web-based international industry/university cluster alliance in the world, and the first international web search linking of regional clusters ever (www.zurichmednet.org).

Copenhagen University’s new center for TT, the Tech Trans Unit, is the first of its kind in the country to promote collaboration between the university’s researchers and industry, particularly the biotechnology sector (www.itu.dk). At the same time, a consortium was established aimed at marketing the Danish capital region’s research activities, again with the emphasis on biotechnology. Members of the Copenhagen Tech Transfer Consortium are: Copenhagen University, the Institute of Technology, the Royal Veterinary & Agricultural High School of Copenhagen, Copenhagen Hospital Corporation, the Danish University of Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Copenhagen County. In addition, there is one participant from abroad: Glasgow’s Heriot-Watt University, which has a history of work in TT.

United Kingdom

In the UK, the Health Technology Portal (www.healthtechnologyportal.org.uk) is the route to funding under the Health Technology Devices (HTD) Programme (www.doh.gov.uk). This is the primary interface for Department of Health science and TT sponsorships with industrial partners sharing project costs. Praxis, collaboration between Cambridge and MIT, is the UK’s first national training program for TT professionals (www.praxistech.org.uk), and joins UNICO and AURIL, below, as established UK TT organizations. Praxis offers courses on the fundamentals of TT, creating spinout companies, and advanced licensing skills. www.unico.org.uk is the website for the University Companies Association (UNICO), a ten-year old effort to represent technology commercialization for UK universities. UNICO focuses on holding meetings and doing surveys to provide information on spin-out company management, seed and venture funds, investment finance, accounting, technology licensing, etc. The Association for University Research and Industry Links (AURIL) at www.auril.org.uk is a European effort in TT to connect higher education and industry with the objective of supporting innovation and competitiveness. AURIL has a further mission to support local, regional and national economic regeneration and is the largest knowledge transfer association in Europe.

UK’s Investment and Technology Promotion Office (ITPO) for the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) is hosted by the Northwest Development Agency (NWDA) and provides support for investors, companies, intermediaries and trade organizations who are considering commercial activities in developing overseas economies at www.nwda-unido.org.uk. Babraham Bioscience Technologies Ltd (BBT) manages all commercial activities on the Babraham Research Campus at www.babraham.com. Their website lists technologies available for licensing but with a critical extra step—they illustrate just what they believe the commercial opportunity to be and the cost saving features of the new approaches! BBT is the wholly-owned trading company of the Babraham Institute, a research charity focused on fundamental biomedical related research, www.babraham.ac.uk. Babraham’s BioConcepts provides critical support to new bioventures during the first stages of the technology-to-business translation process, helping originators to commercial success. www.bioindustry.org takes you to the trade association for biotech in the UK with networking events, publications, etc.

IP2IPO raised over $50 million to build a pipeline of new technology companies based on TT from four major UK universities at www.IP2IPO.com. In many respects, IP2IPO parallels LUNA in the US, a firm that commercializes technologies emanating from Virginia Tech at www.lunainnovations.com.  IP2IPO raised its money by floating a stock offering on Britain’s Alternative Investment Market. BTG, the former, British Technology Group, (www.btgplc.com) has been around for fifty years and counts interferons, MRIs and the hovercraft as a few of the technologies that they successfully helped along. BTG licenses technologies, develops interesting propositions, and has a venture capital group that will assist in funding.

UK-based Flintstone Technologies plc is an incubator that works on chemical and surface technology deals that are close to being ready for the market at www.flintstoneplc.com. Flintstone’s modus operandi is to give inventors shares in a new UK-based company, which takes over all the intellectual property. Also in the UK, DiagnOx offers services to the diagnostics industry to support all stages of TT, from proof of principle through to market at www.diagnox.co.uk. Diagnox has a links library that includes sections on: UK Government Grants; PwC Bioscience Index; Investment glossary; Funding for Health Technology devices; and Business Angels.

Oxford University formed a unit to address the business education and other needs of scientist-entrepreneurs with its Oxford Science Enterprise Center at www.science-enterprise.ox.ac.uk. Based at the Said Business School, the program consists of entrepreneurship and business skills courses, specialist seminars, entrepreneur events, and a business plan competition. The Oxford Genetics Knowledge Park is part of a government funded initiative to translate advances in genetics into clinical practice along with TT, at www.well.ox.ac.uk/gkp. A majority of new spinouts have been financed from internal university funds or government-backed initiatives in the UK, including University Challenge Seedcorn Funds (England), Proof of Concept Fund (Scotland) and Spinout Wales. The Oxford Technology Venture Capital Trust (www.oxfordtechnology.com) provides seed capital to companies with developed university technology as more and more VC funds around the world focus on completed work done at these excellent facilities.

At Cambridge University, consultancy firms operated early to bridge the academic and commercial area in biotechnology and other areas but now the University itself has come on strong. A new masters degree in BioScience Enterprise was introduced in 2002 (www.bio.cam.ac.uk) and modeled off joint work with the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences, the MIT Sloan School of Management, and the Graduate School of Biological, Medical and Veterinary Sciences of the University of Cambridge. Cambridge’s Institute of Biotechnology helps secure up to $400,000 in investment funds for new companies based on TT and as little as $16,000 for good business plans but no viability as yet. A new commercial subsidiary for the school has been formed as well, Cambridge University Enterprises (www.cec.cam.ac.uk). The Wolfson Industrial Liaison Office at Cambridge has rolled out high-tech companies over the last 10 years (www.admin.cam.ac.uk). Dr. Mike Clark’s personal experience with Cambridge labs and commercialization is referenced at www.path.cam.ac.uk.  

www.Cambridgenetwork.co.uk and the Isis Innovation website at Oxford University illustrate extensive life-sciences and other high-TT resources and information at www.isis-innovation.com. Isis acts as Oxford’s TT arm and takes an aggressive attitude towards commercializing interesting biotechnology. A new City Technology Investment Network (CTIN) has been opened to emulate the success of the Oxfordshire Investment Opportunity Network, both seeking to link investors with early stage technologies at www.citytechnet.co.uk (this site has a set of useful case studies on funding early-stage technology companies). CTIN helps raise venture capital and provide resources and put on events as well as publish educational articles on making a company successful (examples are Sir Martin Wood, founder of Oxford Instruments, Bridging the Equity Gap; Dr. David Kingham, CEO Oxford Innovation, Quality Technology Firms; and Professor Colin Howard, CEO of the London BioScience Innovation Centre, Unlocking Huge Business Potential.) The London BioScience Innovation Centre at www.oxin.co.uk/London_BSC.htm and www.londonbioscience.com opened in 2002 at the Royal Veterinary College Site with extensive laboratory facilities and excellent business connections.

Queen Mary Innovation at www.qmul.ac.uk is part of the University of London and incorporates the London School of Medicine and Dentistry and Barts. Queen Mary is working to develop a strong culture of innovation and enterprise and has set up its own TT company, Queen Mary Innovation and Enterprise, to work with academics across all departments. www.whiterose.ac.uk is a consortium of the Universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York, with access to technologies and the Seedcorn Fund. Cardiff and Lancaster universities have opened a new Center for Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics (CESAGen) that researches issues in innovation and other topics, as a joint venture of area resources including Techniquest, a science education center, all referenced at www.cesagen.lancs.ac.uk.

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships is a UK-wide activity to make the skills, knowledge and technologies in universities more available to corporations. Each Partnership employs one or more graduates for between one and three years on a project transferring the knowledge the company is seeking into the business. Funding is led by the Department of Trade and Industry with participation by another ten government organizations. Project costs are shared with the company and offices are now in most universities, at www.ktponline.org.uk.

Business in the southwest can receive assistance from universities in the following areas: Improving the design of existing products; Developing a new product; Developing a marketing strategy; and Streamlining manufacturing or logistics at www.bris.ac.uk/research. A regional center for the UK’s northeast operates at Newcastle, as the Centre of Excellence for Life Sciences at www.celsatlife.com, a group that will respond if: “you see an opportunity to spin out from a company or university; an entrepreneur wishing to raise venture finance; seeking to license technology in or out; evaluate business opportunities from R&D; need a fresh look at product and market strategy; need help with IP; need a mentor; need fresh talent on an interim basis; want help with a product launch; need to rethink distribution channels; or need in-house staff training.”

Other TT-oriented sites in the UK include the giant Wellcome Trust at www.wellcome.ac.uk/techtransfer, which includes a primer on TT and information on a new $59 million Translation Awards fund as a follow on to their Development Fund, a financial source that has supported 40 early-stage projects in life-sciences commercialization, through Catalyst BioMedica Ltd. The Royal Veterinary College at www.rvc.ac.uk; Sussex Innovation Center at www.sussex.ac.uk; Technical Transfer Consultancy (davidrayttc@aol.com); and TrusTech (www.trustech.org.uk) are all sites for life-sciences TT information in Britain. Technology Transfer & Innovation Ltd is a new manager of TT partnerships with government, universities, etc., in the UK at www.tti-ltd.com.  www.ukbi.co.uk is a website devoted to providing information on incubation facilities in the UK and Scottish-based www.angletechnology.com manages biotech incubators in the US, Sweden and the UK. ANGLE Technology has also created three new bioscience companies in the UK and one in the US using TT from universities or government labs, taking complete responsibility for developing the company in exchange for an equity position and license, for the originator of the IP. A unique partnership ANGLE operates includes one with Fairfax County, VA and UKBI to work together to nurture new companies.

A listing of business parks in Ireland that operate in concert with Industrial Development Ireland (www.idaireland.com) is part of a major effort to attract companies and put them in contact with a variety of Irish resources. The pharmaceutical and medical technology industries are a special emphasis of the organization. The Biotechnology Directorate at Enterprise Ireland (www.biores-irl.ie) has a specific focus on TT and will team you with technology, funds, and incubation as well as management talent, if needed.

The Edinburgh Technology Fund (ETF) provides seed-com funding to assist in the transfer of emerging technologies into commercialization at www.ed-tech-fund.ed.ac.uk. By focusing on the communities of the University of Edinburgh, Moredun Research Foundation, Roslin Research Institute, the UK Astronomy Technology Centre and the Edinburgh Station of the British Geological Society, they hope to create a cluster of new company start-ups and licensing portfolios at each of the target research communities. There’s a good schematic on the overall commercialization process at the website. In regards to the formation of clusters themselves, a new study at www.dti.gov.uk/clusters/ecotec-report/download.html has been published by Ecotec with insights into the process as A Practical Guide to Cluster Development.

Canada

The Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance at www.cata.ca connects you with 15,000 high-tech executives and is a central source for TT activities and organizations in the country. Canada has a biotechnology corporation capitalization support program called Biolevie that provides financing assistance for technology companies developed there, and implemented through loans provided by Investissement Quebec at www.investquebec.com. The site illustrates a fair amount on tax benefits and refers to added regional resources. A guide to universities and other technical institutes in British Columbia that specifically relates to helping companies with their R&D is available from the Advanced Systems Institute at www.asi.bc.ca, and funding is possible as well, with research fellows receiving $40,000 per year for four years. The CITO Accelerator Investment Program provides from $75,000 to $150,000 in the form of convertible loans for the most promising commercial proposals from researchers at Ontario universities and colleges (www.cito.ca). The CITO website tells the stories of several technology spin-offs that received funding and developed into viable concerns. A TT organization owned by the University of Calgary, University Technologies International (UTI), operates in all sectors of Canadian research, at www.uti.ca. UTI has a terrific set of TT links including one called Wacky Patent of the Month at http://colitz.com/site/wacky.htm. CanBioTech produces the monthly UBioMed Report covering research and technology discovery news from Canadian, US and UK institutions, at www.ubiomed.com CanBioTech illustrates partnering opportunities with these institutions for both research and commercialization and keeps an impressive set of links. The Canadian Agri-Food Research Council keeps an active site for biotech-related developments in agriculture at www.carc-crac.ca and hosted a Knowledge Transfer Workshop to develop strategies for helping the agri-food sector to access scientific knowledge through the Internet.

The Biotechnology Research Institute (BRI) is the largest biotechnology center in Canada and a part of their National Research Council. Housed in the Greater Montreal region, BRI has over 800 regular personnel, guest workers, student, post-docs and industry scientists. To support technology development in industry, they have over 10,000 square meters of lab and office space and an environmental pilot plant. Http://irb-bri.cnrc-nrc.gc.ca. The Quebec government created VRQ (valorisation recherché Quebec) for TT with a $60 million budget and the mission to commercialize the output of 13 Quebec universities. VRQ organized four TT “societies” that serve as general partners for the management of the IP and TT, while the schools are limited partners.

Salaries are considerably lower in Canada than those in the U.S., prompting pharmaceutical companies to locate manufacturing as well as research facilities in the country. It’s attractive for entrepreneurial-minded researchers as well, with $100,000 Proof of Principle grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research available for promising discoveries (www.cihr.com).

Genome Atlantic is one of five regional research centers established across Canada in conjunction with Genome Canada, a not-for-profit corporation established to promote genomics research in Canada by bringing together industry, governments, universities, hospitals, research institutes and the public in support of regional genomics research and its ultimate exploitation at www.genomeatlantic.ca. This website links to dozens of research centers, information resources, government agencies, etc., including BioQuebec, Investissements Quebec, Life Sciences Development Association, et al. A white paper describing the Canadian patenting process, Managing a Drug Patent Portfolio in Hard Economic Times, is available from Dr. Nika V. Ketis at www.BennetJones.ca. 

Nu-Tech is the short name for Nova Universities Technology Inc., a multi-institutional non-profit TT and commercialization office for Dalhousie University and the Nova Scotia Agricultural College in Halifax, Canada. Services provided by Nu-Tech include: licensing and negotiation management, IP protection, market strategy planning, venture financing options, industrial liaison, strategic partnerships, etc., at www.dal.ca/nutech. Their website links to about a dozen Canadian resources. BioMed Management, Inc., in Halifax, is a biomedical technology development company that seeks research projects with commercial potential, and attracts investment and partners in start-up companies at www.biomedmanagement.com.

The National Research Council-Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC-IRAP) is an innovation assistance program for Canadian small and medium-sized enterprises, accessed at http://irap-pari.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca. With 190 sites across the country, they coach clients through all stages of the innovation process including helping to locate funds, partners, staff, technologies, etc. The Federal Partners in Technology Transfer is a source of facilities for TT in Canada including government assistance programs at www.fptt-pftt.gc.ca. www.biotech.ca provides news, events, classes, technologies, etc. that emanate from Canada and is a comprehensive source of information on biotechnology. Check out BioTeCanada’s guide to the industry for the media and suggestions for financing as well as their free magazine at the website. Another magazine and website on Canadian biotechnology, BioBusiness, is available at www.biobusinessmag.com.

Australia

The VentureLink Network in Australia is headquartered at the Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship and sponsors events to help commercialize innovation from the public and private sectors at www.venturelink.net. The University of Technology, Sydney, Australia, offers a bachelor’s degree in biotechnology innovation, as one of four technology innovation courses of study. The University has students study across the scientific fields of biotechnology and molecular biosciences, and learn how to commercialize new technologies and initiatives. Effectively, with 88 credits of biotechnology subjects and 56 credits of business, they combine the study of science with business, capital management and business sustainability, to make student ideas work (www.uts.edu.au or e-mail Graeme.Sheather@uts.edu.au). The university offers a variety of entrepreneurial graduate programs through the Swinburne Graduate School of Business. The University of Adelaide has an attractive masters program in Science & Technology Commercialization—developed with the IC2 Institute at the University of Texas in Austin—with courses offered in such fields as: financing commercialization; strategic analysis for technology commercialization; marketing technological innovation; new enterprise finance; legal issues of the commercialization process; etc., all available on-line! Adelaide’s Education Center for Innovation and Commercialization courses start and finish every six weeks.

UniQuest was organized at the University of Queensland to commercialize research and has a website with the entire commercialization procedure at www.uniquest.com.au. Instead of just being a TT office, Uniquest tailors individual commercialization solutions and currently manages commercial R&D projects for industry across diverse fields including drug development and medical instrumentation. The office sets up research teams, provides market research, prepares business plans and proposals for government agencies, as well as provides project management skills. Their arms are wide open for PhD students who want to be entrepreneurs. The Department of Innovation and Information Economy, Sport and Recreation, Queensland helps to fund, incubate and otherwise commercialize technologies at www.iie.qld.gov.au in that state. Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organization seeks to do largely the same for the whole country, at www.csiro.au. The Australian Nuclear Organization has life-science applications surrounding irradiation technology at www.ansto.gov.au.

