Author: Marie Powers

AUTM’s U.S. Licensing Activity Survey: FY2008 brought especially good news for the University of Utah, which now leads the nation in spinning off companies such as Catheter Connections — one of 20 Utah spinoffs during 2008. A few years ago, nurses Michael Howlett and James Mercer began patenting concepts for catheters that would block the transmission of pathogens into patients’ bloodstream — the source of infections that cause up to 100,000 preventable deaths a year. “We designed a prototype and got a provisional patent, then looked for someone to turn it into a reality,” Howlett says. “It’s hard for a couple little guys to get to the titans of industry.” The clinicians went to U-Utah biomedical engineers, who developed their ideas into marketable products and launched the young company, which doesn’t even have an office yet.

U-Utah performs well not only in creating companies but also in filing patents (119), patents awarded (33), and generating revenue from licensing technology ($26.2 million), according to the AUTM report. Since 2005, when U-Utah established its TTO, the university has spun off 83 companies that employ 400 people and have attracted $240 million in capital, according to Jack Brittain, vice president for technology venture development. All but five of the companies are still operating. “These are the real deal,” Brittain says. “We are creating a future in Utah for really good jobs,” with an average salary of $85,000. Outside reviewers credit the support U-Utah provides entrepreneurial faculty to shepherd their ideas to the marketplace. Joe Tanous, who heads Oregon State University’s TTO, contends that U-Utah is the nation’s most successful institution in translating research expenditures into economic growth. According to data he has compiled, the university spins off one company for every $15 million in research grants it attracts, while the national average is one company for every $104 million.

Catheter Connections formed after IP lawyer Vicki Farrar, now the company’s CEO, introduced Mercer and Howlett’s ideas to U-Utah’s department of biomedical engineering to evaluate their marketability and develop them into commercial products. The university assisted with viability studies, helping to secure VC, and patenting issues. The new company donated the Mercer-Howlett patents to U-Utah, which then licensed them back under terms that helped Catheter Connections to flourish, Farrar says. FDA approval is near for a device that company officials hope to have on the market in the coming months.

Source: The Salt Lake Tirbune

AUTM has taken a very public stand against the Kauffman Foundation’s missive against U.S. TTOs in the Harvard Business Review. (See this article.) In an editorial published in Business Week, AUTM President Arundeep S. Pradhan, associate vice president for technology transfer and business development at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, urges policymakers to keep intact the Bayh-Dole Act and support the current system used to commercialize federally funded academic research. Citing the recent study by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, Pradhan recounts the economic benefits of university patent licensing from 1996 to 2007: a $187 billion impact on U.S. gross domestic product, a $457 billion impact on U.S. gross industrial output, and 279,000 new jobs created as a result of university inventions. “Just as important, however, are the stories behind those numbers,” he writes. “Innovations originating in university labs and transferred to industry for development and distribution have improved the quality of life for people across the U.S. and around the world.” Examples include the hepatitis B vaccine, the prostate-specific antigen test, Google, the Honeycrisp apple, and FluMist.

Critics of the Bayh-Dole Act postulate that universities and TTOs are inefficient obstacles to the formation of start-up companies. In reality, American universities create more than two start-ups each working day, according to AUTM’s new licensing survey. Such start-ups have longer life spans and raise more capital than non-university affiliated start-ups. In addition, technology licensing offices obtain patent protection and are rapidly implementing programs that include entrepreneurial training, product proof of concept support, and seed stage or gap funding. “If universities did not undertake these financial risks, the number of patents, licenses, and start-up companies emanating from academic research would drop off dramatically,” Pradhan writes.

