{"id":519517,"date":"2010-04-07T14:55:22","date_gmt":"2010-04-07T18:55:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.technologytransfertactics.com\/content\/?p=6281"},"modified":"2010-04-07T14:55:22","modified_gmt":"2010-04-07T18:55:22","slug":"distributed-partnering-model-eschews-conventional-start-up-road-to-commercialization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/519517","title":{"rendered":"Distributed partnering model eschews conventional start-up road to commercialization"},"content":{"rendered":"

The ongoing effort to build a better mousetrap for commercializing university IP has spawned a new concept its developers have dubbed “The Distributed Partnering Model (DPM).” The model was recently described in a white paper available here<\/a>. Duane Roth, CEO of the San Diego-based nonprofit business accelerator CONNECT, and Pedro Cuatrecasas, MD, adjunct professor of pharmacology and medicine at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), offer an approach that focuses more on advancing products and technologies than on developing individual start-ups. Although designed for life sciences innovation, the model also can be applied to other technology sectors, according to the authors.<\/p>\n

The biggest problem with the conventional startup model is the Valley of Death, “which is where I live” at CONNECT, Roth says. Although research funding has poured into biotechnology since the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980, driving a growing number of ideas and disclosures, the financing system to commercialize that IP “is just not functioning — especially in the start-up phase,” he maintains. Biotechnologies coming from university research labs now focus on small molecules, not proteins or antibodies. Although the technologies are innovative, they’re increasingly risky. VCs are shunning these early discoveries in favor of downstream technologies with well-identified lead compounds that are likely to succeed in clinical studies — even though this scenario almost never occurs, Roth notes. The DPM “describes a way to think a little differently — perhaps more rationally — about how we fund early-stage innovation,” he says.<\/p>\n

The model is built around four independent steps of a collaborative process to advance discoveries by sharing, or “distributing,” the financial and technical R&D risks, based on the unique assets, expertise, culture, and risk tolerance of participating organizations. The four steps are:<\/p>\n

1. Discovery. <\/strong>Universities and other research institutions would continue to play a leading role in applying their scientific expertise to generate new discoveries and technologies.<\/p>\n

2. Definition. <\/strong>A new type of organization called a product definition company (PDC), which combines an experienced management team with investment capital, would assemble a portfolio of discoveries in a given field, define initial product(s) from the discoveries, and advance them through product definition for eventual sale to third parties.<\/p>\n

3. Development. <\/strong>Well-defined products would be handed off to professional service providers (PSP), which would move product development to “proof of relevancy,” when products would be ready to advance to the marketplace.<\/p>\n

4. Delivery. <\/strong>Companies, such as big pharmas, would acquire products from the VC owners when they emerge from development, then package and deliver them through their own distribution channels.<\/p>\n

Instead of spending capital to build a company, DPM calls for independent PSPs to conduct the translational experiments and move a technology to the development stage. Hence, the majority of investment would fund continued product or technology development rather than operating and maintenance costs. “The difference here is that, instead of starting a company around every idea, you would start a company that takes 10 ideas forward in the given area of expertise of the team managing that product definition,” Roth says. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The white paper was underwritten by the Kansas City, MO-based Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which has raised the hackles of many TTOs. Following Kauffman’s proposal for “free agent” faculty skewered university TTOs, the commercialization debate has continued to rage. And although Roth maintains that the ideas came solely from him and Cuatrecasas, tech transfer professionals have greeted the DPM idea with some skepticism. “Bluntly, I think this is an extremely ill-founded proposal,” says Lita Nelsen<\/strong>, director of the Technology Licensing Office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Tech transfer is local, Nelsen points out. “The majority of important entrepreneurial deals are done with people we know in the faculty, so the distributed model doesn’t work,” she says. An in-depth article describing and debating the merits of the DPM appears in the March issue of Technology Transfer Tactics<\/em><\/a>. To subscribe and access the full article, plus more than three years of archived back issues filled with tech transfer strategies and best practices, CLICK HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The ongoing effort to build a better mousetrap for commercializing university IP has spawned a new concept its developers have dubbed “The Distributed Partnering Model (DPM).” The model was recently described in a white paper available here. Duane Roth, CEO of the San Diego-based nonprofit business accelerator CONNECT, and Pedro Cuatrecasas, MD, adjunct professor of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-519517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}