Spider Silicon is an Australian initiative as a cluster or consortium of companies and institutions involved in silicon design, with the support of the Office of Economic Development, and accessed at www.spidersilicon.com. They feel that integrating  resources in a highly technical area facilitates commercialization solutions. Clusters Asia Pacific (CAP) Inc. is a network of organizations with a common interest in developing and sharing knowledge about industry clusters at www.capinc.com.au. CAP has links with organizations in Europe and the US as well as Asia, and serves as the Asia Pacific chapter of the Competitive Institute (headquartered in Barcelona) and is an active member of the OECD’s Local Economic and Employment Development (LEED) program.  books and papers are available at their site including Clusters, Innovation & Investment and papers on connecting clusters, food clusters, and high-tech clusters. Knowledge Commercialization Australia at www.aticca.com lists dozens of technologies and speaks to TT throughout the region. Atamo is an Australian-based firm that specializes in developing new products from interesting technologies, along with corporate resources such as funding for new firms (www.atamo.com.au). The Australian Biotechnology Advisory Council (www.biotechnology.gov.au), the Australian Institute for Commercialization Ltd. at www.ausicom.com.au and AusBiotech (www.biotechnologydirectory.com.au) connect you to the commercial heart of the country’s biotech industry. A new study entitled Critical Factors in Successful R&D, An International Comparison at www.ausicom.com.au is a terrific review of research innovation (technology of all kinds) and economic growth with an executive summary and conclusions that are so insightful they should not be missed.

The Corporate Entrepreneurship and Innovation Network serves corporate entrepreneurs introducing, developing or managing entrepreneurial initiatives in larger firms throughout Australia and New Zealand (www.ceiconference.com). New Zealand’s largest university, the University of Auckland, has its own commercial research and knowledge transfer company, Auckland UniServices, Ltd., at www.Uniservices.auckland.ac.nz. An Asian and Pacific Centre for Transfer of Technology of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific lists technologies, events, papers, TT services in the Pacific, and other information at www.apctt.org. BioInsight and BioIndustry Review are publications that report on industry trends and developments down-under, which include over 400 biotech and 600 device firms, at www.advanceconsulting.com.au. The Review is an annual report that profiles new companies and gives you an overview of government support programs, patenting, etc.

Walter Adamson at www.digitalinvestor.com.au gives a scathing review to the process of commercialization found in Australian universities and suggests major changes in staffing and incentives to turn around a record he finds particularly disappointing. Adamson’s set of white papers at his website comprise a rich resource and set of ideas for transforming technology transfer into a far more viable process. He is also the instigator of the open source commercialization business process to be found at www.OpenTTO.org as the basis for continuous improvement. Adamson also references a collaborator in the use of software to reconfigure business teams and assist commercialization, www.Verticali.com.

Other International

The International Economic Development Council keeps a set of links to help coordinate development and investment decisions to include university economic development centers and programs as well as financial information for small business at www.iedconline.org. CNRS is the French equivalent of NIH in the U.S., and a rich resource for TT at www.cnrs.fr. The premier French life-sciences group, the Pasteur Institute, has an active TT office with a list of available technologies and a directory of people to speak with in functional areas, at www.pasteur.fr.

Technology Transfer and Participatory Research is a section of the website from Solutions That Cross Frontiers at www.ciat.cgiar.org/biotechnology/tech_transfer.htm, an organization that illustrates how biotechnology and economic diversity can help conserve our natural resources. The Technology Bureau for International Industrial Partnerships is the effort by the United Nations to foment industrial growth, and includes a separate section on TT.

In Japan, the National Center for Industrial Property Information is a source for patent licensing and referencing to other areas in that country, at www.ncipi.go.jp. The Japan Institute of Invention and Innovation (JIII) was formed in 1904 to promote original ideas and use them to help develop the economy (www.jiii.or.jp/english). The website for the JIII connects to 11,000 members throughout their private and legal sectors. The Japanese formed an International Center for Environmental Technology Transfer (ICETT) in 1990 as a source of technical and administrative know-how for developing countries at www.icett.or.jp. The Computational Biology Research Center is a division of the Japanese National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology. The South Koreans lured the Pasteur Institute to set up a branch in Seoul with a $100 million Eurodollar contribution to speed biotech developments in Asia. Korea has also committed itself to become a biotech powerhouse with an intended government investment of roughly $2 billion over ten years to bring six new drugs to market while supporting a variety of biotech projects, with an expected payoff of nearly 100,000 new jobs.

In Egypt, the Agricultural Genetic Engineering Research Institute (AGERI) has TT workshops and training sessions listed at www.ageri.sci.eg. Palestine announced they want to promote technology and started an IT incubator. www.africabio.com links Africa with the rest of the biotech world, and lists resources around the world. The Global Bioscience Development Institute supports efforts in developing economies to use biotechnology advantageously at www.gbdi.org and the Centre for the Management of IP in Health R&D looks for any way to improve health in developing countries, including TT, and has sample agreements for TT purposes at www.mihr.org. The International Intellectual Property Institute focuses on IP to grow economies and uses TT as a core for the creation of national wealth, at www.iipi.org. Asian R&D projects are showcased at www.panasia.org.sg.

The Southern African Research & Innovation Management Association (www.sarima.co.za) is in the process of forming classes on TT, building a database, modeling development activities, and otherwise seeking to drive new revenues and a stronger economy out of technology R&D. Dr. Tony Heher of the University of Cape Town, and past President of SARIMA, has been studying TT activities around the world and is probably as knowledgeable as anyone about what goes into a good program, as illustrated in his paper Return on Investment in Innovation from Technology Transfer, available from www.sarima.co.za. While an active proponent of TT, you should know that his data suggest positive returns take a long time to realize, but at a cost of roughly 1% of R&D, are within an institution’s budget.

The Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in Havana is the result of a total $1 billion investment that began Cuban biotechnology back in 1980. Cuban researchers developed the only vaccine against meningitis B and dozens of new drugs and treatments have been spawned in that country (http://gndp.cigb.edu.cu). Cuba decided to make the investment after scientists from the M.D. Anderson Hospital in Houston, TX visited the country and told them that’s where the future would lie. Researchers from Harvard Medical School, Princeton University and other schools have visited and maintained contacts with Cuban biotech centers such as the huge Pedro Kouri Institute outside of Havana. In the same region, Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical is a Latin America-based group that focuses on TT and participatory research to promote more efficient agriculture throughout the developing world, at www.ciat.cgiar.org.

In Israel, 35% of the country’s researchers are involved in the life-sciences and companies are continually being spun-out in a TT process. The Weizmann Institute of Science (www.weizmann.ac.il) has been the source of hundreds of intriguing technologies, and a leader in TT. Yeda Research and Development Company is their commercial arm with a website that provides success stories, opportunities, different agreements, funding help, etc., at http://yeda.weizmann.ac.il. The Hadassah Medical Organization has provided TT for startups through Hadasit Ltd., at www.hadasit.co.il. In addition to the classical startup activities, Hadasit, together with Teva Pharmaceuticals and local VC funds, Giza and Pitango, formed Bioline Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical drug development company. Hadasit serves both as a strategic investment partner and as an operating partner capable of outsourcing Hadassah’s pre-clinical and clinical services. Bioline in-licenses compounds primarily from Israeli academia and hospitals and oversees their R&D up to the stage of proof of efficacy in patients. The new company acts as a bridge between academia and industry while actively seeking to broaden its shareholder base by adding strategic players from around the world. The US-Israel Science and Technology Foundation (USISTF) hosts exchanges between scientists and businessmen, provides funding for a variety of projects including business development, entrepreneurship training, IP asset creation and management, and has a particular interest in harmonizing regulations and procedures for approving new medical devices. The Foundation’s interesting website is at www.usistf.org. A reference to biotech throughout Israel is found at the website of the Volcani Agricultural Research Center, www.agri.gov.il.

A 70-page paper, Entrepreneurial Innovation in Europe, provides a review of innovation policy and practice in Europe, through the window of eleven studies published by the European Commission, Innovation Directorate of the Enterprise Directorate-General, at http://eur-op.eu.int/general/en/s-ad.htm. An article published by Dr. Manfred M. Fischer, Vienna University, entitled Innovation, knowledge creation and systems of innovations relates particularly to the development of biotech/industrial clusters, reports Tom Vass (the Annals of Regional Science, Vol 35, issue 2, 2001). An abstract reads “The main objective of this paper is to provide greater understanding of the systems of innovation approach as a flexible and useful conceptual framework for spatial innovation analysis. It presents an effort to develop some missing links and to decrease the conceptual noise often present in the discussions on national innovation systems. The paper specifies elements and relations that seem to be essential to the conceptual core of the framework and argues that there is no a priori reason to emphasize the national over the sub-national (regional) scale as an appropriate mode for analysis, irrespective of time and place. Localised input-output relations between the actors of the system, knowledge spillovers and their untraded independencies lie at the centre of the argument.”

The ScanBalt is a cluster of life-science leaders around the Baltic Sea, including member states Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Germany since 2002, and candidate countries Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Norway, Iceland and the region of Northwest Russia. Their area consists of 63 universities and more than 700 biotech companies, incorporating two well-known biotechnology clusters, that of Medicon Valley in southern Sweden and Greater Copenhagen, Denmark, and BioCon Valley in northern Germany. ScanBalt at www.biotop.de/biotopics has an engaging 16-page report on 2003 trends in biotechnology, with separate pieces on such topics as Modern Strategies of Regenerative Medicine and Healing with Food. Medicon Valley is accessed at www.mva.org and BioCon Valley at www.bioregio.org. Stockholm BioRegion is the agency for biotechnology TT in Sweden and has investment capital to commercialize the research of local institutions at www.vinnova.se. A Nordic asset manager, BankInvest, has a separate fund for biotech companies at www.bankinvest.dk. 

The annual Swiss Equity Fair brings technology companies from Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Great Britain into contact with VCs. The website at www.praesenzboerse.ch includes an advisory board with the Swiss including Dr. Claudine Janes, Head of the Technology and Innovation Relay Center, Osec, www.osec.ch (Technology Transfer Management). The Osec Technology and Innovation Relay Center is a profit center of the Osec Business Network Switzerland a source for licensing and manufacturing agreements, technical assistance, joint ventures, partnerships, fund-raising and M&A. Osec is part of the European IRC-Network (www.irc.cordis.lu) serving 30 countries with 70 branch offices. Other Swiss institutions involved in biotech are referenced at www.swissbiotech.org. www.biomedicalinnovations.com is a Swiss venture capital fund that focuses on area technologies. www.EuropaBio.com connects you into biotech for the whole continent.

German universities had been slow to the TT process since up until February 2002 all IP had been owned by the researchers who had discovered it. A new law gave ownership to the university with 30% retained by the professors. Humboldt University in Berlin was the first school to formalize a patent policy, at www.hu-berline.de/forschung/transfer/index.html. IP management is handled by the Berlin-based asset management firm ipal Gmbh, and standards are elaborated at their website, www.ipal.de.

Italian biotechnology TT can be accessed at www.biotech.ist.unige.it/bio/saiita.html but only in Italian, and the Dutch have a similar resource at www.nefarma.com, but also with a language barrier.  Biomedical Innovation & Technology Transfer in Italy is in English (www.bioinnovit.com) and specializes in commercializing life-sciences research. EURO-BIC’s Valle d’Aoste helps organize companies and connects you to the Italian Business Angel Network at www.iban.it.

Europe has a group that facilitates TT through translation services, Genesisfaraday at www.genesis-faraday.org/technology. Their major objectives include: liaison with members to understand technology needs and TT; TT support mechanisms; mentoring; and organizing workshops and exchange programs. The Faraday Partnership is a major asset for the UK and is a major element in their December 2003, 148-page report, Competing in the Global Economy: the Innovation Challenge, a document that lays out the challenges and the proposed responses for Britain to mobilize its assets in economic growth (www.dti.gov.uk/innovationreport).

BCG-Europe provides oversight to the European drug development process, and focuses on turning technologies into viable companies with a screen on economic, technical and regulatory factors at www.bcg-europe.com (the same hold true in the US at www.bcg-usa.com). The Association of European Science & Technology transfer Professionals (ASTP) represents 28 countries and regularly sponsors conferences and seminars to advance commercial development at www.astp.net (look for a connection to the European Association for the Transfer of Technologies, Innovation and Industrial Information). The European Space Agency at www.esa.int has a TT program that lists over 450 space technologies looking for a commercial home and a funding connection.

Embassies often seek to bridge their biotech and other technical organizations and companies with partnerships in the US and elsewhere. The Norwegians hosted an all-day program in Washington, DC on their biotech and energy strengths (www.norway.org/restech), and the Swedes did the same thing in a half-day program. The Israelis regularly host tech night seminars at their embassy and a contact with other embassy commercial attaches will turn up many more events, in Washington and elsewhere.

OTHER RESOURCES

Battelle Memorial Institute has produced several studies on economic development and the biotech industry and is putting its money where its mouth is, with a new $150 million venture capital fund to back technologies at its labs nationwide, seeking to turn their output into profitable private companies. The Battelle fund focuses on seed and early-stage investments and expects to attract $4 to $5 from other investors for every $1 they commit to a start-up, putting the fund’s potential impact at around $900 million. The Battelle fund aims to carry technologies through that difficult funding region known as a “valley of death” between the laboratory and the marketplace. At least 80 percent of the fund is slated for investments from properties associated with Battelle, which manages or co-manages four national labs for the federal government—Oak Ridge; Brookhaven in New York; Pacific Northwest in Washington state; and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado.

Yet2.com is the Massachusetts-based website of a Belgian executive, Chris de Bleser, who deemed it the first comprehensive forum for technology exchange on the Internet. They sell technologies, held by a 25-strong group of some of the largest companies, including Monsanto, P&G, Polaroid, 3M, Boeing, Dow Chemical, DuPont, Ford Motor, etc. de Bleser worked at Polaroid where he revived its technical and digital imaging division through the re-application of Polaroid technologies into a whole raft of new products. There are other websites devoted to IP including TechEx and IPTex, but they hope to differentiate themselves from others. 3M has its own website devoted to TT at http://cms.3m.com/cms/US and asks you to contact them with inquiries while providing a catalog of available technologies and a FAQ (frequently asked questions) section. 3M may still be a sandpaper and tape company to many, but they list technologies in: dental and orthodontics; drug delivery; ergonomics; infection prevention; medical devices; microbial detection and control; pharmaceuticals; and wound management. Procter and Gamble follows a Connect and Develop strategy that automatically makes available any technology not being used within 3 years of patent—even to competitors. P&G businesses know if they don’t use it, they’ll lose it, hopefully forming a more careful consideration of new P&G technologies. (P& G employs 8,600 scientists, but is keenly interested in the ideas of the 1.5 million who are outside the company and employs “technology scouts” to look around.) Lucent’s New Ventures Group follows the same ideology for its Bell Labs inventions. Firms are seeking technologies as well, and the German firm Brahms lists several categories of bio-markers for in-vitro diagnostics that they seek in half a dozen disease areas. Brahms wants to talk to you if there’s a fit and you’re seeking a partner for commercialization (www.brahms.de).

Agrenetics in Wilmington, MA develops new pharmaceutical, medical device and biotechnology businesses. This group takes technologies and integrates them with the management and marketing skills necessary to grow a company, at www.agrenetics.com. Their website links to TT resources including the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council and CenterWatch Clinical Trials Listing Service. The Hopkins Capital Group (HCG) (www.hopkinscap.com) operates quite differently than a VC fund, and assumes all the initial risk in new technology discovery and investment. HCG focuses on investing in life-sciences and other technologies that offer a disruptive market shift—those of start-up companies that show a convincing path to growth. HCG has patient capital and effectively incubates its portfolio companies.

A series of strategy papers in Nature Biotechnology provide wonderful insights into TT topics such as In-Licensing as a Business Model, and an explanation of how using this technique with drugs can grow a biotechnology start-up quickly and cheaply at http://biotech.nature.com, written by Dennis Schafer, someone who has started seven biotechnology companies, SchaferDP@aol.com). Other topics in the series speak to: Chris Evans’ evolution from a lab rat to financial wizard; profiles of biotech innovators such as Steve Holtzman, Philippe Pouletty, Keith McCullagh and Jon Saxe; the rise of the European bio-entrepreneur; setting up a biotech incubator; business needs of a biotech start-up; business plans for fundraising; partnering dynamics; maximizing IP; using IP as a foundation for funding; venture capital syndication; managing risk; focusing a start-up; and PR for the biotech. Reading through this set of papers provides an extraordinary foundation for biotech entrepreneurs.