In the Harvard piece, Kauffman leadership claims “technology licensing offices are underperforming,” he adds. The example they provide is that “although funding from [NIH] has mounted over the years … the output in terms of new FDA-approved drugs has been falling.” There is no correlation between NIH-funded basic university research and the FDA approval process, Pradhan points out. The drug approval process is the responsibility of industry and takes place well after the technology is licensed. “To suggest a connection between technology transfer performance and the rate of FDA approvals indicates a lack of understanding of the complex dynamics at play and the role of university technology transfer offices,” he writes. Moreover, the “free agent” system advocated by Kauffman would create serious conflict of interest and personal benefit issues and potentially generate unrelated business income for the agent,” he adds, noting that historical analysis shows that neither inventor ownership nor “free agency” have succeeded. “A university’s mission is to serve its faculty,” Pradhan points out. “It would be inappropriate for the university to handle technology from outside inventors.”

Other than a few faculty members who report issues with their respective institutions, there is no evidence that university TTOs are doing a poor job, he maintains. “The true rate-limiting factors in entrepreneurship and commercialization are threefold: 1) the significant gap between the nature of research funded by the federal government and the product development needed to obtain private investment; 2) the challenge of finding early-stage venture funding and experienced startup company management; and 3) competing priorities and intensive time commitments of faculty related to writing competitive grants, securing tenure, publishing, and teaching,” Pradhan writes. “With that in mind, it is clear that the critics again demonstrate a significant misunderstanding of the primary mission of universities and the nature of faculty’s interest in commercialization and entrepreneurship. If we really want to take the next step in spurring technology-based economic development, let us identify where the real stumbling blocks are and concentrate effort and resources in addressing them rather than opining without data.”

Source: Business Week

Dramatic increases in spinout activity at Ireland’s universities also seem to refute the Kauffman Foundation’s contention that TTOs are holding back university research. According to figures from TTOs at Ireland’s third-level institutes, 35 spinouts were formed in 2009 across the country’s 10 major institutes, up from an average of 10 per year in previous years. The driving factor behind this growth is the Technology Transfer Strengthening Initiative (TTSI), set up by Enterprise Ireland in 2007 to increase the commercialization of IP in Irish universities and to transfer this IP into industry. A key element of the TTSI was the establishment of TTOs across the 10 institutes, which include the seven member bodies of the Irish Universities Association plus Waterford Institute of Technology, Dublin Institute of Technology, and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.

The data also show that the number of licenses issued to manufacturers or developers has risen significantly, from an average of 33 per year before the TTSI initiative to 102 last year. “These new figures are hard evidence that supporting university-based research works, and that it can result in the formation of sustainable, viable corporate entities,” says John Scanlan, director of the Office of Commercialization at NUI Maynooth. Of the 35 spinouts established last year, about half are in the information technology space and half in the bioscience/food arena. Examples include Analyze IQ Limited, an NUI Galway spinout that creates technologies used to analyze complex mixtures of illegal drugs, pharmaceuticals, and contaminants. Other spinouts include the mobile software company Cauwill Technologies, launched by the University of Limerick, and Trezur Limited, a digital music application developer backed by the Dublin Institute of Technology and Enterprise Ireland.

Source: Silicon Republic

In partnership with Business Valuation Resources, 2Market Information Inc., parent company of Tech Transfer E-News, is offering the just-published Guide to Valuations for IRC 409A Compliance. This new resource, authored by expert Neil J. Beaton, focuses on the nuts and bolts of performing valuation and allocation analyses specifically related to Internal Revenue Code 409A. In these types of valuations, metrics and methodologies differ by the stage of investment and the availability of quantitative and qualitative data. Understanding and identifying the unique variables required to perform a valuation for an early-stage company is critical to a well-supported, and ultimately acceptable, valuation opinion. The Guide will provide readers the foundation they need to perform most of the common 409A valuations over a wide variety of economic conditions. For more details and to order, CLICK HERE.

The more comprehensive Guide to Intellectual Property Valuation, authored by expert Mike Pellegrino, is also available. For details, CLICK HERE.

Scotland’s Aberdeen University has launched the spinout Sight Science Ltd to commercialize its Neuro-Eye Therapy (NeET), a technology that has been likened to physiotherapy for the eyes. Partial sight loss following stroke affects some 55,000 people across Europe each year. Thousands more suffer vision loss following a brain injury. Delivered through a home-based interactive laptop package, NeET prompts patients to respond to patterns on the screen that stimulate regions of the brain that have been injured, causing sight loss. The basis of NeET is similar to the approach taken in rehabilitating movement and speech disorders after stroke. Patients using the computer program are presented repeatedly and systematically with visual patterns designed to encourage plasticity within the injured brain.

