|
If you're trying to stop smoking, thank the University of California, Los Angeles, for the nicotine patch. If you get thirsty when you're working out, thank the University of Florida for Gatorade. But if you're in an emergency room with chest pains and need a diagnosis, you can be grateful to Washington University.
Two tests that quickly determine whether a person is having a heart attack accounted for one-fifth of the University's $8.3 million license income in fiscal year 1999. These tests can pick out the one person who needs urgent care from the four others who are having indigestion or panic attacks.
The tests resulted from the research of Jack H. Ladenson, Ph.D., professor of medicine and pathology. In the 1980s, Ladenson isolated an antibody that recognizes a protein that leaks into the bloodstream from heart muscle during a heart attack. In 1986, the University secured the first nonexclusive license for this antibody -- creatine kinase-MB -- and the product reached the market in 1988. Ladenson then developed even more specific tests based on antibodies for the muscle proteins troponin I and myoglobin.
"Licensing has made the technology much more widely available and more easily utilized throughout the world than the procedures we originally published in scientific journals," Ladenson said. "It also allows useful procedures and reagents to be rapidly and effectively utilized by the clinical and research communities."
Putting research results to good use is the goal of the University's technology transfer program. "One of our missions is public service," said Theodore J. Cicero, Ph.D., vice chancellor for research, associate vice chancellor for animal affairs, associate dean of the medical school and professor of psychiatry and neurobiology. "I think there can be no better way of doing that than by making sure that our basic technologies and research developments get out to the public in the most efficient way possible."
Tech transfer received a major boost in the United States in 1980 with the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act, co-sponsored by Sens. Birch Bayh, D-Ind., and Robert Dole, R-Kan. The act allows universities to take title to inventions arising from their federally funded research and to license these technologies to companies that wish to take them to market.
Before it was passed, fewer than 250 patents were issued to American universities each year. Among the many products that have resulted from university discoveries since it became law are Internet search engines, faster modems, tests for early prostate cancer and feline leukemia, and safer highway guardrails. The biotechnology industry is based on gene-splicing research done at Stanford University and the University of California in the 1970s, and the Internet owes much to supercomputing research at the University of Illinois in the 1980s.
A recent survey by the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) attributed more than $33.5 billion in economic activity and 280,000 jobs to the commercialization of academic research in 1998. That fiscal year, AUTM member institutions generated 4,808 new U.S. patent applications, obtained 3,668 new licenses and contributed to the formation of 364 companies across the United States.
Washington University obtained its first patent in the 1920s, but its formal tech transfer program was established in 1971 by the late Edward L. MacCordy, Ph.D., then vice chancellor for research. In 1982, the University signed the Monsanto-Washington University agreement, one of the first significant research collaborations between an American university and industry.
"Technology transfer is a significant part of the University's responsibilities," Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton said. "Our distinguished faculty and researchers are exceptionally creative and innovative. Our technology transfer effort is focused on bringing the benefits of discovery to society and to do so as rapidly as possible."
Since 1997, immunologist Andrew Neighbour, Ph.D., associate vice chancellor and director of technology management, has headed the University's Center of Technology Management, which Cicero oversees. In fiscal year 1999, the center's 15 staff members completed 157 licenses, a significant increase from the 50 or so per year executed in the mid-1990s. The staff also evaluated 104 new inventions and filed 109 U.S. and foreign patent applications last year.
The process begins when a faculty member contacts the office about a research finding and the University decides to take title. Whether a technology is patentable -- it must be new, useful and not obvious from prior work -- is one factor affecting the University's decision. But the major question is whether a breakthrough would meet a need in the marketplace.
"That is where the business experience of our staff comes in," Neighbour said. "They have a sense of what diagnostics, pharmaceutical, electronics and communications companies are looking for today."
Through extensive research and networking, the center tries to match an invention with a company so licensing can begin. Companies also learn about new technologies from scientific meetings or journals.
Most of the University's inventions are not directly useful to the general public, however. They are more likely to provide companies with tools to develop their own products. For example, Glaxo Wellcome is using a mouse model of prostate cancer developed by Jeffrey I. Gordon, M.D., the Alumni Professor and head of molecular biology and pharmacology and professor of medicine, to look for potential prostate cancer drugs.
Once a technology is licensed, the inventor or inventors receive 45 percent of the annual income after expenses have been met. An additional 15 percent feeds back into the tech transfer program, and the rest is divided among the faculty member's lab, department and dean. There also may be companion research agreements, which generated $21.7 million for the University in fiscal year 1999. Such agreements support labs and postdocs for collaborative projects.
The University also encourages faculty in their own commercial ventures. "Entrepreneurial faculty should have the opportunity to see their ideas reach fruition in the public sector without having to leave academe," Cicero said. "So we are interested in encouraging them to spin off small companies."
Several faculty have taken this route, and Garland R. Marshall, Ph.D., professor of molecular biology and pharmacology, has even founded two companies. Tripos Inc. develops computational tools and combinatorial libraries for drug discovery, and MetaPhore Pharmaceuticals Inc. focuses on metals in medicine.
Neighbour said it is unrealistic to expect the University's program to have a major impact on the local economy, though it certainly creates jobs and wealth. Moreover, licenses and research agreements can account for only a small proportion of the University's annual operating revenue, which totaled about $1.1 billion in fiscal year 1999.
But the program's long-term goals don't center on income. "Our main role is to provide service to faculty and to facilitate public use of our discoveries," Neighbour said. "We want to make money along the way and return value to the University and inventor. But when a deal is done, we want to step back with pride because our program has recognized an opportunity, structured the best relationship with the best company and, as a consequence, helped bring that product to the marketplace. That is our ideal."
For more information about the University's technology transfer activities, visit the program's Web site (http://ctm.wustl.edu).
This article is excerpted from an article in the School of Medicine's Spring 2000 Outlook magazine and is reprinted with permission.