The Capital Network (CN Group) is Texas-based and helps molds new companies using TT and an extensive network of funding organizations with hefty management resources at www.cnevents.com. CN provides a platform for interaction between entrepreneurs and capital while extending advisory and capital-raising services. The National Association of Seed and Venture Funds along with the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer are hosting a showcase in Arlington, TX in late March 2004 called World’s Best Technologies that illustrates promising technologies available for investment or licensing from universities, federal labs and other research facilities at www.wbt04.com. www.TheVentureForum focuses on the technologies available from fifty of the most interesting companies on the West Coast, in early April. If you feel you need an incubator, one of the first places to start looking would be the National Business Incubation Association at www.nbia.org. Oklahoma State University partnered with the city of Stillwater, OK and the Meridian Technology Center in a new research part to commercialize OSU technologies.

KensaGroup identifies and evaluates promising discovering and inventions that are filed at universities, while creating scientific, institutional and financial bridges to commercialization. They welcome inquiries from inventors and TT offices and don’t mind situations with regulatory issues at www.kensagroup.com. www.scoutmedical.com is the website for a similar service, although the focus is on medical devices and comes with a partnership at MPM Capital, a healthcare VC firm. Apjohn has their own $25 million VC fund to capitalize early-stage life science companies they help to organize. A set of methodologies to guide start-ups through the technology commercialization maze is available from Mark Neely at www.infolution.com.au. RTI International examines more than 300 technologies each year and works to commercialize the most promising, including listing a number at www.rti.org.

www.beta-1.com is a Florida-based firm that assembles capital, mentors, technology, management and facilities to birth new companies. Research Corporation Technologies (RCT) partners with universities and research institutions to commercialize early-stage technologies at www.rctech.com. RCT has a worldwide touch along with funding sources and provides a list of technologies they are seeking, such as: new platforms in the life sciences; preclinical and clinical-stage drugs; preclinical and clinical-stage diagnostics and devices; and novel biotech tools for gene expression and protein production. RCT goes on to list the medical areas they’re looking for fits within. LifeTech Research at www.lifetechresearch.com is a group of highly skilled life-sciences, regulatory, medical and financial professionals who provide analyses of novel biotechnologies and medical products, principally for institutional investors. LifeTech leverages its network of medical, regulatory and health services professionals to help analyze clinical trial safety and efficacy data, competitive market analysis, post-approval technology diffusion and adoption, and micro- and macro-economic health policy and reimbursement issues—factors that affect valuation. www.emergenttechnologies.com accelerates the commercialization process by identifying new markets and appropriate industry partners along with funding and manpower help. Emergent draws from an impressive advisory board and lists some of their most promising companies and technologies on their website. Business Cluster Development (BCD) advises organizations, corporations, universities and communities on the development of incubators and innovation programs with a focus on moving TT to commercial success at www.clusterdevelopment.com Michael Gerber, in his book, The E-Myth Revisited, has a wealth of material for business startups at www.e-myth.com and www.results-count.com is a source to add marketing muscle to a start-up or expanding company. Kerdan Consulting is located in the heart of Boston’s biotech neighborhood and offers business strategies of integrating and extending technology markets (www.kerdan.com). www.theblueskygroup.com runs an incubator as well as connects entrepreneurs with resources while providing training and a host of other services needed to launch companies. Most of their connections are in their back yard, the Rocky Mountains out of Laramie, WY, but perhaps all of that sky provides the best atmosphere for growth.

In addition to companies, skilled individuals have established themselves in the TT world. Jane A. Biddle, Ph.D., is a TT consultant that prepares and reviews commercialization plans, policies, commercial business plans, government grants, contracts and subcontracts, helps with negotiations and finalizing Material Transfer, Clinical Trial, Sponsored Research, Confidentiality Agreements, and Consulting and Licensing Agreements, including those involving intellectual property rights and managing intellectual property portfolios, in Seattle, WA, (206) 352 2984, callajane@juno.com. A sampling of other groups that provide a variety of services in drug development, regulatory expertise, or commercialization include: The Biologics Consulting Group in Alexandria, VA (headed by a former FDA vaccines manager); Access Bio in Lovettsville, VA (a former FDA toxicology director); BioDirect in Silver Spring, MD (a former FDA review team leader); Garvey Associates in Potomac, MD (former FDA review officer, Dr. Tom Garvey); and Don Hill & Associates in Silver Spring, MD (former FDA product certification director). Former FDA Commissioner, Dr. Frank Young, organized his own consulting group in Washington, DC. Working on both sides of the Atlantic, Shotwell & Carr focuses on product development and the regulatory process at www.shotcarr.com while Seraphim Life Sciences Consulting is a highly analytical strategy firm at www.seraphim-technology.com. www.tom-lambert.org has a fascinating free newsletter for people who wish to become consultants. Estco Medical has a white paper on launching a marketing campaign for a new drug and another on internet marketing for life-science companies at www.estcomedical.com. www.business.com has a directory of biotech consultants. Contract research organizations (CROs) have materially expanded the nature of their services and groups such as Target Health (www.targethealth.com), an eCRO with web trial capabilities, and Quintiles (www.quintiles.com), a large multinational CRO, provide many outsourcing services.

 Investment banking and consulting firms have developed technological expertise, often by forming close links with major academic institutions and organizations that can both vet technologies and suggest technological opportunities. Three Arrows Capital Corp., a Washington, DC-area investment banking firm has attracted a technology following through the creative application of business financing with technical and marketing expertise at http://www.ThreeArrowsCapital.com. Seminars and briefings on raising capital and using TT detail strategies for moving companies forward are regularly provided along with illustrations of optimal funding steps. www.capitalwest.com funded two University of Oklahoma TT projects and generated multiple paybacks for the initial investors. Juan Enriquez runs BioTechonomy, a life-sciences research and investment firm at www.biotechonomy.com. www.partner-intl.com specializes in arranging strategic partnerships, licensing and management. www.biostreet.com reports on biotech deals.

Mike Shuman’s Community Ventures looks to organize new technology companies but to include wide neighborhood ownership to provide both local control and local jobs and the Directory for Social Entrepreneurial Organizations at www.seo-online.org.uk extends this approach. www.GreenBiz.com is a resource to bridge the business and environmental worlds, with data and a newsletter on technologies and organizations that are environmentally-oriented. GreenBiz.com is a product of the Green Business Network with links to like-minded people around the world, and the sponsor of a new set of environmental websites on subjects such as buildings, transportation, business, etc.

Some firms specialize in TT services both into and out of countries. For a smaller country, such as Norway, Corporate Initiatives Ltd. of Minneapolis, MN consults in the biomedical, biotechnology and IT fields, to include strategic planning and financial management to startups. www.cinit.com describes their services while connecting with Viking Ventures in Norway and organizations in Sweden and Denmark. CVF Technologies Corporation on the American Stock Exchange, sources, funds and manages emerging technologies. VC investors have included insurance companies, corporate pension funds and other contributors, many who invest directly into other VC pools. CVF at www.cvfcorp.com has staked out the technology realms of IT and industrial biotechnology.

Trilogy Associates of Medfield, MA published a paper by J. J. Kalinowski, Assessing Commercial Opportunities for New Products. While basic to examining markets for new technologies, the paper provides a set of useful questions and a process for doing so at www.trilogy1.com. Foster & Roberts catalyzes the transformation of technology-centered companies into market-directed companies and offers extensive services in business formation for TT at www.frconsult.com. A European firm that offers essentially the same set of services, Altran, lists itself as “the European leader in innovation consultancy [due] to its wide-ranging expertise, which gives it a cross-disciplinary proficiency in technology, and to its unique approach, in which technological innovation is the means by which companies grow and compete” at www.altran.net. www.providea.co.uk specializes in sales and marketing help and www.argentix.co.uk has an impressive history of helping commercialize technology along with the funding, management and marketing expertise needed.

www.InventorsHelpline.com has a free inventor’s kit and links to  trade shows on innovation around the world. Lisa Lloyd’s website at www.inventionuniversity.com features courses, consulting and other information for people seeking to find out how to maximize the value of their invention. Lisa’s courses seek to answer common patenting questions as well as financial modeling for valuing your intellectual property. OmniWeb Global at www.vistaweb.com promises to bring investors directly together with technologies, and uses a form of Internet connection to try to pair them up. OmniWeb is allied with the new ATS Securities Market and actively sponsors small stock offerings as tools for raising capital.

The NIH has a special group for nanotechnology research since they see it as enabling new medical treatments. Dr. Jeffrey Schloss is a program director for nanoscience at NIH and notes “Nanotechnology operates at the same scale as biological processes, offering an entirely unique vantage point from which to view and interact with the fundamental biology of life.” Nanotechnology research at the NIH is coordinated through the NIH Bioengineering Consortium (BECON) and accessed at www.becon.nih.gov.

While biotechnology has captured the greater efforts of TT professionals around the world, it’s not the only area of potential economic growth. BMW agreed to lease a research facility being built at Clemson University, and largely paid for by the State of South Carolina. IBM kicked in a little software, Clemson’s foundation bought $21 million of land, BMW and automotive suppliers made cash contributions, and everyone seems to be hoping for new high-tech jobs that come out of an institute devoted to automotive research. Various disciplines have organizations devoted to technology transfer. The Petroleum TT Council can be accessed at www.pttc.org and even the Addiction TT Center has a unifying point around www.nattc.org. Information Technology is the focus of LogOn Technology Transfer at www.ltt.de, a privately owned group that lists TT events worldwide. www.globaltechnoscan has a weekly magazine on net technologies and TT along with venture capital, trade shows, etc.

ASSOCIATIONS

            The Center for Accelerating Medical Solutions (CAMS) is dedicated to shortening the time it takes to find cures, improved treatments and effective prevention of the most deadly and debilitating diseases. With funding from Michael Milken and others, CAMS mobilizes economists, medical researchers, clinicians, etc., to evaluate the entire research process from beginning to end, to then publish concrete policy recommendations, and provide leadership for their implementation at www.fastercures.org.

The Licensing Executives Society (U.S.A. & Canada), Inc. is a professional society comprised of over 5,000 members who are involved in the transfer, use, development, manufacture and marketing of intellectual property, including professionals in the field of law, academics, science, government and the private sector. LES is a membership society of the Licensing Executives Society International (LESI), which has a worldwide membership of close to 10,000 members in more than 25 national societies, representing over 80 countries. They provide a professional TT journal, Les Nouvelles, to their members, all accessible at www.lesi.org.

The Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI) in Reston, VA, has been oriented towards information technology (IT) since its formation in the mid 1980s, but with the move towards bioinformatics, more of its work has relevance for the greater biotechnology industry. CNRI promotes various collaborative activities that create productive synergies among government agencies, universities, and private organizations, undertakes targeted research in technologies for digital objects rights management, and high-speed networking; and supports various educational initiatives in the public interest at www.cnri.reston.va.us.

Pharmaceutical engineering has an association in the ISPE (Society for Life Science Professionals) at www.ispe.org. They publish a TT book and disc that forms A Guide on transferring expertise and technology associated with APIs, Dosage Forms and Analytical Methods. The bound version costs $215 for non-members and is heralded as “You will find the ISPE Technology Transfer Guide useful from the earliest phases in a product’s life cycle to post-approval transfers. It provides guidance and insight into the essential activities and documentation required to move a product, process, or method from one unit to another. The Guide is equally applicable to ethical and generic products, as well as technologies originating from any region around the world.”

ASM Resources is the for-profit arm of the American Society for Microbiology and combines seed capital, training, networking and expert services for biotechs. They have an impressive outreach to TT offices, VCs, pharmas and the host of resources required for a new life-sciences company and, with the leadership of Christine Copple, Ph.D., is becoming a major force in new biotech enterprises, at www.asmresources.com.  

            The Midwest Research University Network (MRUN: Partners in New Technology Entrepreneurship was formed in 2002 as an alliance of several university TT professionals. The focus is on startup enterprise development to facilitate local economic growth and has extensive information on angel and seed-stage financing, management talent, and chances to partner.

STATE/REGIONAL EFFORTS

A catalogue of state plans for life-sciences development is maintained at www.baybio.org, an association of biotech companies and interested parties in and around San Francisco, CA. BayBio has an extensive collection of resources including a Primer on State Incentives for Biology-Based Industries along with classes, conferences, etc., (check with Matt Gardner at mgardner@baybio.org). A state by state listing (and international) of Community Technology Centers at http://www.ctcnet.org/ctc.asp illustrates a huge number and extraordinary variety of local TT resources. State biotech associations are also a natural source of technology, capital suggestions, networking, partnerships and other information. Very active state groups are found in North Carolina (www.ncbiotech.org), New York (www.nyba.org), and Virginia (www.vabio.org) to name just a few (a list of 22 is at www.biobusinesssolutions.com) and over forty exist in the US alone.

The Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO) is a source of money, assistance and events for technology-oriented entrepreneurs. They regularly sponsor  TT events under their program for federal laboratories. Programs on life-sciences and other high-tech interests are held as Technology Partnering Showcases with a variety of technologies from federal labs, universities, etc.—all illustrated for licensing purposes at www.mdhitech.org. TEDCO’s Maryland Technology Transfer Fund (MTTF) typically provides up to $50,000 to support state companies doing technology development in collaboration with area research organizations, dominated by federal labs but increasingly originating at universities as well. The formula for creating a viable company follows the path of: first identifying the technology to be commercialized; then forming a company for that purpose: licensing what’s needed; finding seed funding from an organization like TEDCO; and beginning operations to help attract serious funding from VCs or other sources.

Brainchild MD is a new business that was launched in late 2003 to help commercialize technology in university and federal labs in Maryland. The Department of Business and Economic Development Financing Group committed to investing $1 million over four years in the new for profit business and expects to add funds from private investors. Brainchild will identify university and federal lab technologies that have the potential for becoming viable products and will then provide long-term mentoring and support to help transform these ideas into new companies. The model for building and launching a new Maryland-based technology company is taken from companies such as Zircle, which is seeking to use technology from Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, and the U.K.-based TechTran Group (www.techtrangroup.com), created in 2002, where independent, for-profit companies drive the technology commercialization effort through close, collaborative partnerships with research institutions and public agencies. Access Brainchild through Jessica Tiller at (410) 727 6855.

In Connecticut, the Biomedical Engineering Alliance and Consortium (BEACON) is a collaboration among private and public institutions to develop and deliver commercially viable innovations to biomedical science. Information about BEACON as well as the Connecticut Technology Council (CTC), the Connecticut Office of BioScience and other organizations with important TT applications, is available at www.ctinnovations.com. Utah funds a Centers of Excellence program to help fund university-based technology programs that are working their way towards commercialization at www.dced.state.ut.us.

The Pacific Northwest Research Institute (PNRI) is a nonprofit research center that runs an active TT program to hand-off promising avenues to biotechs or pharmas (www.pnri.org).   PNRI is part of an emerging cluster of nonprofit biomedical-research centers in Seattle, anchored by the University of Washington and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and including the Institute for Systems Biology, Seattle Biomedical Research Institute, the Benaroya Research Institute and the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health.

In Washington State, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (www.pnl.gov) helps local companies license technology, obtain business and technical assistance, provide facilities and equipment and often have provided staff who took an entrepreneurial leave to start a new company. Their website includes a section on Technology Investor Network and Funding in addition to Technologies for Licensing, etc. The Washington State Biotechnology and Medical Technology Online at www.wabio.com links to numerous other TT organizations and provides extensive background on the life-sciences and forming and running a new company. One reference alone, the Montana State University TechLink Center in Bozeman, MT (www.mbc.umt.edu) gives background on TechLink and the fact that the organization has forged over 150 TT partnerships for all 10 NASA as well as Department of Defense Research labs nationwide. They provide partnering and licensing opportunities with DoD and NASA in biotechnology and biomedicine at nzelver@montana.edu.

New York launched a media effort to lure more biotech companies to settle within its borders and states such as New Mexico ($200 million), Arkansas ($70 million) and Kentucky ($30 million) have all established VC funds to nurture biotech start-ups.