Following therapy, patients have reported significant improvements in their sight, giving them increased navigational skills, helping them to carry out everyday activities such as crossing the road, and being able to concentrate longer. Patients are required to complete the computer-based exercise, which takes around 30 minutes, once or twice a day over six months. Most who have used the therapy have found it so successful that they have extended its use, according to researchers.

Source: Science Business

The laboratory work of Doris Taylor, PhD, the Medtronic-Bakken chair in cardiac repair and director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Cardiovascular Repair, has moved closer to commercial reality following the execution of an exclusive license agreement between the university and Taylor’s start-up company, Miromatrix Medical, Inc. The technology licensed to Miromatrix offers the potential to generate new hearts for ailing patients and to grow human tissue to repair other body parts. In the future, the technology may be used to grow entire organs for patients who need transplants. The license agreement is a major step in U-Minnesota’s technology commercialization efforts, according to Tim Mulcahy, the university’s vice president for research. Taylor’s research “holds the potential to launch an entirely new industry on the scale of the medical device industry,” he says.

In November, Miromatrix hired medical technology veteran Robert Cohen as CEO. After hammering out the business and legal terms of the agreement with officials from U-Minnesota’s OTC, Cohen hopes to close an initial round of financing for the company in coming months and to commercialize a “series of products” based on Taylor’s research “as efficiently as possible.”

In the meantime, The University of Minnesota Law School and the OTC received a gift of royalty-bearing patents from 3M, based in St. Paul. The patents, with an estimated value of $760,500, are expected to generate revenue approaching $2 million over the next five years, which will be divided between the Law School and the OTC. At the law school, the newly established 3M Fund for Law, Science, and Technology will support various programs and initiatives in teaching and research. Alumni Raymond Eby (’98), a manager in 3M’s Corporate Development Group, and Mike Geise (’05), Office of Intellectual Property counsel, were instrumental in securing the gift. “We believe that great legal scholarship and high-quality legal education are critical to sound policy and best practices for the future,” Eby says. “Investing in legal excellence and technology is vital to ensure Minnesota’s role as a national leader in the years to come.”

Sources: Star Tribune and UM News

Writing on the ATPBlog, ATPBio principal David Grainger, PhD, director of Graingerlab — an inflammation research and therapy lab in the department of medicine at Cambridge University — and senior partner at the life sciences boutique investment group Total Medical Ventures, recalls meeting in the mid-1990s with a VC partner who said that “a good idea is worth a million.” He meant that backing a good idea with a million dollars to see whether it had potential was a good bet, Grainger explains. Nevertheless, the comment “suggested that, in the 1990s, a good idea was worth something,” he says. Today, a good idea — without considerable commercial work-up and proof-of-principle data — “is worth so close to nothing that it isn’t worth arguing about the few cents,” Grainger maintains. “Even a well-considered plan, and an array of impressive supporting data, is worth little.”

What changed? The most obvious is the simple law of supply and demand, according to Grainger. A decade ago, most universities had not bought into the idea of attempting to monetize early stage IP. When a few groundbreaking academics in the U.S. and Europe broke the mold, university discoveries like restriction enzymes, gene cloning, and polymerase chain reaction were catapulted into commercial success through the formation of spinout companies. “Initially, these highly visible successes drove a bubble in the market for ideas: every technology investor wanted a piece of ideas like this, yet the number of commerce-savvy academics was tiny,” he writes. “Voracious demand and limited supply lay the foundations for the ‘good idea is worth a million’ concept.” As prices climbed and the number of attractive deals multiplied, every institution geared up to exploit its pot of gold.