In Saint Louis, MO, BioGenerator (www.biobelt.org) is an initiative to create a viable biotech industry, largely by extending the work of local university researchers, and helping to find business managers, solicit investors, and provide market research and other essential business services. BioGenerator is being funded by the Danforth Foundation, McDonnell family foundation, the Monsanto Fund and the Bunge Corporation.

In Texas, the San Antonio Technology Accelerator Initiative (SATAI Network) focuses on advanced technology and hands-on development of start-up companies. They look to local equity through the San Antonio Capital Alliance and coordinate an alliance of service providers. SATAI works closely with TT and economic development professionals in both the public and private sectors at www.satai-network.com.

Hawaiian TT is largely accessed through the state High Technology Development Corp. and the Hawaii Technology Trade Association at www.htta.org. www.ResearchTriangle.org connects with area universities for technology developed in North Carolina and area funding sources.

The State Science and Technology Institute (www.ssti.org) is committed to U.S. economic development and is an important website for anyone interested in TT generally, and particularly high-tech. The list of books on their website is impressive and a start for research into TT. A few of the books available for sale form an impressive bibliography:

• OECD, Turning Science into Business: Patenting and Licensing at Public Research Organizations.

• Henton, Douglas along with Melville and Walesh, Grassroots Leaders for a New Economy: How Civic Entrepreneurs are Building Prosperous Communities.

• Wessner, Charles W., The Advanced Technology Program: Assessing Outcomes.

• NRC, Future R&D Environments: A Report for the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

• Peterson, Ron, When Venture Capitalists Say ‘No’—Creative Financing Strategies & Resources at http://www.ThreeArrowsCapital.com.

• Wessner, Charles W., NRC, Government-Industry Partnerships for the Development of New Technologies.

• OECD, Dynamising National Innovation Systems.

• Bok, Derek, Universities in the Marketplace: The Commercialization of Higher Education.

• Jaffe, Adam B. with Lerner and Stern, Innovation Policy and the Economy: Vol. 3.

• Wolfe, David A., Clusters Old and New: The Transition to a Knowledge Economy in Canada’s Regions.

Wisconsin formed a $317 million Biostar initiative, calling for new research facilities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to provide incentives for biotechnology growth in the state. Even though the state has a $3.2 billion deficit (2004) they intend to invest the money, and are heartened by the State of Wisconsin Investment Board’s provision of another $90 million to two venture capital firms for biotechnology firms in the region. Kelly Henrickson, an associate professor at the Medical College, who founded the Waukesha biotechnology firm Prodesse, Inc., feels many more such firms will be spun out of academic labs if the state continues to “blend research, academics and entrepreneurship.” The state sponsors an annual Economic Summit to look for ways to spur job growth. In 2003, laboratory innovations, entrepreneurial start-ups and a rapidly growing biotechnology industry were at the forefront of their objectives. Wisconsin lists 248 genetics and life-sciences companies with 19,000 workers and nearly $5 billion in sales.

The Research Foundation of the State University of New York established a TT office in 1979 to help faculty market their inventions and can be accessed at www.rfsuny.org/tto. Their basic agreements call for inventors to receive 40% of the gross royalties with school departments and offices sharing the rest. They suggest that faculty record their ideas as intellectual property and further that “During our lifetimes we may come up with at least 10 inventions that go unrecognized.”

Florida has recently announced a major expenditure (nearly $.5 billion in total) to bring a Scripps (TSRI) campus to Southern Florida to focus on biomedical research, technology development and drug design. The state expects to see as many as 44,000 well-paying jobs come out of the investment. The expansion is expected to boost Florida’s economic development in biotechnology, just as the Scripps campus in La Jolla served as the seeding ground and economic stimulus for bioscience industries in Southern California. Roughly 40 companies grew out of Scripps research and technology developments. TSRI will collaborate with and support local industry and businesses, the university system, and school districts in the region, on the same model it followed in San Diego.

The Sacramento Area Regional Technology Alliance (SARTA, www.sarta.org) is a public-private partnership that seeks to incorporate all the technological resources in a nine-county area of Northern California. While SARTA doesn’t speak to TT, it implicitly includes any and all TT resources that can be gleamed from their area, and targets putting those resources together in the form of new companies. Their model is representative of many others across the world, and even though TT may not be mentioned directly, it is still the way for technology to become commercialized and energized.

The San Diego Bioinformatics Forum at www.sdbioinfo.org/links has a good Links Section that includes job lists, event calendars, industry web sites, local academic institutions and local organizations. The greater San Diego area is a hot bed of biotechnology activity with  venture capital firms and biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies concentrating on the region. The presence of at least 12 private research foundations, notably the Salk Institute and the Scripps Research Institute, is a terrific talent pool of bioscience researchers.

CalTech executes 40 to 50 license and option agreements a year with partners that include emerging ventures and the Fortune 500. CalTech takes equity in every startup, and avoids upfront fees, to make it easier for the company to succeed. It’s in CalTech’s favor, however, since history suggests that successful products may easily not come out of the original technology and that an equity stake in the company can capture the future but then unknown successes, that licenses would otherwise miss. The University of California at San Diego has a set of biotech links at http://bioscience.ucsd.edu and the San Diego Biotechnology Discussion Group lists their meetings at www.sdbiotech.org.  The University of Southern California formed a Technology Commercialization Alliance (www.usc.edu/org/techalliance), the first such collaboration between the schools of business, engineering and medicine at a university. USC took a three-pronged approach to improving the ability to commercialize its technologies: education, commercialization resources, and networking. San Diego State University has teamed with Invitrogen, Pfizer and CardioDynamics to offer a joint PhD-MBA program to produce biotech executives. The corporate sponsors fund the startup phase of the program and provide internships, lectures and case studies. UCLA has an e-mail notification system dubbed “HiddenGems” to help distribute information on their promising technologies.” Details on their roughly 600 active inventions at www.research.ucla.edu/oipa.

The Virginia Institute for Defense and Homeland Security is made up of 14 state universities plus the Center for Innovative Technology and promotes TT out of those institutions at www.idhs.org. The Carilion Biomedical Institute (CBI) in Roanoke, VA provides research funding and entrepreneurial business support for biomedical research and product development (including both devices and pharmaceuticals) for the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, the Carilion Health System, and local start-up companies. Under the website of its director, Dr. George J. Blanar at www.binaryspark.com the TT activities in this otherwise remote but technically potent corner of Virginia come to life. Blanar advances various ways that technology can be marketed, including new markets that arise from the introduction of the technology itself. Blanar has an innovative 4-Step Business Program for the commercial development of research and inventions that is particularly sensitive to uncovering marketable products. In addition to biotechnology, Binaryspark consults in energy and telecommunications.

The Biotechnology Council of New Jersey as well as many other financial and technical resources throughout the state is available at www.biospace.com with data on nanotechnology, telecommunications and other areas of interest in addition to biotech. VentureScene New Jersey is a source for government funding and revenue sources at www.youngstartup.com, with a website that includes a very good presentation by the director of technology commercialization at the NJ Small Business Development Center.

The Enterprise Center of Johnson County, KS is a business incubator that works with Kansas City-area entrepreneurs to develop companies at www.ecjc.com. KCCatalyst, Inc. is a nonprofit organization that works to accelerate the emergence and growth to technology and life sciences-based companies in the greater Kansas City bi-state region by providing strategic guidance, consulting and business development centered on three areas: collaboration; commercialization, and capital formation, at www.KCCatalyst.com.

The South Carolina Technology Alliance in Columbia, SC at www.sctech.org was organized to invest in world-class university research programs that are directly linked to South Carolina industry. Essentially, they’re trying to create a business environment as friendly as possible for technology-intensive companies, and so far have helped to lure a biotech company away from its sister state north, with a package of incentives that amounted to nearly $10 million. Each of South Carolina’s three research universities, MUSC, the University of South Carolina and Clemson University, has a TT office.

In Alabama, Auburn and Tuskegee universities have created an economic development strategy for the Interstate 85 corridor, based upon university created research and its commercial appeal. Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN has been at the forefront in experimenting with models for commercializing technology developed at the school. They have operated the Chancellor’s Fund of $10 million for some years as a venture capital pool for university start-ups and have a new initiative to further that work. Vanderbilt leased 8,000 square feet of space for the Cool Springs Life Sciences Center and will add incubation as well as funding help for companies that rise through the Vanderbilt Office of Technology Transfer and Enterprise Development. A private effort to provide management and other skills to high companies comes from www.nashvillemanagementgroup.com. Memphis is pulling out all the stops to make that city the regional center of biotech. The Regional Chamber (www.memphischamber.com) formed the BioWorks Development Council, pulling together people from the area’s medical school, research hospital, medical device manufacturers, and other hospitals and clinics for a coordinated metro marketing effort. The Memphis Biotech Foundation received a $10 million grant to build a new research park, all under the aegis of BioWorks. GTx is a biotech enterprise designed to spin-out new firms in Memphis, armed with over $100 million, awesome technology in men’s health, and a partnership with the University of Tennessee (UT). GTx was made possible by an early angel investor who suffered from prostate cancer, and contributed money and energy to mobilize regional capital. Facilitating GTx even further, UT formed Tri-Star, a new licensing company, and the University of Memphis created IIDSystems to speed the commercialization of discoveries.

Arizona is spending $440 million on new facilities for technology research in bioscience and medical technology in area universities. Arizona State University (ASU) is building the Arizona Biodesign Institute for the School of Life Sciences and applied biological sciences research complex. ASU provides entrepreneurial training and workshops through a new economic development program named Technopolis, modeled after the older Connect program at UC San Diego. The University of Arizona (UA) has its Arizona Health Sciences Center and Northern Arizona University (NAU) is building a Yuma Science Building in conjunction with Arizona Western College. The state anticipates attracting $50 million a year in research grants and that every dollar the state spends on technology will yield about $6 in income. In regards to TT, a bill in Arizona would allow universities to receive stock or equity, and become shareholders in a company started by academic researchers. As approved by the Legislature, the measure goes to the state’s voters in November 2004. As a head start, ASU hired a former pharmaceutical company executive to head its TT office. Peter Slate, former director of Baxter International’s global technology outlicensing, will start as head of Arizona Technology Enterprises, developed by the ASU Foundation. Bioscience links in Arizona are extensive and are accessed as www.flinn.org/bio/bio_links.cms along with news in the industry. Among just a few of the groups referenced at this site are the Arizona Biology Network, Arizona Biodesign Institute, Arizona Cancer Center, International Genomics Consortium, Translational Genomics Research Institute, ASU Bioengineering Program, and UA Biomedical Communications.

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

The NIH website at http://ott.od.nih.gov accesses the Office of Technology Transfer and its numerous references to available science and to TT resources. As with government generally, however, this is just a place to start. Other references include Office of Technology and Industrial Relations, http://ott.od.nih.gov; Technology Transfer Branch of NCI, http://ttb.nci.nih.gov; NIH Small Business Funding Opportunities, http://grants1.nih.gov; Clinical Trials Network, www.clinicaltrials.gov; Clinical Trials Information of the NIC, www.cancer.gov; Developmental Therapeutics Program, http://dtp.nci.nih.gov; and others you’ll come across. The Public Health Service has separate TT offices linked from this website, under Related Web Sites, to include NCI, NHLBI, NHGRI, NIAID, etc. They have a reference to training in TT, funding information, background on IP law and federal regulations, references to TT associations and resources, and even a suggestion Just for Fun. Contact Dr. Ben Prickril in NCI for a briefing on how TT at NIH operates at prickril@box-p.nih.gov or Dr. Carolyn Laurencot for an emphasis on the regulatory side at laurencc@mial.nih.gov. Under Licensing Opportunities (http://ott.od.nih.gov/db/tech.asp) you’ll find abstracts of technologies that are available and categorized into large groups such as cancer and infectious diseases, sub-categorized into diagnostics, therapeutics, research materials, etc., and each containing separate descriptions of patents and technology NIH would like to license. Turning to the description of any technology gives a brief description of the invention, status of the patent, name of the inventor and contact information. The site describes their programs, CRADAs, intramural licensing program, links and lists available technologies. An interesting perspective on the development of NIH’s TT office can be gained from Thomas Wiseman, now a patent attorney at the law firm of Venable, who helped establish the NIH office in the early 1990s (tgwiseman@venable.com). The National Center for Biotechnology Information at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov is the entrance to the technical areas and databases of the National Library of Medicine.

Federal labs sponsor separate conferences or symposia on TT. The U.S. Navy’s Patuxent River Laboratory runs an Annual Business Development Symposium on The Defense Transformation Landscape—Technology Insertion Opportunities at www.paxriver.org. The Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois has a major TT site that not only details various technologies, but gives you a tutorial on TT, and another on how to partner with Argonne or otherwise obtain federal funding. Argonne’s site at www.techtransfer.anl.gov illustrates links, contacts, partnerships, case studies and funding awards. They respond to national initiatives and Argonne Staff created the Midwest Consortium for Biobased Products and Bioenergy along with DOE Ames, the University of Illinois, Purdue, Michigan State, Iowa State and the USDA. If you’re looking for technology to help improve existing products or processes, or to create new ones, you can e-mail Argonne a query and they’ll respond to you. Argonne has a 15-page listing of resources for technologies associated with small businesses in the Midwest.

Brookhaven National Laboratory at www.bnl.gov has an aggressive TT program in six major technology areas including one in Biotechnology and Health. Technologies they have available include Recombinant DNA Technologies; Diagnostic Assays; Vaccine Development and Genetic Therapy; Agricultural Biotechnology; Radio-Imaging and Radio-Therapy Chelating Reagents; Positron Emission tomography; and Targeting and Delivery Systems.

The TT division of the Los Alamos Lab publishes an annual report for laboratory collaborations with private industry, promoting the commercialization of LANL technologies, etc. Separate information on technology maturation funding along with proposal instructions are at www.lanl.gov/partnerships. Los Alamos’ sister lab, Oak Ridge, keeps special technology clusters such as biological and environmental science, computing and computational sciences, and physical sciences among others at www.ornl.gov/adm.tted/TechnologyTransfer.htm. 

A dated but still impressive Federal Bio-Technology Transfer Directory is available at www.bioinfo.com and lists thousands of patents, applications, CRADAs and licenses. An annual subscription fee of $350 provides up to date listings and the website references  papers on TT without charge. There are numerous links to: biotechnology and biomedical resources; antiviral and virus-related resources; patent and technology transfer resources; federal technology transfer and agency/lab resources. BioInfo will connect you with a cornucopia of resources in the form of Virtual Library, BioPharma, BioAbility, Bio Online, BioTactics, BioSpace, BioFind, BiotechFind, Informagen, BioScorpio, BioPortfolio, Bio-Link, BioView, Microbes.info, the Internet Directory of Biotechnology Resources, and PharmaLicensing, among many others. BioPharma, in particular, characterizes both the science and the commercial appeal (www.BioPharma.com).

The Department of Agriculture is an unusual place to think of as a repository of TT research but their website at www.nal.usda.gov/ttic is a wonderfully rich source of information. They run a Technology Transfer Information Center at the National Agricultural Library and will link you such resources as: Journal of Technology Transfer; T’Squared, the Newsletter of the Technology Transfer Society; International Journal of Technology Management; Proceedings of the Technology Transfer Society Annual Meeting; etc. Ag has a page of TT Frequently Asked Questions including responses to What kinds of technologies are industries looking for? and What funding sources are available for technology development or commercialization? at www.nal.usda.gov/ttic/faq/t2faq.htm.

The Department of Commerce commissioned a study through the Economic Development Administration on Technology Transfer and Commercialization: Their Role in Economic Development, from Andrew Reamer & Associates, August 2003. The 239-page report analyzes TT and changes in the economy along with profiles of some of the more interesting models and options for regional TT. The whole report is available at http://www.tech-links.net/ttc.pdf, and you can read through 21 case studies, but one of the more interesting conclusions Reamer makes is that:

The National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST), in Commerce, published a 75-page report on Methods for Assessing the Economic Impacts of Government R&D in September 2003 at http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/budget.htm. In October 2003, Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security published a 150-page report, A Survey of the Use of biotechnology In U.S. Industry that talks to access to capital and access to intellectual property, among many other topics. The Small Business Administration has an Office of Technology that helps in the commercialization of research through the programs of Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer Program (STTR), both of which could be a source of funding and help.

ProVision Technologies is a non-profit division of the Institute for Technology Development of NASA and a participant in the Mississippi Enterprise for Technology at www.pvtech.org in a highly specialized area. This group works with private enterprises to investigate the potential of hyperspectral imaging. If their customers find a potential application, work may begin on tailoring the imaging system, and any accompanying software to meet the needs of the customer. In particular, they are committed to the development of biomedical applications using hyperspectral technology, working out of the John C. Stennis Space Center.

The National Technology Transfer Center (NTTC) is a full-service technology-management center that helps organizations identify commercially promising discoveries, market them to American industry, and build partnerships to turn inventions into products. Congress established the NTTC in 1989, with continued support from Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., and Congressman Alan B. Mollohan, D-W.Va. The NTTC is a recognized national asset located on the campus of Wheeling Jesuit University. Guided by a mission to aid economic development through matching federally funded research with U.S. private industry, the NTTC offers a complete line of products and services enabling American businesses to find technologies, facilities and world-class researchers within the federal labs and within universities needed to remain on the cutting edge of innovation. NTTC clients include NASA, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the Department of Homeland Security, the Missile Defense Agency, the Small Business Administration (SBA) and the Department of Commerce (DOC). For more information on the NTTC, call (800) 678 NTTC (6882) or visit www.nttc.edu. The Missile Defense Agency has its own newsletter on TT and has a report that features 24 technology companies that successfully commercialized their MDA-funded research in areas such as materials, computing, electronics, optics, etc. at www.mdatechnology.net. Federal TT sites on the Internet are available at www.federallabs.org and include main federal resources, grants and SBIR information, IP data, as well as a raft of other TT organizations.

NASA’s Ames Research Center has 2,000 acres in the heart of Silicon Valley that will house a research park for university professors to collaborate on areas on interest. While still emphasizing traditional NASA technologies such as satellites and super-computing, they emphasize nanotechnology and astrobiology, the study of the origin, distribution and destiny of life in the universe. Goddard-developed technologies that focus upon commercial applications are at Goddard’s Technology Commercialization Office, http://techtransfer.gsfc.nasa.gov. Technologies for all NASA Centers can be found at www.teccenter.org.

N2TEC is a National Science Foundation Partners-for-Innovation Project with the purpose of implementing a national Technology Transfer and Commercialization Network to coordinate and provide a variety of resources and knowledge so that members—particularly underserved schools and communities—can collaborate and innovate. Their website at www.n2tec.org has a tutorial on the commercialization process, a video on the way N2TEC operates, and the start-up journals from USC. N2TEC launches its portal and collaboration services in March 2004.

A set of guidelines for transferring technology from the VA Federal Laboratory to the private sector, written by Dr. Alvin Sacks of the Palo Alto, CA Health Care System is available at http://guide.stanford.edu/TTran/ttg/toc.html. This site provides TT definitions, mission, goals, government regulations and law, rules of the game, background on dealing with the bureaucracy; a case study, and references. The Stanford site describes how that university created a TT section, a good glossary and other TT websites.

The Department of Defense (DoD) maintains a Center for Commercialization of Advanced Technology to bridge the gap between the generators of technology, the DoD, and the marketplace at www.ccatsandiego.org. Many defense laboratories have thrown open their doors to work with aspiring technology companies where successful developments could help both parties, and CRADAs and many other forms of agreements with these institutions are possible. If you’ve got something that could be of value to the Navy, contact these highly educated and motivated TT professionals: Dr. J. Scott Deiter, Head, Technology Transfer Office, NSWC, Indian Head, DeiterJS@ih.navy.mil or Michael R. Scherr, Director Technology Division, NAVSEA, MD at scherrmr@ih.navy.mil. On the Army side, the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center in Maryland has an extensive biotechnology team that is available to work with selected companies in the areas of enzymology, molecular biology, microbiology and biochemical engineering at www.ecbc.army.mil. Typically, three mechanisms are available at military labs: work for Private Party Agreements (use of facilities/commercial use agreements); Cooperative R&D Agreements (CRADAs); and Patents and Licensing.

The U.S. Army formed the Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies to coordinate biological research in the development of sensors, computers and materials. Headquartered at UC Santa Barbara, they work with CalTech and MIT to extend the use of biotechnology to non-medical areas, using biotech as a tool in discovery (www.aro.army.mil/biotech).

PART II

“The biotech industry is set to take off. This will have a ripple effect through the whole economy.” Phil Bond, Under Secretary, Department of Commerce.

“The future of economic sustainability relies more and more heavily on the successful commercialization of university-generated research.” Dr. John Taylor, Director General of the Research Council.

Whether or not you agree with the above, heads of state, governors, city and county officials and others involved in the economic development process certainly act as if they believe biotechnology has this kind of muscle. Biotech jobs on average pay $68,000 per year, double the U.S. median and one of the reasons politicians are scrambling to develop new biotechs. Genentech has been growing twice as fast as the U.S. economy generally and has added 5,600 employees (and  millionaires) to the Bay area. A shortcut measure of return on dollars invested used by the Tennessee Valley Authority suggests that for every $2 million in research, a new patent should result. For every seven patents, there should be one start-up company. The AUTM survey provides confirmation of this relationship, as do surveys from the UK, Australia, Canada and continental Europe. An analytical paper by Tony Heher referenced on page 22 comments on this “constant” and its implications.

While biotechs generally have been costly for early state and local economic development investments, nothing on the horizon provides as great an opportunity as this industry (from 2000 to 2002, biotech companies added roughly 12% more jobs, the fastest growth for any major industry). A shortcut between university and other laboratories to the store shelves lies within TT, and this technique is gaining new adherents throughout the greater biotechnology community.

The Federal Laboratory Consortium of 700 major labs or centers defines TT as “The process by which existing knowledge, facilities or capabilities developed under federal R&D funding are utilized to fulfill public and private needs.” The Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) has defined TT as it applies in university TT offices, and the U.S. Air Force has developed an online TT training program that gives an overview of the major issues and processes at www.afrl.af.mil/techtran/handbk.

A few of the biotech companies that were based upon technology developed in university or federal laboratories give us a feel of the pattern for a viable company. Eleanor Yang in a LARTA article reports, “UCSD professor Roger Tsien is one of the university’s successes. In the past decade, the biochemist has helped start three companies. One pharmaceutical company he started with two other UCSD professors, Aurora Biosciences, made machinery and biological tests to screen potential drug components. The company quickly attracted venture capitalists, went public, and in 2001—near the height of the biotech boom—was bought by Vertex Pharmaceuticals for $592 million.” UCSD professor H. Kirk Hammond made a revolutionary medical discovery for the treatment of angina patients. The company he helped create was bought out and his stock was sold for over $10 million, though he continues to teach, albeit without money worries.

In a presentation by Dr. Garheng Kong of InterSouth Partners at the NIH BBIG in October, 2003, Kong noted how the VC firm funded  biotech startups that had been spun-out of universities located convenient to their Durham, NC headquarters. They felt that TT was an exceedingly important resource and that companies that came with university backing were often highly investable. Prime Biotech in Paris, France (www.primebiotech.com) and many other private equity firms are quite interested in firms with developed technologies being spun-out of university and other labs.

Venture capitalist, Brian Atwood, of Versant Ventures notes “There has been a significant shift in the last two years to favor start-ups that have products in human clinical testing, so that earlier stage (preclinical) start-ups can be out of favor, but that’s a generalization that may not appear in all cases. To a large extent our business as VCs is unearthing technology and innovators at the laboratory level, a process that often bypasses the technology transfer office until it’s time to arrange a transfer license.”

Atwood suggests “…I think most researchers have the essential personality characteristics to be entrepreneurs. This includes the attributes to conduct independent research—initiative, curiosity, focus on a specific problem, and drive—and includes the ability to apply for and secure grant support for research problems, a process similar to that of starting a company. The differences arise in transferring these skills to a business environment, where the emphasis is on solving a problem that a group of customers have.” In response to questions on VC criteria on TT deals, Atwood responds “More than anything else is market size for the products resulting from a particular technology; a key part of what we do is to define the products and identify customers and their demand for these products. Where new markets are being created this process can be very difficult, but envisioning a large market opportunity, and then realizing the opportunity, is the most important success factor.”

Most biotech entrepreneurs have an exaggerated idea of what percent of a downstream company they will actually own when the time to cash in really comes about, especially if they succeed in attracting venture financing. In regard to royalty rates, AUTM finds royalty rates dependent upon market factors and determined through negotiation. While defining an average royalty rate will not reflect the true value of an invention, one study cites a typical royalty of approximately 2% of the revenues generated by a licensee-company from its sales of products or services under the license. A small study conducted by the AUTM finds the rate to be 2.3%.

Another trend that is becoming obvious is the merger of biotech with other industries. The nanotech area has been a favorite of funding for professional investors in recent years and becomes even more interesting when potential biotechnology applications are paired with advances on the nano scale. Ardesta is a firm that has invested in nano companies, and suggests that they can provide the corporate infrastructure for researchers to build real companies. Ardesta is like many companies today that see an opportunity to provide the management skills that are needed to complement the specialized expertise of lab scientists and can be accessed at www.ardesta.com.

The recent federal history of TT is documented in a paper from the University of Minnesota by Vernon Ruttan and forms a timeline for the surge in interest in TT that is becoming ever more evident. (A longer history is in a section that begins on page 59.)

• 1980, Bayh-Dole Act (PL 96-517). Permitted universities, nonprofit firms, & small businesses to own title to inventions from research funded by the federal government so they may license these inventions to industry for commercialization. The Magna Carta for university TT.

• 1980, Stevenson-Wydler Technology Innovation Act (PL 96-480). Mandated federal labs to take an active role in technical cooperation with industry by establishing at each laboratory an Office of Research and Technology Application (ORTA).

• 1982, Small Business Innovation Development Act (PL 97-219). Required federal agencies to provide special funds for small business R&D within the scope of their agency mission.

• 1984, National Cooperative Research Act (PL 98-462). Encouraged firms to enter into joint precompetitive R&D venture without fear of antitrust laws and eliminated the treble damages standard of antitrust laws in litigation arising therefrom.

• 1986, Federal Technology Transfer Act (PL 99-502). Empowered government-owned government-operated labs (GOGOs) directly to enter into cooperative R&D agreements (CRADA) with firms and established the Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) for Technology Transfer.

• 1987, Executive Orders 12591 and 12618. Further articulated the Federal Technology Transfer Act for administrative purposes.

• 1988, Omnibus Trade and Competitive Act (PL 100-418). Designated the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) as lead agency to establish and administer Manufacturing Technology Centers (MTC).

• 1989, National Competitiveness Technology Transfer Act (PL 101-189). Extended the CRADA authority to all government-owned contractor-operated federal labs (GOCOs).

• 1993, Defense Authorization Act (PL 103-160. Directed the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) to promote dual-use technology via technology reinvestment.”

Following the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, the Federal Technology Transfer Act of 1986 (P.L. 99-502) required that all federal laboratory scientists and engineers consider TT an individual responsibility and that TT activities were to be considered in employee performance evaluation. The law established a charter and funding mechanism for the previously existing Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer (FLC). In addition, the law enabled Government Owned and Government Operated (GOGO) laboratories to enter into Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs) and negotiate licensing arrangements for employed inventors to share in royalties form patent licenses. Further, the law provided for exchange of personnel, services, and equipment among the laboratories and nonfederal partners. Other specific requirements, incentives and authorities were added, including the ability of GOGO laboratories to grant or waive rights to laboratory inventions and intellectual property, and permission for current and former federal employees to participate in commercial development, to the extent that there is no conflict of interest. A good working definition of aspects of how this law is implemented can be found on the website of the US Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground, Science and Technology Board, at http://stb.apg.army.mil/Mechanisms.

Data on SBIRs, types of licenses, cost-shared contracts and dozens of other provisions of the Act are found here. A Commercialization Assistance Mentoring Program and the FLC Technology Locator can be accessed at www.federallabs.org as well as  publications that are of interest to the TT community, including pieces on A Business Incubator Concept Adapted to Federal Laboratory Technology Transfer and Managing the Successful Transfer of Technology from Federal Facilities. An 81-page report Partners on a Mission: Federal Laboratory Practices Contributing to Economic Development has been authored by Diane Palmintera, produced for the U.S. Department of Commerce, and available at www.InnovationAssoc.com. Palmintera’s Accelerating Economic Development through University Technology Transfer has been a best seller in the university and federal lab communities.

The RAND Corporation held a TT Forum in Washington, DC in December 2002 to examine Federal TT, at the behest of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). The results of that forum and the interesting recommendations and conclusions, plus a questionnaire on TT generally are contained in a report at www.rand.org. The report contains a 49-page bibliography, possibly a record for a publication of this size.

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation issued a report in August 2003 entitled Accelerating Technology Transfer & Commercialization in The Life & Health Sciences. The 42 page report has 21 findings and 8 general recommendations for the Kauffman Foundation along with a good bibliography. Their general conclusions included statements about TT such as “Implicit Social Contract, Economic Development, Clustering of Resources, Challenges to University TT and Commercialization and Needed Activities.”

SPINNING OFF TECHNOLOGIES AND COMPANIES

A working paper by Edward B. Roberts and Denis E. Malone of March 1995 (WP #3804, and updated in 2002) from MIT’s Sloan School of Management detailed Policies and Structures for Spinning Off New Companies from Research and Development Organizations. The paper brilliantly illustrates TT with a model of the spin-off process, illustration of alternatives, stages of TT processes, relationships with internal and external venture capital funds and profiles of groups such as ARCH (Argonne National Laboratory/The University of Chicago Development Corporation), British Technology Group, Harvard University, MIT, Stanford University and UConn. In abstract “This paper develops five alternative structural ‘models’ for formal efforts aimed at spinning off new companies from universities, government laboratories, and other research and development organization. In various ways the models combine the roles of technology originator, the entrepreneur, the R&D organization itself, and the venture investor. The paper also presents the policies and structures of technology commercialization operations from investigations at eight R&D organizations in the United States and the United Kingdom. The data indicate that an R&D organization operating in an environment where venture capital and entrepreneurs are readily available (e.g. MIT and Stanford) can appropriately: (1) exercise a low degree of selectivity in choosing technologies for spin-off creation and (2) provide a low level of support during the spin-off process. The spin-off process is more difficult in environments where venture capital and entrepreneurs are scarce (e.g., ARCH) and mechanisms for high-selectivity and a high level of support must be in place the R&D organization to compensate for this scarcity.”

Many technology companies got their start with close ties to universities. Hewlett-Packard with Stanford, Polaroid Corp. with MIT, and Qualcomm with the University of California at San Diego, are just a few examples.

Before the Bayh-Dole Act only 10 U.S. universities accepted equity in start-ups but as of 2003, 123 universities in a GAO study noted that they held equity. MIT, at the top, had an interest in 116 start-ups. While most universities do not restrict the percentage ownership they can hold, roughly three-quarters of the schools will be under 10% equity ownership.

Barr Dolan, founding partner of Charter Ventures in Palo Alto, CA, identifies the following common pitfalls in moving from the lab to the corporation that he encountered in his more than twenty years as a Silicon Valley entrepreneur:

• “Focusing too narrowly. Scientists tend to be very interested in new things so the idea of producing a product—with no more tweaks—is not natural to them. They may really be interested in new research, not developing a product.

• Overestimating the probability of success in research and development. They often underestimate the difficulty of selling products. No matter how great the technology is, no technology sells itself.

• Getting lost in the details. They have trouble putting together strong business stories or seeing the business big picture.

• Trouble relating to business types. Believing that marketing people can’t be trusted.

• Not being very practical in a business sense. In a right angle world, things should work a certain way. They don’t get it when it doesn’t.”

“Venture capitalists should use the following criteria to determine the commercial potential for TT deals:

• Strength of the intellectual property. Is the IP proprietary and protected? What are the barriers to entry? Is there scientific merit or other validity to the work? How quickly and inexpensively can it be presented as a product that has the right physical and technical specifications, the right price, and achieve the right level of market penetration? For life sciences: strong pre-clinical data, animal studies, ADME and toxicity data are required.

• Technology platform. Will the technology spawn more products later, or is it a one-trick pony? What is the value added to the R&D chain? Will other companies be willing to pay for it?

• A sense of the regulatory pathway and the cost of going down it. For life sciences, what are the clinical trials going to look like? Has the FDA worked with this type of technology or product before?

• An idea of the size and timing of the market. Is this serving an unmet need? Are people actually ready to pay for it? What are the competing products or technologies?

• What is the reimbursement potential? For medical devices, treatments or vaccines, is it something that will be reimbursed through the current (and future) medical payment system?