It didn’t take long for a tipping point to occur. The dot-com bust starved technology investing of capital just as the tech transfer supply pipes were turned on to full volume, Grainger says. “Ideas came pouring out of institutions — revered and mediocre alike — and the result was predictable: prices crashed.” But unlike other bubble markets, the bubble market in ideas was less visible, he adds. Often, the details of these transactions were not released publicly. Worse still, licenses and acquisitions often were financed using fiendishly complex agreements with royalties, milestones, and other delayed considerations that made it almost impossible to assess the sale value. As a result, university tech transfer professionals were just as slow to recognize the crash that had occurred as they had previously been to see the potential in selling academic IP. Because TTOs are relatively “non-selective,” the average quality of available IP also declined rapidly, Grainger maintains. Thus, prospective buyers had the nearly impossible task of wading through knee-deep piles of “one-page teasers” to find the one idea in 10,000 that might actually have commercial value. Almost all such investors have withdrawn from the market altogether, leaving university TTOs “lined up like desperate men at a singles party almost entirely lacking in girls,” Grainger writes.

The take-home messages? Tech transfer professionals must be more selective about the ideas they take on and promote, he suggests. Institutions also should change their success metrics to focus on the number of deals done with genuine third parties rather than the number of technologies discovered. To do that, TTOs need better access to expert assessors. “Even if the tech transfer professional asks the inventor for help finding an external assessor (and most don’t even ask), any names they get will be colleagues who think the same way as the inventor,” Grainger writes. “Worse still, almost all inventors and many tech transfer professionals think from the technology solution towards a product, rather than from a product need to a technology solution. The lack of rigorous external assessment and a technophile tendency lead to over-optimism about the value of the idea.”

The solution lies in more rigorous assessment of early stage ideas, Grainger maintains. “The lack of definitive data does not preclude a proper assessment of the potential for an idea to make money,” he writes. “The market risk is amenable to conventional assessment even before the first experiment has been designed.” Why will anybody buy this product? How many will they buy? And at what price? If the concept passes muster on the market test, it’s still possible to make a worthwhile guess at the technical risk posed by the development path between idea and product, he asserts.

“Success in the next decade will follow the most selective technology owners – or rather those who are able to make the best selections at the lowest cost,” Grainger comments. “The market for unqualified ideas and opportunities will rightly remain rock-bottom. The challenge for all owners of early stage assets is to properly qualify their offerings so that quality rather than quantity becomes the benchmark. Then, once again, there will be realizable value in invention.”

Source: pharmaphorum

The U.S. Supreme Court’s highly anticipated ruling in the Bilski case has the potential to alter the landscape for business method patents and send shockwaves through the tech transfer community. For TTOs, it’s critical to prepare now and determine your patent portfolio’s exposure to Bilski-related turmoil, decide how vigorously you want to defend affected patents, if at all, and explore alternatives for protecting relevant IP. That’s why our Distance Learning Division has teamed with three university IP experts for a 90-minute audioconference focused on the practical steps and strategies you can take now to prepare for the fall-out — and minimize any negative impact on IP in development, already-patented innovations, pending applications, and existing license agreements. Don’t miss The Bilski Decision: Expert Strategies to Manage Its Impact on University IP, coming March 30th. To register or get full program and faculty information, CLICK HERE.

Also coming in March:

• Tuesday, March 9: Tech Transfer Marketing on a Shoestring: Guerilla Tactics in a Budget-Cut World

The University of California, San Francisco has signed a partnership agreement with Genentech, Inc. to discover and develop drug candidates for neurodegenerative diseases. Genentech will support the work of several researchers at the UCSF Small Molecule Discovery Center (SMDC), which is administered by the UCSF School of Pharmacy and located in the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) on the UCSF Mission Bay campus. A research team at Genentech will work closely with UCSF to develop a drug candidate based on prior academic research conducted at SMDC and discoveries at Genentech. In addition to receiving financial support from Genentech for its research function, UCSF has the potential for further funding in excess of $13 million, if certain development and commercial milestones are met, plus royalties.