• Does the technology readily lend itself to being produced in quantities that are economically attractive? In other words, are there impediments to using semi-skilled assembly technicians to build the product? Does it require special materials or components that are particularly expensive or have a difficult procedure or are hard to handle?”

While TT can be discreetly defined and earmarked, practitioners in the field find it difficult to speak about it in isolation. TT is an integral part of incubators, venture capitalists, university classes and efforts on innovation and business development, regional economic development initiatives, training and education generally, etc. Simply, TT is pivotal and seminal in its use, and generates many more demands for resources to implement its promise.

Rob Muir in Australia examines Doing the Deal—US Style, a refreshing look at funding a new technology company. Download his presentation at www.kca.asn.au/information/ and cull such gems as “What Not to Say: We have no competition; Customers really need our product; Our numbers are conservative; We project a 10% margin; We only need a 5% market share; and We don’t need IP.” If you have any of these phrases in your presentation or business plan you need to realize you’re raising a red flag to any experienced investor.

Taxol, the best-selling cancer drug to date, is a special case of TT that leaves many observers with a bad taste in their mouths. Bristol Myers Squibb earned $9 billion from Taxol, treating a million cancer patients. NIH received back only $35 million in royalties and Medicare, the state-federal health insurance plan for the elderly paid $685 million for the drug over five years. The GAO said NIH spent $484 million in research on Taxol through 2002. Based on an extract taken from the bark of the Pacific yew tree, Taxol was tested at the NCI’s Natural Products Program, an effort to look at natural compounds of all types. NIH took the drug through phase II clinical trials, the riskiest portion of drug development. In 1989, NIH advertised for a partner to finish the testing and licensing necessary to take the drug to market, and signed an agreement with Bristol-Myers Squibb, who was asked to find an alternative to the small amount of yew trees available. NIH helped fund research that first synthesized the drug, and went to Bristol. In its defense, the NIH said Bristol could not patent Taxol and that the drug was expensive to manufacture.

While we can see huge potential profits involved in successfully establishing a new chemical entity (NCE), there are especially large benefits for the regions that are able to establish an industry. Dr. Alan Paau, assistant vice chancellor for TT and intellectual property at the University of California at San Diego, said the philosophy of his university and the political establishment has been crucial to making San Diego the fourth-largest city for biotechnology and biomedicine. “UCSD is here to serve the community.” Paau said a university must commit itself to serving the business community by pursuing research with useful applications for the private sector. UCSD spun off and attracted over 400 biotech companies in and around San Diego during the past decade. A research community that sees its city and state taking tech development seriously will start to produce technology that is commercially viable. If it hears only talk—or nothing at all—researchers will be more likely to conduct research for knowledge’s sake, stated Paau.

The University of California at Davis is hoping to beef-up the Sacramento area’s biotech industry, a group of 85 life-science firms that have grown up in the six counties around the university. The Sacramento Angels, a local investor’s group, announced collaboration with UC Davis to increase private funding of research and development at the school’s medical center. The Angels’ initial emphasis was in the computer chip and software industries, but the organization is trying to attract more members with expertise in biotechnology and medical technology, to commercialize medial advances made by the university. Several local venture capital firms that emphasize biomedical research agreed to participate.

A hot risk-management software developed at the UCD Medical Center called Incident Reporting was enthusiastically received by angel investors but transferring the technology to the private sector proved torturous as they had to work out new procedures. While the product is ready for market, and has the potential of generating millions in royalties for the school, UCD notes there are a lot of organizations within their system that have a stake, and they need to take time to coordinate everything. UC Davis has invited venture capitalists to tour labs and meet faculty with interesting and potentially commercial ideas. They instituted a new course in the management school to help faculty with invention disclosures and business plans and UC Davis Connect and UC Davis Medical Center are active sources for TT. They are studying the idea of opening an incubator nearby just for faculty so they can start their businesses and maintain a teaching or research load at the school. With an annual funding record of over $424 million, UC Davis believes that a rich resource for TT is being generated. UC Irvine is just as aggressive, and actively invites companies with clinical trials to work with their faculty and research experts at www.ota.uci.edu.

If systems biology truly proves an integrating venue for the life-sciences and another half-dozen academic disciplines, perhaps this approach will have legs for industry cooperation and the entire field of TT.  There are new bio research facilities that are going up on campuses such as Cornell, Duke, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, UC and the University of Michigan to feature systems biology. The objective is to break down bureaucratic, cultural and physical barriers to teamwork, looking to accommodate new types of interactions and scientific styles.

A Washington, DC lawyer illustrated major failings by biotech companies in their agreements and plans. Peter Kostopulos in Fierce Biotech “argues many biotech companies don’t spend enough time planning for partnership talks and implementing the agreement, undercutting much of the value gained through hardnosed contract negations.” Here are his top 10 partnering faux pas.

“Contractual problems:

1. Modifications/amendments: every partnership deviates from the initial plan. Do the amendments conflict with provisions of the original agreement?

2. Vague terms: define specific performance milestones and don’t rely on standard terms such ‘best effort’.

3. Risk allocation clauses: if a company takes on risks they don’t control, they should be paid handsomely for absorbing that risk.

4. Royalty duration clauses: can suppliers claim a reach-through royalty? Do royalties go into escrow in the event of a dispute?

5. Control/competition issues: who really controls the decision making process?

Internal problems:

1. Internal planning: companies often fail to write detailed business plans or develop realistic expectations for the value of their products.

2. Decision making: put simply, companies pick the highest offer, but that may not be the best opportunity.

3. Deal creation: failure to recruit a broad deal-making team or perform adequate due diligence on potential partners.

4. Implementation: failure to recruit managers with a stake in the partnership and poor record keeping.

5. Planning for the future: what happens if the deal is terminated? Who owns what?”

A terrific website for investigating any kind of technology intellectual property issue is at

www.Kuesterlaw.com. Kuester explains the variety of IP issues involved in technology and developing a company while citing law firms in major cities with specialty practices in the area.

            Australian commercialization firm BioComm has a solid history of licensing interesting technologies to major companies, thereby skipping most of the organizational problems new companies must face. Their website at www.biocomm.au lists Australian-developed technologies they feel have particular value.

ACADEMIC AND OTHER CONSIDERATIONS

Economist Ketaki Sood defended academic TT practices (The Scientist 7/14/2003) by noting  “A recent survey by Emory University and the Georgia Institute of Technology of 62 U.S. universities found that most university inventions need further development, with only 12 percent ready for a practical application when they are licensed to a company. The fact remains: universities need a business partner to create a marketable product. One also needs to consider if researchers can take on the role of an entrepreneur and successfully bring a technology to the marketplace. Researchers might have the essential personality characteristics to be entrepreneurs, displayed in their initiative, focus and drive to take an idea to a commercially applicable technology. But can researchers transfer these skills to a business environment, where the emphasis is on creating a technology that provides solutions, attracts customers and generates revenues?” Larta CEO, Rohit Shukla, in the same article defending and promoting TT, offers “In the final analysis, the desire to be relevant, the focus on placement of their graduates, and the ever-increasing fiscal demands on universities, coupled with declines in, or raucous legislative debates about, the level of public support, have left universities vulnerable. They are attacked if they don’t aggressively pursue commercialization of their incubated technologies, and they are attacked if they open their door to commercial interests. Purists, regardless of their motives, would forever saddle universities with an 18^th century model, when the university was truly apart, an iconic ivory tower.” Observes Shukla, “The true entrepreneur is driven by passion, not discretion, by flexibility, not doggedness, by quirkiness, not rationalism, and by a highly individualistic drive to succeed. There is no place for objectivity in his or her universe. The average researcher, while individually focuses, is conservative by nature, driven by objective reality and a strict adherence to scientific method. However, the entrepreneur and the researcher do not have to be mutually exclusive, and the right framework and the right motivation often will uncover the hidden entrepreneurial gene in the most obstinate researcher.” “In a world truly revolutionized and made more accessible by communications technology, the old rules under which we operated will be swept away, regardless of any hand-wringing that may accompany such an enterprise. Universities and research institutions are part of the vital fabric of the marketplace, providing the framework and the big ideas, as well as some of the grist for the mill. Of course, there needs to be constant vigilance by thoughtful people with no outside agenda in order to prevent them from becoming mere playthings of the corporate will. Certainly, a new system of interaction will yield far better results than those provided by the current system.”

A 14-page overview of biotechnology entrepreneurship activities in the Asia-Pacific region can be found in BioEntrepreneur, www.nature.com. Funding plans, agreements with area universities, TT, incubators and commercial parks, etc., are all parts of an extraordinarily ambitious plan to capture a good part of the biotechnology business for Asia. A country-by-country analysis is provided with a focus on the entrepreneurial potential for each nation.

The Southern Growth Policies Board produced a 184-page report Innovation U. New University Roles in a Knowledge Economy that details the TT and other entrepreneurial activities at 12 universities: Georgia Tech; N.C. State; Ohio State; Pennsylvania State: Purdue: Texas A&M; Wisconsin; Virginia Tech; UC San Diego; Utah; Carnegie-Mellon and Stanford. The report illustrates the resources available at each of the schools and is an insight into ways entrepreneurs can use these institutions. (www.southern.org).

The Association of American Universities has a set of major papers on biosciences and TT accessed at www.aau.edu/research/technolo.html: with such gems as Draft PCAST Committee Report on Technology Transfer; Harold Schmitz on Value of Technology Transfer and National Security; History of the Bayh-Dole Act, Howard Bremer; University Working Group Observations on NIH Report on Investment in Drug Research; NIH Report on Return on Investment in Drug Research; University Technology Transfer of Government-Funded Research Has Wide Public Benefits; and GAO Report on Research Universities’ Administration of the Bayh-Dole Act.

While  university administrators suggest that TT revenues are an insignificant portion of their annual operating budgets, statistics suggest that many others find them so important they are factoring them into their fiscal expectations. “US and Canadian universities, teaching hospitals, and research institutions generated nearly $1.1 billion in royalties and fees from discoveries licensed to companies in FY 2001,” according to the AUTM. Columbia made the most, with $129.9 million, with 90% coming from pharmaceutical patents and most of that on the co-transformation process, a method for recombinant DNA synthesis of complex proteins in mammalian cells—something that has brought the university more than $400 million since 1983. MIT was next with $74 million. ¹ MIT TT director Lita Nelsen explained that figure as an anomaly since it came from cashing in on the IPOs of spin-offs, Praecis Pharmaceuticals and Akamai Technologies. (These are big, expensive efforts. The licensing office at MIT employs 45 and Stanford has 25.) Cambridge University in England took in only about $2.5 million, as most European institutions are behind their American counterparts, where the average of 143 US universities showed $5.8 million. Some of the payments are skewed such as the $251.5 million UC received in FY 2000, a consequence of a $200 million settlement from Genentech (about 75% of UC’s current royalties come from the life-sciences).

Universities around the world have been drawn or pushed into more active industry relationships as a function of the genomics revolution. Simply, vast new opportunities have opened up for researchers and it becomes difficult to operate under the old rules. It’s not without doubt and experience that universities face new situations, and have plenty of reasons to worry. In the early 1990s, a Harvard-affiliated researcher, Scheffer C.G. Tseng, violated policy and then manipulated clinical trial data to show the effectiveness of an eye ointment he had developed. He and his family earned more than $1 million by trading in stock of the company that developed the product. ³

VALUE OF TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER

Powered by the engine of biotechnology, and being realized with the convergence of nanotechnology, biology, information technology and cognitive science, little is being left on the table that cannot be encompassed within the greater ream of the biotech sea change. Simply, the marriage of silicon and DNA opens unprecedented doors. Of the $120 million requested by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in FY 2005, more than two-thirds is allocated for projects that exist at the intersection of biology, information technology and micro/physical sciences.

Reporter Margot Carmichael Lester asks “Did you know that 80 percent of the country’s basic scientific research—the foundation for gee-whiz biotechnology and medical device development—is performed in federally funded labs? The federal government pours $23 billion into federal labs like the National Institutes of Health and National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences. Washington funnels another $18 billion to university research facilities.” She goes on to report “Today, economists estimate that 30 percent of the value of NASDAQ stems from university based, federally funded research, which might never have been commercialized had it not been for Bayh-Dole.” 4

The Council on Governmental Relations on Technology Transfer in U.S. Research Universities suggests, “During the past two decades, universities have surprised everyone, including themselves, with the tremendous success in licensing their research results for commercial application. Through ‘technology transfer’ they provide commercial sector companies with access to new discoveries and innovation resulting from research. Industrial partners develop these inventions and manufacture products that help to improve the lives of American. However, with success comes notoriety, often based on misunderstanding or distortion of facts. News stories of university millionaires tend to catch the eye more effectively than scientific articles about the drugs and devices that would have become available had university inventions not been successfully commercialized.” ⁵

“The biggest myth to dispel is that universities engage in technology transfer ‘for the money.’ Three factors explain why universities are currently so active in partnering with industry. First, under the Bayh-Dole Act, universities have a mandate to ensure, to the extent possible, that inventions arising from federally funded research are commercialized. The law gave universities the right to commercialize products and inventions that came from federally funded faculty research. Previously, federal grant rules gave the government the exclusive right to commercialize research findings, which created a barrier preventing universities or private companies from developing, patenting or marketing products based on the research. Schools now see it is an obligation they have increasingly embraced since 1980 when the law was enacted, and Jill Sorensen, director of the Office of Technology Management at the University of Illinois at Chicago, felt ‘It changed things very much for the better.’ Secondly, universities need to make sure they have adequate resources to enable faculty to continue to do research and to provide learning opportunities for students. And finally, universities must consider their obligation to respond to the needs of local and state economies and the nation as a whole.”

“The university sector has been highly successful in its technology transfer efforts since it was given the right to own and license university inventions under the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980. Prior to 1980 when university patents were generally owned by the federal government, no more than 10% of those patents were licensed to industry for commercialization. Data for FY98 on university licensing activities show that universities are filing in excess of 4,000 patent applications a year and issuing more than 3,500 licenses or options to license annually. Trend data show a cumulative total of licenses and options issued since 1991 standing at over 20,000 and that the percentage of licensing activity has doubled between 1991 and 1998. Anecdotal reporting from universities shows a licensing to patenting ratio of better than 1:3. There is a general consensus that licensing is most effective if it directly involves the inventor and the inventor’s institution.”

The Council Report further stated “Recent data and the application of impact models show a return to the U.S. government and national economy from university licensing of $33.7 billion, and support of 280,000 jobs during the university fiscal year ending June 30, 1999. The return to the federal government in taxes paid on university technology transfer induced corporate and individual earnings, alone, equals a 15% return on sales of licensed products. The public is currently benefiting from the products, processes and services available in the marketplace as a result of more than 17,000 active university licenses.”

The research and consulting company, CHI Research, reported “in 2001, the top 10 US universities generated 689 life science patents, compared with 263 in information technology and 245 in all other technology categories. 6 “Life sciences contribute more than do other fields to institution’s technological and research strengths because ‘companies in the life sciences have a lot of experience in commercializing ideas from universities,’ says John Fraser. ‘Companies in engineering and other fields do not have this same experience because they tend to develop ideas themselves. The engineering fields also are more process oriented, while the life sciences are more product oriented.’”

Stanford economics professor Dr. Nathan Rosenberg and author of How the West Grew Rich: the Economic Transformation of the Industrial World,” notes in a Financial Times interview ⁶ “To track what is happening, it is best, according to Prof Rosenberg, to look at leading universities, which he describes as mines of technological advances, having a huge potential to benefit society. In terms of the amount of money going into this field, the US is a long way ahead of Europe, says the professor. ‘In 2001, of the $32.7bn spent by US universities on research and development, nearly 60 per cent went on life sciences, including medicine and biotech. A continuation of such high spending levels will doubtless translate into substantial commercial advantages as well as into extensive improvements in the human condition generally.’ Europe has not done enough, he says, to make its universities link up with the business world. ‘For better or worse, US universities have long had an interest in being close to business. Not all Americans like the idea of their universities being close to business—but they mind a lot less than in Europe,’ he says. The point about industry/university collaboration, he adds, is that no one should expect instant results. Frequently, technologies appear in a primitive state. As this improves, their influence changes appreciably. ‘When, in the late 1940s and 1950s, people were trying to forecast the impact of computers, they failed to realize how much the computers themselves would change.” “New technologies, says Prof Rosenberg, do not necessarily displace old ideas, but add to them.” “Patience, says the professor, is a necessary discipline for many aspects of life, and all the more when it comes to tracking technological progress.”

Further perspectives were provided by Kathy Ku, Director of the Stanford University Office of Technology Licensing in a talk to senior university executives in July 2001, illustrating: “Over the 30-year life of the Stanford Office, 4,300 disclosures were received; only 30% were ever licensed; 50% of the Stanford deals over the 30 years produced less than $10,000; only 30 deals generated $1 million or more cumulatively; of the 378 deals generating any royalties last year, only 39 generated $100,000 or more; only 1 of the 4,300 was a blockbuster.” “For FY96, Stanford calculated that the royalty income of $44 million that year represented total federal tax revenues for that year of $450 million, or 1.5 times the government’s funding of research at Stanford that year.” ⁷

The National Bureau of Economic Research issued a seminal report on patents in the form of a 50-page report in January 2003, Universities, Joint Ventures, and Success in the Advanced Technology Program ⁸ abstracted as America’s most innovative firms participate in the U.S. Commerce Department’s Advanced Technology Program (ATP). “Those that participated at least once accounted for over 40 percent of U.S. patents to U.S. entities during 1988-1996. Many firms are repeat participants. ATP participation has significant and robust effects on innovation in firms, generally increasing firms’ patenting during the time they are receiving ATP support, when compared to patenting by the same firms prior to and after the ATP award. ATP participation increases firms’ patenting on average by between 5 and 30 patents per year during the period of ATP participation. This represents a 4 to 25 percent increase in firms’ patenting compared to the period before ATP participation. Furthermore, joint-venture (JV) project participation and university participation in a project both appear to have a positive impact on firm patenting. The amount of funding received by the firm is crucial for single participants, with the positive impact concentrated in those firms with large grants. Single participants are more likely than JV members to be small startups for which ATP funding is large relative to the total R&D budget. For JV participants, participation is more important than the level of funding.” NIST publishes a Guide to NIST (www.nist.gov) that includes descriptions of cooperative research opportunities such as those in biotechnology (DNA chemistry, e-mail dennis.reeder@nist.gov), biomolecular materials (e-mail anne.plant@nist.gov) and the Center for Advanced Research in Biotechnology (e-mail Roberto.poljak@nist.gov). ATP at www.atp.nist.gov illustrates funding opportunities along with the proposal submission process, other resources, etc. The ATP itself is arguably the most potent single organization in the world for TT with its extraordinary concentration on university research along with commercialization.

A GAO report examined the impact of federal rights to sponsored inventions.(9) A summary at Technology Research and Development Center of Alaska (www.trendalaska.org) states, “GAO identified that the government uses its license rights in biomedical inventions under the Bayh-Dole Act primarily for research: few products commonly purchased by the government are claimed by federally sponsored patents. Furthermore, contrary to an interpretation of Bayh-Dole held by many universities, the GAO represents that the government is not entitled to price reductions on products that incorporate technology subject to Bayh-Dole. Rather, the GAO suggests that the government is not liable for patent infringement if it contracts with a third party to make a product for government purposes that incorporates a federally funded invention. However, GAO concedes that such right has never been exercised for biomedical inventions. Other conclusions for the report are equally valuable and important for universities and public research organizations that conduct research subject to the Bayh-Dole Act.”

Scholarly insights into the TT operations of universities have generated numerous studies, including a 42-page study, Incentives and Invention in Universities ⁹ abstracted, “We show that economic incentives affect the number and commercial value of inventions generated in universities. Using panel data for 102 U.S. universities during the period 1991-1999, we find that universities which gave higher royalty shares to academic scientists generate more inventions and higher license income, controlling for other factors including university size, quality, research funding and technology licensing inputs. The incentive effects are much larger in private universities than in public ones. For private institutions there is a Laffer curve effect: raising the inventor’s royalty share increases the license income retained by the university. The incentive effect appears to work both through the level of effort and sorting of academic scientists.”

Eleanor Yang reports ¹⁰ “Technology transfer licensing deals generated $868 million for U.S. colleges and universities in the 2001 fiscal year ending June 30, according to the most recent data, a survey of 335 schools by the Association of University Technology Managers. More than 3,870 companies have been spun off in the past two decades based on research licensed from universities.” She quotes Chris McKinney, director of the office of TT and enterprise development at Vanderbilt University. “If we can produce technologies of all sorts, we can save more lives. I think that’s a wonderful thing to strive for.” Yang notes, “Some schools, including the University of Illinois at Chicago, have given enterprising professors more latitude to pursue commercial endeavors as a guard against losing them.”

Similar insights into TT on the federal level are exemplified by a National Academy report. ¹¹ While a great deal of research and recommendations are summarized, the Panel reports “Education and training: Technology transfer mechanisms in the United States have been quite successful and have created measurable economic benefit—to the admiration of the rest of the world—because there has been a wealth of talent in government funded research programs. Independent of successful mechanisms for transfer, this pattern cannot be expected to continue in the absence of strong technological education, training and a full ‘pipeline’ of talent. Metrics and documentation: Because the process of technology transfer is complex, involving many steps and participants, it is very difficult to generate meaningful data to assess its effectiveness. For the same reasons, anecdotal data are readily available. We would encourage caution in interpreting anecdotal information on this subject and recommend the continued development and thoughtful study of technology transfer activities for the purpose of supporting sound policy decisions.”

On a state level, the National Governor’s Association, ¹² Growing New Businesses with Seed and Venture Capital: State Experiences and Options. Authors Robert G. Heard and John Sibert, Ph.D., note “This report identifies strategies specifically designed to develop seed and venture capital for entrepreneurs that have shown promising results in states throughout the nation.” Combining these funding programs with TT at area universities and labs could be a formula for strong economic growth. They published reports on Building State Economies by Promoting University-Industry Technology Transfer and A Governor’s Guide to Building State Science and Technology Capacity.

At the university level, one of outspoken TT critic Derek Bok’s successors at Harvard, Lawrence H. Summers, has a vision of expanding Boston as a life-sciences research center, and announced an initiative to improve TT. “The tech transfer process is a very labor-intensive one,” explained Joyce Brinton, Harvard’s director of Office of Technologies and Trademark Licensing. “Our outreach to companies is less than optimal.” ¹³ Officials noted that they wanted to avoid stage III trials but very much wanted to work more closely with industry. “Unlike 41 other states, Massachusetts does not yet have an official life sciences initiative” reports strategy guru Professor Michael Porter, but he noted that “the region’s ‘pre-eminent’ cluster of institutions and private industry could serve as a springboard for growth.”

Most universities, labs and other resources for TT use a rather standard form to report inventions that may be patentable and commercializable. As an example, a review of the Report of Invention Disclosure Form from the Johns Hopkins University indicates the kind of information needed: title of invention; school and department where the invention was developed; name of inventors; contact information for the lead inventor; and little more.

Duquesne University in Pittsburgh holds an annual Entrepreneur’s Growth Conference, to include a seminar on licensing technology from universities. “’If you’re not looking at licensing, you’re really closing yourselves off from large opportunities,” says David Smith, an attorney who served as senior vice president and general counsel at Pittsburgh-based IssueInformatics Inc. He since formed Teregenics, LLC, a strategic consulting firm for tissue engineering and regeneration applications.¹⁴ Harold Swift, a license manager at Pitt’s Office of Technology Management, noted that “’each licensing deal is very unique. We may extract the value at the beginning or maybe at the very end.’ [He tells about a] Case in point is a start-up company called Flourous Technology, which is based on Pitt technology. As he tells it, a company called Albany Molecular ‘saw an opportunity, but it wasn’t possible to license it to the company. So they asked for a pre-business plan, saw it and liked it.’ As a result, the start-up incorporated in Pittsburgh, and Albany Molecular contributed $650,000 in seed capital, with another investor adding an additional $100,000 to start the company. The firm now employs 15 people and recently raised $3 million in venture capital. The university, meanwhile has a ‘sizable’ equity position, and the university professor who developed the innovation serves in an advisory capacity with the start-up, which complies with university conflict of interest policies. Another example, Swift says, is the recent establishment of a company called Cook Myosite, which is based on muscle stem cell technology. Pitt put the deal together after approaching a large company, Cook Biotech, in Indianapolis. ‘They liked the technology and wanted to license it, but they wanted the technologies to stay in place,’ Swift says. The solution: Create a new entity based in Pittsburgh. Cook then invested $2 million in the venture.”

University alumni magazines routinely run articles on interesting technologies that have been developed in their labs and now form the basis of interesting new companies. The stories are invariably interesting, illustrate how the school is contributing to the local economy, and instill a feeling of pride in graduates. The University of Minnesota has an Office of Patents and Technology Marketing to help start-up companies succeed, to include fundraising, product development, management and sales. The director of business development at Minnesota, Dick Sommerstad, is developing an electronic system to connect potential investors with start-ups. A report from the Vice President for Research and Dean of the Graduate School, Christine M. Maziar, profiles technologies developed there alongside the new companies that have resulted. Doug Johnson heads Minnesota’s Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, something he became interested in when he read that the web browser was created at the school, but never commercialized. That feat (and the money) belonged to Illinois and Netscape, years after Minnesota could have done it with the Gopher browser, in the early 1990s.

The Indiana Venture Center was formed a collaboration between the five schools of Ball State, Indiana University, Purdue, Notre Dame and Rose-Hulman along with other private and public organizations. Their stated mission is to create new companies from the research emanating from Indiana-based resources. Bruce Kidd commented “We have great research going on at Notre Dame that people don’t even know about. Most people think of Notre Dame football and the Catholic church.” Seven universities in North Carolina teamed up with Sun Microsystems to form the Sun North Carolina Research Triangle Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology—the multi-goaled project includes collaboration between the academic and commercial worlds. Sun has been involved in 30 centers of excellence in a real effort to develop bioinformatics business.

MIT has been inventive with its TT efforts at the Media Lab operation it runs in Europe. The school organized a small fund to help researchers (usually $50,000) at its Dublin-based laboratory to create business plans to attract funding. The Irish government kicked in the major portion of the money with a $32 million grant, feeling that its prestige client can attract many other companies.¹⁵  MIT has expanded the idea with joint research in the Singapore-MIT Alliance, the Cambridge-MIT Institute and other programs in Malaysia and Japan.

MIT suggests that there are two general forms of TT that emanate from a university. The direct mode is directly from the university to industry. The indirect mode is the creation of graduates who bring knowledge, skills and an entrepreneurial attitude to their later jobs and their community. The direct route includes: professors consulting to industry; collaborative research inside the school; out-licensing of technology, and; spinning-off new companies. MIT’s policy is that education, discovery research, and publication are their first priorities, and TT is a by-product that is not to distort their long-range mission. Nonetheless, they encourage entrepreneurship by faculty and students, within well-defined rules.

A BankBoston study in 1997 noted that over 4,000 companies had been founded by MIT graduates and faculty, employing 1.1 million people, sales of over $232 billion, and 1,000 of those companies in Massachusetts. This study noted that the state effectively imports company founders since only 9% of undergraduates come from Massachusetts but 42% of the software, biotech and electronic companies founded by MIT graduates are located in the state—5% of the employment and 10% of the economic base of the state.

APPLICATIONS OF TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER

Joe Allen, President of the Robert C. Byrd National Technology Center offers an example of a TT project in an article published by LARTA, “the Human Genome Project, which began in 1990 as a joint venture between the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health. The project was designed to:

• Identify all genes in human DNA

• Determine the sequences of the 3 billion chemical base pairs forming human DNA

• Create a database

• Improve data analysis

• Transfer related technologies to the private sector.

Completed in early 2003, data from the HGP will be used to:

• Develop targeted diagnostics and prognostics, drugs and other therapies

• Breed healthier, hardier and more nutritious crops and livestock

• Create cleaner and more efficient production of chemicals, pulp and paper, textiles, fuels, metals and minerals

• Produce biodegradable items, new energy sources, diagnostics, and more effective, less hazardous cleanup of toxic-waste sites

• Undertake evolutionary and human anthropological studies

• Detect and determine resistance to biological warfare agents.” ¹⁶

Creating Capital, Jobs and Wealth in Emerging Domestic Markets: Financial Technology Transfer to Low-Income Communities is a plus-100 page report that was produced by the Milken Institute and funded by the Ford Foundation (http://www.milkeninstitute.org). The study reviews how the range of financial technologies could bring more capital to lower-economic-income groups.

            Spinning out new companies or finding suitable vehicles for corporate investment has become an invaluable growth model for technology companies. Julian Birkinshaw of the London Business School, and author of Why Big Companies Must Think Small, illustrated four models for corporate venturing in a Financial Times article of August 5, 2003. “‘Venture harvesting’ involves setting up a separate unit to turn spare internal resources into cash. Its primary purpose is to spin-out new businesses. For example, BT Group established a venture unit called Brightstar to harvest value from the 14,000 patents and 2,500 unique inventions it holds in its research laboratories. ‘Ecosystem venturing’ invests in companies that are complementary to existing businesses. They may be suppliers or customers or, as at Intel Capital, companies making software or related products [note: Intel is at the top of the list for companies constantly seeking new technologies in TT opportunities]. ‘Venture innovation’ uses venturing techniques to stimulate entrepreneurial activity within a function of an existing business. For example, Shell created a program called Game-changer in 1996 to increase innovation in its exploration business. Ten per cent of the technical budget was set aside and used to fund promising but non-traditional ideas through a staged funding process similar to that used by venture capitalists. ‘Corporate private equity’ means setting up a standalone unit to compete in the private equity industry. It operates exactly like a VC company and its success is measured purely in financial returns. The biggest cause of failure in corporate venturing occurs when managers fail to make a clear choice between these models. Without a decisive choice, strategic and financial objectives are typically ambiguous and the unit’s managers find themselves being pulled in several directions at once.”

PATENTS, THE USUAL VEHICLE FOR PROTECTION

In October 2003, budget-challenged Maryland announced a $.5 million grant to pay TT costs at state universities. Governor Ehrlich stated “Intellectual property is the cornerstone of technology development and commercialization. Our goal is to increase the number of patent applications by 100 per year for three years, bringing Maryland’s institutions output above the national average.”

The commercial world can be a rough venue for much of academia, as a recent ruling on patent infringement for cox-s inhibitors illustrates.¹⁷ The University of Rochester (UR) lost a patent case against pharma giants Pfizer and Pharmacia. An appeals court ruled that the patent UR had gained in 2000, and expected to reap huge amounts of money in the form of royalties, was invalid. The question for UR is whether to take the highly expensive route and continue to pursue in court their claims, realizing the formidable opposition represented by major pharma firms.

Another complicated legal element that illustrates pitfalls and landmines of biotech TT includes “A recent court case, Duke v. Madey has eliminated the experimental use exemption from claims of patent infringement for noncommercial university purposes. The court held that the experimental use exemption does not apply to research that furthers universities’ ‘business objectives, including education and enlightening students and faculty participating in these projects…In short, regardless of whether a particular institution or entity is engages in an endeavor for commercial gains, so long as the act is in furtherance of the alleged infringer’s legitimate business and is not solely for amusement, to satisfy idle curiosity, or for strictly philosophical inquire, the act does no quality for the very narrow and strictly limited experimental use defense. Moreover, the profit or non-profit status of the user is not determinative.’ While this decision appears to have its greatest impact on no-for-profit research institutions, a recent survey of individuals involved in biomedical research shows that both commercial and on-commercial entities sometimes use patented research tools without a license, which they justify on the basis of a ‘research exemption.’ The outcome of this decision, whether judicial or statutory, could be an important factor in future technology transfer practices and, much like the case for research tool, would benefit from a public policy workshop.”¹⁸

Professors Jean O. Lanjouw and Mark Schankerman found that one of every eight top biotech patents was the subject of an infringement lawsuit in a scholarly 44-page paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in December 2001, Enforcing Intellectual Property Rights (The Scientist, 8/19/2002). Chicago attorney Kevin Noonan provided some tips in the same article as “How to Lick a Lawsuit:

• Critical to winning a patent lawsuit is demonstrating you invented first. Maintain a good lab notebook and keep up-to-date records. Have it signed and countersigned.

• If grad students and postdocs are involved, be sure the principal investigator (PI) reviews their lab books at least weekly.

• Give lab presentations regularly to keep everyone up to speed. Even if the presentations are informal, the PI should write them up, including copies of the gels, data, and printouts discussed.