The agreement represents the first major collaboration SMDC has formed with an industry partner, according to Jim Wells, PhD, who founded the center in 2005 and serves as its director. “What is transformative about this agreement from the university’s perspective is that it is a true collaboration between UCSF and Genentech scientists with the intent to generate drug candidates. This is different from a standard outlicense or simple research collaboration,” says Wells.

The collaboration builds upon an existing master agreement between Genentech and UCSF that allows the two to collaborate in a streamlined manner. “To date we have entered into more than 15 research collaborations with UCSF across several therapeutic areas,” says Marc Tessier-Lavigne, PhD, executive vice president for research and chief scientific officer of Genentech. “We believe that this latest agreement with SMDC enhances our relationship with the university and creates a new model for important industry-academic drug development partnerships.” The partnership also coincides with the UCSF School of Pharmacy’s goal of shaping the future of pharmacy science by working in fresh, collaborative ways, according to Mary Anne Koda-Kimble, PharmD, dean of the UCSF School of Pharmacy. “This is a tremendous new partnership and one that fits perfectly with one of the school’s major strategic goals,” she says. “Our work with QB3 is a great example of how we are doing this. We believe the new UCSF partnership with Genentech takes this to a whole new level.”

Source: PR Web

RTI International, based in Research Triangle Park, NC, has developed a lighting technology that is more energy efficient than the common incandescent light bulb and doesn’t contain mercury, making it environmentally safer than the compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulb. The technology centers on advancements in the nanoscale properties of materials to create high-performance, nanofiber-based reflectors and photoluminescent nanofibers (PLN). When the two nanoscale technologies are combined, the resulting high-efficiency lighting device is capable of generating more than 55 lumens of light output per electrical watt consumed — more than five times greater efficiency than that of traditional incandescent bulbs.

“By using flexible photoluminescent nanofiber technologies for light management, RTI has opened the door to the creation of new designs for solid-state lighting applications,” says Lynn Davis, PhD, director of RTI’s Nanoscale Materials Program. “This new class of materials can provide cost-effective, safe, and efficient lighting solutions.” Additionally, the technology produces an aesthetically pleasing light with better color rendering properties than is typically found in CFLs. The technology has demonstrated color rendering indices in excess of 90 for warm white, neutral white, and cool white illumination sources. “Because lighting consumes almost one-fourth of all electricity generated in the United States, our technology could have a significant impact in reducing energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions,” Davis says. RTI is continuing development of the technology and actively pursuing commercialization opportunities.

Source: PhysOrg.com

A research team led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Panos Datskos is developing a chemical and biological sensor with unprecedented sensitivity. Ultimately, researchers believe this new “sniffer” will achieve a detection level that approaches the theoretical limit for detecting explosives, biological agents, and narcotics. The device consists of a digital camera, a laser, imaging optics, a signal generator, and digital signal processing. Collectively, these components can detect tiny amounts of substances in the air — much like a dog’s nose. The underlying concept is based on micro-scale resonators similar to the microcantilevers used in atomic force microscopy. Although the basic principle is simple — measuring changes in the resonance frequency due to mass changes — a number of obstacles have impeded widespread application of such systems.

“These challenges are due to requirements of measuring and analyzing tiny oscillation amplitudes that are about the size of a hydrogen atom,” explains co-developer Nickolay Lavrik, a member of the Department of Energy lab’s Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences Division. Such traditional approaches require sophisticated low-noise electronic components such as lock-in amplifiers and phase-locked loops, which add cost and complexity. The new type of sniffer works by deliberately hitting the microcantilevers with relatively large amounts of energy associated with a range of frequencies, forcing them into wide oscillation, or movement. Lavrik likens the response to a diving board’s movement after a swimmer dives. “In the past, people wanted to avoid this high amplitude because of the high distortion associated with that type of response,” adds Datskos, a member of the Measurement Science and Systems Engineering Division. “Now we can exploit that response by tuning the system to a very specific frequency that is associated with the specific chemical or compound we want to detect.” The researchers expect the technology to be incorporated into a handheld instrument that could be used by transportation security screeners, law enforcement officials, and military personnel, with additional applications in biomedicine, environmental science, homeland security, and analytical chemistry. A prototype could be available in six to 18 months.

Source: Chemical Online

The regular “Your Business” column in London’s Telegraph has begun tracking the progress of 50 promising university spinouts to show the breadth of cutting-edge technology emerging from Britain’s universities. You can bookmark the column and track the financial progress of these spinouts yourself at Telegraph.co.uk.

It was the shot heard round the tech transfer world; in fact, it was interpreted by many tech transfer professionals as a shot across the bow, if not a full-force slap in the face. In a brief one-page treatise in the January/February edition of the Harvard Business Review that the stalwart publication cited as one of the top 10 “breakthrough ideas” of 2009, Robert E. Litan, the Kauffman Foundation’s vice president for research and policy, and Lesa Mitchell, vice president for advancing innovation, set tongues wagging and blood pressures rising. What was it about the article that has caused such uproar? It might have been their description of today’s academic tech transfer system as “suboptimal.” Or this: “Many university-developed innovations could reach problem, ironically, centers on the very entities designed to facilitate commercialization.” TTOs, the authors insisted, “are underperforming.” The “monopolistic model” of the TTO has “. . . evolved into a major impediment. Inventive faculty members are hostage to their TLO, regardless of efficiency or contacts.”

The missive went on to theorize that TTO underperformance was evidenced by a declining rate of new drug approvals. “We have a massive bottleneck of innovation on our campuses. Even though federal funding from the National Institutes of Health has more than doubled over the past 15 years, the number of new drug approvals has fallen from 40 to 50 a year down to 12,” says Mitchell. “As the federal government dedicates billions of dollars in research funding to clean energy, we cannot let this pattern be repeated.” Litan and Mitchell propose a “simple” solution to the problem they perceive: a free market for licensing university-developed technologies that allows the inventor to comparison shop for commercialization assistance.

The response from tech transfer professionals has been swift, vociferous, and often emotional. AUTM responded with a point-by-point refutation of the Kauffman claims — and Sen. Birch Bayh himself co-authored a piece in Life Sciences Law & Industry, responding with a succinct “Nonsense!” to claims that free agency for faculty inventors was precisely what Bayh-Dole envisioned.

Perhaps none of the Kauffman claims drew more fire than its attempt to draw a line from TTO activity to the pace of FDA approvals. “This is so naïve it surprises me,” says Wes Blakeslee, JD, executive director with Johns Hopkins University Technology Transfer. “First, even if there was any possible linkage between those two things, it takes years and years and hundreds of millions of dollars to develop a drug. All you have to do is look at how many licenses have been done this year versus 15 years ago, and it’s probably seven times as many; there is just no nexus with the number of drugs being approved.” Lesley Millar, technology transfer director at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, agrees. “To even suggest that … is nothing short of astonishing,” she says. An in-depth article examining the proposal and the debate it has sparked appears in the February issue of Technology Transfer Tactics. To begin a subscription and get the entire article, plus access to three years of archived back issues filled with tech transfer best practices, CLICK HERE.

In November 2009, pharma giant Pfizer revealed it would lay off 600 of its 1,000 employees in St. Louis, MO, as part of a 15% reduction in its global work force following the $68 billion acquisition of drug maker Wyeth. But Pfizer’s loss is St. Louis University’s gain. SLU plans to tap the pool of laid-off scientists to launch a research center focused on discovering drugs to treat medical problems in the developing world. SLU has committed $5 million over the next two years to fund the Center for World Health & Medicine, which will launch in July, according to Raymond Tait, SLU’s vice president for research. Initially, the school plans to hire a dozen downsized Pfizer researchers. “We’re not going to compete with Pfizer and Wyeth,” Tait emphasizes. “We’re not going after blockbuster drugs.” Instead, the school plans to follow its Jesuit mission by helping underserved populations — for example, by targeting childhood diarrhea.