• Be sure everyone in the lab understands his or her intellectual property ownership obligations to the lab, university, or research institution.”

HISTORY

 “Technology transfer is not a new phenomenon for universities. Dating from the early 1800s in Europe, companies are known to have been developed around the expertise of faculty at universities. Research universities have historically transferred technology through the traditional methods of publication, the training of students, and through their extension programs. Formal technology transfer through the licensing of university-owned intellectual property adds new educational dimensions and research opportunities for students and faculty.” In Making Knowledge Accessible to All¹⁹ “the Pandora’s Box of commercialization within higher education was opened long ago, and the result has not been all bad. Critics once feared that the Land-Grant Acts, first signed into law in 1862 by Abraham Lincoln, would dilute the ideal of the classical liberal education with a commercialized focus on vocational training. Yet those acts opened up higher education of excellent quality to millions of American and provided a boost to the economy of the United States through agricultural research and extension.”

Cardinal John Henry Newman argued eloquently in the mid-19^th century that a university was the proper home for knowledge, debate and stimulation of the public mind, not for utilitarian research in the sciences and technologies. Yet as the late Clark Kerr notes in his seminal The Uses of the University (1972), research was becoming a focus of universities even as Newman’s pen hit paper.

One of the most important changes in American higher education occurred in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries and is commonly referred to by historians as the Academic Revolution. It witnessed the introduction of research as an end in itself in the American university (beyond what was already occurring in agriculture) and the emergence of the Ph.D. degree as the terminal academic credential for university faculty.

In a new book by former president of Harvard University and dean of the Harvard Law School, Derek Bok, Universities in the Marketplace: the Commercialization of Higher Education, Bok writes “Public officials intent on economic growth are undoubtedly pleased with the vigor universities have shown in placing their discoveries and expertise at the service of private industry. By all accounts, corporate investments in academic science have yielded a handsome return in new products and improved technology.” As Bok notes, “research became even more important to American universities during and after World War II, due to the federal government’s decision to rely on universities as the nation’s primary performers of basic research. Since then, tens of billions of dollars for research have flowed into university campuses, with all sorts of federal strings attached in such unrelated areas as women’s athletics and student privacy. Yet Harvard, USC and other leading research universities have willingly accepted the loss of autonomy that federal funding involved.

Clark Kerr observed that, since 1520, only about 85 institutions have remained continuously in existence. They include several Swiss cantons, the Roman Catholic Church and the parliaments of the Isle of Man, Iceland and Britain. But about 70 of the 85 institutions that have survived continuously for the past millennium are universities. In other words, few things last longer or are more resilient than universities. The isolated ivory tower is frankly a myth. As far back as the 17^th century, scientists such as Newton and Hooke began turning to practical rather than purely theoretical concerns. Robert K. Merton has observed that a survey during the latter part of that century found that Royal Society of London scientists were spending 60% of their time addressing social and economic needs rather than the lofty interests of pure science.”

Bok states, ‘The purely pragmatic university, intent upon increasing its financial resources by any lawful means, may gain a temporary advantage now and then, but it is not an institution that is likely to prosper in the long run.’ Bok’s jeremiad reminds one of words written nine centuries ago the Cisterian monk, Bernard of Clairvaux, in his sharp jab at the prosperous Benedictine monastic community of Cluny: ‘Scattered as we are among the gentiles, are we learning their tricks and serving their idols? I shall speak plainly: Isn’t greed, a form of idolatry, responsible for all this? Aren’t we seeking contributions rather than spiritual profit? ‘How?’ you ask. ‘In a strange and wonderful way,’ I answer. Money is scattered about in such a way that it will multiply. It is spent so that it will increase…I don’t know why, but the wealthier the place, the readier people are to contribute to it. Just feast their eyes on gold-covered relics and their purses will open…The church is resplendent in her walls and wanting in her poor. She dresses her stones in gold and lets her sons go naked. The eyes of the rich are fed at the expense of the indigent. The curious find something to amuse them and the needy find nothing to sustain them.’

Universities, of course, are not monasteries, especially in the US. But they are in many ways America’s secular temples. Bernard’s words offer a caution for all of us in higher education—from supremely well-endowed Ivy League schools to those institutions that must compete with elite universities on one side and the growing for-profit empire of the University of Phoenix on the other. Universities are America’s competitive edge, perhaps our most important edge over other leading industrial nations. Universities are also America’s best means of exporting and nurturing the values of freedom and democracy around the world. The challenge for academic institutions is to balance the neo-monastic ideals of Newman with the realities of life amidst the swirling forces of the secular marketplace.”

A 2003 GAO report states, historically, the primary return on the federal government’s investment in university research was the advancement of scientific knowledge. More recently, the federal investment in university research not only has advanced scientific knowledge but also yielded thousands of inventions each year that have fostered the development of new technologies, stimulated the creation of new jobs, and improved the quality of life. For some universities, it also yielded new streams of income that helped to support research and education missions. The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 facilitated commercialization of university technology by giving universities, among others, the right to own their federally funded inventions and license them to businesses. As the importance of university research to technological innovation has increased, partnerships between universities and businesses have grown, giving rise to concerns that financial conflicts of interest might restrict the dissemination of research results or bias the conduct or results of federally funded research.

The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 fostered linkages between universities and businesses by giving universities, other nonprofit organizations, and small businesses the option to retain title to the inventions they make in the course of federally funded research. Before 1980, federal agencies generally retained title rights to any inventions made in the course of the research they funded. Funding recipients seeking to commercialize such inventions often faced long delays and uncertainty when they asked the funding agencies to waive their rights. Since 1980, universities have upgraded and expanded their technology licensing efforts, particularly in such fields as biomedicine and computer technology. Federal agencies and industry substantially increased their funding of university research—federal funding grew from $8 billion in FY 1980 to $19.2 billion in FY 2001, and industry funding grew from $46 million to $2.2 billion. U.S universities reported they executed 3,282 technology licenses and options, received $852 million in gross license income, and held equity in 70% of the 494 start-ups formed around university-licensed technology in FY 2001.

INTERNATIONAL

Building the translational highway: toward new partnerships between academia and the private sector by Ketty Schwartz and Jean-Thomas Vilquin chronicles Days of Molecular Medicine, the May 2003 symposium held in southern California.²⁰ These French reporters noted the 1982 and 1999 Allegre Innovation Laws in France paralleled legislation in the U.S., giving institutions rights to IP arising from government-sponsored research. They note “In France, the Inserm patent portfolio, actively managed by Inserm’s department of technology transfer, increased by 75% from 1976 to 2001. Recently, under the impetus of George Radda, the MRC Technology company was created with the vision of creating a lever for strategic capabilities and building capacity for support of technology exploitation to maintain a long-term leadership position. Christian Brechot, Director General of Inserm, strongly supports the development of Inserm Transfert, a subsidiary of Inserm launched in 2001, whose main missions are to offer new entrepreneurial opportunities to researchers and to facilitate the development of Inserm’s innovative technologies.” They go on to note the need for “New educational models and career paths must be envisaged in both the academic and private sectors, with the aim of providing cross-disciplinary training for MDs and PhDs.”

            The French have used a form of TT by encouraging public institutions and private companies to work together in the field of bioinformatics. The GenoStar project received funding and other support from the French Ministry of Research to extend and commercialize earlier research in computer science—the Imagene and Indig projects. The software they developed is modular and comes from the work of four main consortium partners: the Institute Pasteur in Paris; INRIA’s Rhone-Alps research unit in Grenoble; proteomics firm Hybrigenics in Paris; and Genome Express in Grenoble. By putting software out in beta tests to French universities and private firms they have a wealth of feedback to use in making a useful suite of tools.

Scott Gillespie has a slide briefing on Commercialisation Acceleration that addresses growing a new business on a technology platform, and uses San Diego’s high tech history as a way to show the creation of a hospitable environment for growth (www.connect.org and e-mail jigsaw@mypostbox.com).

A unique model for academic startups exists in Germany at the Trier-based Institute fur Telematic, a research center that operates much like the well-known Fraunhofer Institut. The center offers research services to companies, and it then receives financing from the government equal to the value of commissions received and of contracts obtained from the industrial system. 28% of the institutes’ budget is generated in this way.²¹ “With the growth of the center, there will also be more possibilities to create spin-offs or startups in order to enhance an entrepreneurial application to our research. Our studies are not aimed at research on products with a commercial or practical utilization, however, if the commission in charge of these verifications decides that one or our patents may have a practical application, the license is then granted.” Next door, the Austrians have formed a group to facilitate mating technology with funds, facilities, etc., at www.lifescienceaustria.at.

In the summer of 2001, the German government-run technology incubator, Technologie-Beteilugungs-Gesellschaft (tbg) together with the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology along with a state-funded bank, launched a new program to finance spin-offs from university and institutional research centers. Under the new program, tbg will screen up to 500 business plans each year and award up to $150,000 each in seed capital.²² “Between 1997 and 2000 German universities churned out around 1,400 start-ups, while the country’s research centers produced an additional 200. ‘That is around 400 start-ups per year,’ says Peter Fleisher, tbg’s deputy chairman. ‘Frankly, we see potential for up to 3,000 new high-tech companies to be spun out of our universities each year.’” A terrific study How University Business Incubators Help Start-ups to Succeed, An International Study, was made by Dr. Christian Lender at the University of Applied Sciences, Deggendorf, Germany, Christian.Lendner@fh-deggendorf.de.

            A 137 page report on NASA’s technology transfer activities were examined by the National Academy of Public Administration in November 2004, Bringing Innovation to NASA and the Nation (www.napawash.org/pubs). In contrasting the TT activities specified in the National Space Act of 1958 with today, the Academy suggested that early successes in small computers, cellular communications, lightweight and heat resistant materials, telemedicine and other products were no longer being realized. They felt:

·         “The private and university sectors of the economy now conduct much more research and development (R&D) than the federal government, and often are the leaders in many of the technologies that NASA needs for its missions.

·         The issues of technology and technology transfer are multi-national, and the development of space-related technologies has been globalized. The Apollo mission was essentially a U.S.-driven effort; today the International Space Station is an effort conducted by 16 nations.

·         Small businesses are an increasing source of innovation for new technology.

·         Congress, NASA, and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) have different views about how to best accomplish technology transfer. This disagreement plays out through the budget process and has created significant uncertainty about the program throughout NASA’s technology transfer network.

·         Organizations in the technology transfer network operate at the margins of the agency’s overall operations, lack executive support, and are likely to be at odds with each other.

·         The technology transfer program has recently undergone major changes. In FY 2004, the Commercial Technology Program was terminated, and the program’s emphasis was changed from a primary focus on diffusion of technology to the private sector (“spinout”) to a much greater focus on the infusion of technology into the agency to help meet mission requirements (“spin-in”).

SHOULD UNIVERSITIES BE ACTIVE IN TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER?

“The corporate impact on collegiate athletics is widely recognized and most often viewed negatively, Bok holds, while commercial influence on scientific research is still evolving and holds the same negative potential. He points to three areas of growing concern:

• Increased secrecy, withholding or delaying research results to capitalize on patenting or licensing opportunities or avoid negative implications for existing commercial interests of the university or faculty researcher;

• Conflicts of interest, whether real or perceived, arising from researchers’ financial or professional relationships or affiliations potentially influencing the results of funded research and clinical trials; and

• Corporate sponsors exerting or attempting to exert control over the design of research projects, the interpretation of the results, an editorial control of content in the publication of findings.”

Bok makes several suggestions to address conflicts of interest, “universities should flatly prohibit their scientists from performing research on human subjects if the work is supported by companies in which the researchers have significant financial interest, whether from consulting arrangements, gifts, retainers, or stockholdings.” “For research not involving human subjects, universities should ‘insist that professors with substantial and continuing ties to any organization with an interest in the results disclose the nature of those ties or funding sources in any publications or official testimony containing their views.’ Also the university, faculty or staff should disclose financial interests to potential funders to limit conflicts from arising; avoid allowing funding from a single company or group of companies from representing too significant share of a department’s research budget or which comes with too many controlling strings (such as seats on committees allocating funding); and develop stronger relationships with angel and venture capitalists in lieu of creating university-owned entities to encourage the commercialization of faculty research.”²³ As Sara Rimer points out, Bok has a personal experience with TT. “In the 1980’s, during Derek Bok’s tenure as president of Harvard, a major pharmaceutical firm made him a tempting financial offer. It would pay $1 million a year to Harvard Medical School, along with generous fees for participating faculty members, to produce a series for cable television on recent developments in cardiology. It was willing to allow a disclaimer during every program making it clear that Harvard was not endorsing any of the company’s products as long as it could run its advertisements during various points in each episode.” Rimer notes that Bok agonized over the decision, and voted it down. Unlike the Medical School, Harvard’s Institute of Chemistry and Cell Biology accepted $1 million per year from Merck, for a five-year period, something Merck did with MIT and other schools.

In contrast to Bok, and nearly simultaneous in publication, University of Denver professor Eric Gould argues in his book The University in a Corporate Culture that “We often forget that U.S. colleges and universities have never been, from their inception, independent scholarly guilds under the control of the faculty.”  An analysis suggested “Gould’s assessment of academic commercialization is notable for its command of history and it ability to make sense of American universities’ place within the general corporatization of American life. The purpose of this assessment, in Gould’s words, is ‘to work with the realpolitik of higher education and not assume that the market nature of U.S. university culture is going to change.’”

There are obviously many sides to the entire issue of how TT is carried out on American campuses. In two recent articles, analysts have ²⁴ laid out the arguments that university licensing impedes life-science research and²⁵ the case is made that universities should emulate IBM’s nonexclusive patenting practice and open licensing approach. Shulman notes IBM won big “when it nonexclusively licensed its seminal patents on the personal computer and PC ‘clones’ flooded the marketplace. Such PC powerhouses as Dell, Gateway, and Compaq—to name a few licensees—owe their existence to this policy. And IBM has enjoyed a healthy stream of licensing revenues.” Shulman compares U.S. universities and nonprofit research institutions to IBM. Boston University’s TT director, Ashley Stevens’ Guest Essay: In Defense of University Patent Licensing states “There’s nothing wrong with the way academia licenses its intellectual property.” Stevens cites a good deal of economic history to suggest that present practices work well, and also that Shulman is advocating a return to the “dark ages.”

NOTES

1. Warner, Susan in The Scientist of June 3, 2003.

2. Lester, Margot Carmichael Lester, www.larta.org, November 3, 2003).

3. Technology Transfer in U.S. Research Universities, The Council on Government Relations, May 2000 (www.ytip.org/myths.htm).

4. The Scientist, 10/14/2002.

5. Tech Transfer, May 2000.

6. Financial Times interview on October 22, 2003.

7. www.FSU.edu office of research.

8. http://papers.nber.org/papers/W9463,

9. Technology Transfer: Agencies’ Rights to Federally Sponsored Biomedical Inventions (GAO-03-536) released on July 7, 2003 (www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-03-536)

10. Yang, Eleanor, San Diego Union Tribune, 10/26/2003.

11. The National Academy Press Summary Report on Technology Transfer of Federally Funded R&D PCAST (President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology) Subcommittee on Federal Investment in Science and Technology, February 26, 2003.

12. (www.nga.org) produced a 51-page report on the subject on May 1, 2000.

13. Pasternak, Alex L., The Harvard Crimson, 9/15/2003.

14. Bates, Daniel in TechyVenent/Pittsburgh of 6/22/2003

15. Ibid.

16. In a September 1, 2003 article from www.larta.org.

17. Sample, Steven B. and Bennis, Warren, Making Knowledge Accessible to All, September 8, 2003 (www.larta.org).

18. Agres, Ted, The Scientist of August 25, 2003. (www.thescientist.com).

19. Shulman, Seth, MIT Enterprise, Owning the Future (April 2003, www.technologyreview).

20. MIT Enterprise (April 24, 2003).

21. Wentzel, Michael, Rochester Democrat article of March 6, 2003.

22.  (www.larta.org, March 9, 1998, Sample and Bennis.

23. As reported in Nature Medicine, www.nature.com,

24. Rosset, Sabina in Tornado Insider, 9/12/2001, quoting Institute Director Christoph Meinel.

25. Phillips, Stephen, the Financial Times 10/03/2001. 

(Note: Please reference comments, changes, additions, corrections, etc., to Ron Peterson, (240) 308 0337, e-mail tarrows@verizon.net.)