Keeping many of the 1,700 to 2,000 local scientists and skilled technical workers who have been laid off in recent months is a high priority, adds Steve Johnson, senior vide president of the St. Louis Regional Chamber and Growth Association. “You don’t want to dehumanize people, but those are marketable assets for the region,” Johnson says. The scientists could help lure medical and technology firms to St. Louis, seed start-ups, and help launch research groups at local universities, he points out. In the meantime, SLU has started writing an application for a federal stimulus-funded research grant to help launch its Center. “We’ll see if we cannot make this viable,” Tait says. “Over time, we suspect we will get some intellectual property, but intellectual property is not the lifeblood.”

Source: stltoday.com

Rob Duncan, vice chancellor for research at the University of Missouri, is challenging students to create their own careers after college instead of struggling in a slow job market, and he wants faculty members and local entrepreneurs to help. Duncan has created the Club Innovation for Missouri Business, or CLIMB, to pair innovative students with experienced mentors. He envisions a student-led organization that would invite researchers and established entrepreneurs to speak at regular meetings. Students interested in particular subject areas would then flesh out their ideas for new products or services with experts in related fields. “We need to engage members of the community so students get the opportunity to translate those ideas into products and services people are ready to pay money for,” Duncan says.

CLIMB would provide a network of resources to help the best ideas get off the ground. Specifically, Duncan wants to see young entrepreneurs look into the possibility of an air taxi service and new ways to transport and use natural gases. He has enlisted the assistance of attorneys, VCs, and university licensing and tech transfer professionals. CLIMB participants will have access to the Missouri Innovation Center, MU’s Small Business Development Center, and Columbia’s Regional Economic Development, Inc. (REDI). “We’ll focus as much of our resources as available to support the University of Missouri as it builds this economic climate,” says REDI President Mike Brooks.

Source: Columbia Daily Tribune

Through a new partnership with Life Science Analytics, 2Market Information Inc. is offering access to specialized drug pipeline reports that offer an unprecedented level of detail on drug development activity in more than 150 specific therapy areas. You can choose only the individual reports you need in PDF format, or subscribe to the entire database and receive updated pipeline information whenever you need it throughout the year. These rich intelligence resources will arm you with powerful information you can use to:

• Keep track of competitors and new product concepts
• Identify white space in specific therapy areas
• Guide research and drug development priorities
• Assess likely licensees and partners
• Understand the IP landscape for specific indications
• Gain critical market intelligence to guide allocation of resources and investments

Therapy Area Pipeline Reports provide comprehensive detail on the full pipeline status for the specific therapeutic indications you’re most interested in. Each report provides specific, up-to-date information on deals and alliances, research activity, licensing, marketing, competition, and the latest news and developments for each specified drug therapy. For details and to view a list of the reports offered by therapy area, CLICK HERE.

Exploit Technologies, the marketing and commercialization arm of the Singapore Agency for Science, Technology, and Research (A*STAR), has licensed a computer network traffic recognition engine developed by A*STAR’s Institute for Infocomm Research (I²R) to start-up Niometrics Pte Ltd. The licensed technology, dubbed CUB4, is a high-performance, software-based traffic analysis engine. As part of the licensing agreement, Niometrics will further develop the tool and produce a range of security products and services that enable fast updates as new protocols and risks emerge. The new engine allows corporate users to detect IT policy violations and perform fine-grained analysis for potential threats without enforcing unnecessarily strict blocking policies.

“There are thousands of other applications and network protocols putting IT infrastructure at risk of misuse or malware infections,” explains Kostas Anagnostakis, PhD, former research scientist at the A*STAR Institute and founder and CTO of Niometrics. ”The CUB4 engine can already identify more than 4,000 different applications, including a growing number of applications and Trojans that actively try to conceal themselves through encryption or obfuscation. With recent high-profile incidents and the resulting concerns of attacks and insider threats that slip past traditional defenses, the importance of beefing up the enterprise security arsenal becomes even more evident.” The company is in talks with IT managers in financial institutions, government agencies, and manufacturing companies as well as leading system integrators and service providers in Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, and the United States.

Source: Exploit Technologies

Johns Hopkins University has inked an exclusive global license allowing DxS, a wholly owned subsidiary of Netherlands holding company Qiagen N.V., to use its PI3K biomarker patent in the development of PCR-based companion diagnostics for cancer therapies. The patent for PI3K mutations in human cancers was initially filed by Johns Hopkins researchers who assessed the biomarker during their evaluation of tyrosine kinase inhibitors targeting the EGFR (epidermal growth factor receptor) pathway. Their research suggests that mutations in the PI3K oncogene are predictive for the success of certain treatments of patients suffering from lung, breast, colorectal, and other cancers. Financial terms of the license were not disclosed.

Qiagen already markets a PI3K test for research use and last September acquired DxS, a personalized medicines company that specializes in the development of molecular diagnostics to help select the most appropriate therapies for cancer patients. That deal included a $95 million up-front cash payment and up to $35 million in additional fees dependent upon meeting certain milestones. Since then, DxS has inked an agreement with Pfizer to develop a test for the tumor-specific epidermal growth factor receptor variant III (EGFRvIII) as a companion diagnostic for CDX-110 – Pfizer’s Phase II immunotherapy vaccine for the treatment of glioblastoma multiforme. DxS’ product portfolio also includes both clinical and research-use tests to determine the mutation status of cancer-related genes. The company signed a collaborative agreement with Bristol-Myers Squibb and ImClone Systems to provide a companion diagnostic for use with the EGFR inhibitor Erbitux and negotiated a partnership with AstraZeneca to develop a companion diagnostic for use with lung-cancer drug Iressa.

Sources: Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News and PharmaBiz.com

Fusion IP plc, the commercialization specialist for the U.K.’s Cardiff University, has spun out Progenteq Ltd to develop a cartilage replacement therapy for the treatment of acute knee injuries. The company is founded on the work of Charlie Archer, PhD, professor of reparative biology and tissue engineering in the connective tissue research group at Cardiff’s School of Biosciences. Archer and colleagues have isolated a defined population of cells from the articular cartilage, which surrounds the main bones in the knee joint. The cells have stem cell-like properties and can be expanded in the laboratory to produce large quantities of cartilage.

The cells could be used for allogenic cartilage replacement therapy, in which cells derived from donors are used to grow a tissue bank of cartilage that is stored and ready for insertion into patients with acute knee injuries, when and as needed. The technology promises a more cost-effective cell therapy than current autologous approaches, where cells are removed from a patient, expanded, and then returned to the patient. The successful development of a cartilage cell bank also could pave the way for treatment of degenerative cartilage damage such as that seen in osteoarthritis. “Although this is an early-stage project, an allogeneic approach has been described as the holy grail of cartilage repair,” says David Baynes, CEO of Fusion IP. “We believe that Professor Archer’s discovery may be the key. As such, it has the potential to revolutionize the way we treat acute knee injuries.”

Source: Science Business

Two of Central Ohio’s largest economic engines are collaborating on a technology initiative that could pay dividends for both. Columbus-based R&D giant Battelle has signed a two-year deal to use the Technology Entrepreneurship and Commercialization Center at Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business to assess the market potential of technology in its development pipeline. The OSU center has been working for Battelle on the project since mid-2009 on a pilot basis. The agreement takes the arrangement into 2011. Spencer Pugh, Battelle’s vice president for international and industrial markets, says the partnership gives the research agency “a cold, dispassionate eye on the market potential” of its technology.

A handful of OSU faculty and students working on the pilot have assessed more than 70 inventions from Battelle’s national security unit, ranging from wave communication technology to soybean-based flame retardants. Michael Camp, academic director for Fisher’s entrepreneurship center, says the school is looking at potential deals with other Battelle divisions beyond its national security group. Based on a monthly fee arrangement, Battelle is set to pay about $112,800 over the two-year partnership, according to Camp. In the meantime, OSU is poised to benefit from products that make their way onto the market. Battelle has the option to hand over the reins on licensing inventions and split royalties if a product becomes marketable. OSU hasn’t asked to control licensing but opportunities could emerge down the road, Camp says.

Source: Columbus Business First