New York State should invest $20 million to $35 million annually to spin out university-based research into start-up companies, according to a study produced by Excell Partners, Inc., a state-supported seed fund partnership with the University of Rochester. The study, “Venture Capital and Seed Activity in New York State,” notes that New York is second only to California in the amount of federal research funds flowing to its universities but ranks 25th in state capital for start-ups. For every $4.40 spent by California universities for R&D, that state commits $1 to help commercialize the research, the study found. In contrast, New York commits $1 for every $95 spent on R&D. “In New York, we’re way behind the power curve,” says Judy Albers, chief operating officer of Excell Partners and a study author. The study comes on the heels of Gov. David Paterson’s establishment of a task force that’s charged with finding ways to stimulate economic growth through state research institutions. The 14-member task force, led by Cornell University President David Skorton, is expected to make recommendations by December 15 on how to foster business incubation and commercialization of university research. “We’ve got two Ivy League universities in New York, a national research lab at Brookhaven, and eight or nine other preeminent universities,” Albers says. “That’s an enormous amount of intellectual capital.” She hopes the study will demonstrate the need for the state to invest seed money that better corresponds to the amount of research that takes place in New York. “A million dollars ain’t going to do it,” Albers says. “We wanted to use this study to put real numbers to the problem. A lot of people know that we lack seed money in New York State, but they don’t understand the magnitude of the solution.”

Go to: Newsday

Posted July 1st, 2009 by Marie Powers under Tech Transfer. [ Comments: none ]

Farther down the East Coast, Maryland’s biotech community is taking a wait-and-see attitude after the breakup of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute (UMBI). The University System of Maryland’s Board of Regents is dismantling UMBI as a single institute after an ad hoc committee investigating the Institute’s effectiveness found no strong scientific or organizational justification to keep it intact. “I’m sure it was a very thoughtful decision on the part of the regents,” says Richard A. Zakour, executive director of MdBio, the bioscience division of the Tech Council of Maryland. However, “it’s hard to say how it’s going to work out,” he adds. UMBI, established in 1985, is the only University System of Maryland institution with a legislative mandate to drive economic development, according to its annual report. Its research areas include biotechnology applications to human health, marine environments, agriculture, and protein engineering-structural biology, with a focus on tech transfer and commercialization efforts. UMBI encompasses four centers and operates a fifth across three campuses. The Institute has an operating budget of $63.7 million, with 85 faculty members and 59 graduate students involved in its operations.

In its report, the panel studying UMBI said its organization “as a geographically dispersed, freestanding entity has created intractable problems. As a result, while UMBI has attracted talented researchers and developed impressive, state-of-the art laboratory facilities, it has not produced the level of translational research and technology transfer for which it was created.” The committee cited lack of scale in UMBI programs, isolation among UMBI’s research centers and between the centers and the university system’s other research institutions, and absence of a critical mass of graduate and undergraduate students. The regents approved the committee’s recommendation to align UMBI’s research centers with their respective university campuses. Jennie Hunter-Cevera, who served as UMBI’s president for almost a decade, had previously announced her resignation and left at the end of June to join a research institute in North Carolina. An acting successor will be named to guide the Institute’s reorganization, according to a spokeswoman for the university system. William M. Gust, managing general partner at venture capital firm Anthem Managing Partners in Baltimore and a member of UMBI’s board of visitors, says the regents have done a good job with the reorganization. Whether UMBI has been a good investment for the state’s taxpayers “is in the eye of the beholder,” he adds. The money pumped into UMBI over the years has resulted in just one start-up company, but he cites a much better track record in terms of patents and licenses.

Go to: Gazette.net

Posted July 1st, 2009 by Marie Powers under Tech Transfer. [ Comments: none ]

Technology Transfer Tactics has lined up four distance learning audioprograms over the next two months that address some of the most critical challenges and opportunities facing tech transfer and IP professionals. Click on the individual titles below for complete program and faculty information:

• IP Bundling: Establish Effective Partnerships to Increase the Value of Your Innovations - July 9, 2009 1:00-2:30 pm (Eastern Daylight Time)
• Conflict of Interest in University Research: Strengthen Your Process and Policies - July 22, 2009 1:00-2:30 pm (Eastern Daylight Time)
• Achieve Success by Taking a Business-Minded Approach to Tech Transfer - August 6, 2009 1:00-2:30 pm (Eastern Daylight Time)
• Launch Your Own VC! Create Your Own Funding Vehicle For University Technologies - August 26, 2009 1:00-2:30 pm (Eastern Daylight Time)

Posted July 1st, 2009 by David Schwartz under Audioconferences, Tech Transfer. [ Comments: none ]

The University of Iowa Research Foundation (UIRF) in Iowa City has sued Abbott Laboratories for allegedly infringing a pair of UIRF-owned patents related to a cytomegalovirus (CMV) promoter used to manufacture a number of vaccines and therapeutics. The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa, claims that Abbott has infringed one or more claims by manufacturing its blockbuster monoclonal antibody Humira, which is used to treat a variety of autoimmune diseases. UIRF, an independent non-profit corporation that handles technology transfer for the University of Iowa, is seeking enhanced monetary damages because it says Abbott “willfully and deliberately” infringed the patents. Interestingly, a similar lawsuit over Humira, brought by Johnson & Johnson’s Centocor and New York University, was decided last week. The jury verdict went in favor of J&J and NYU, to the tune of $1.67 billion in lost profits and reasonable royalty. The jury also found that Abbott had willfully infringed the Centocor-NYU patents.

The UIRF complaint alleges that Humira also infringes U.S. Patents 5,168,062 and 5,385,839, “Transfer vectors and microorganisms containing human cytomegalovirus immediate-early promoter-regulatory DNA sequence.” Both patents are based on the inventions of Mark Stinski, professor of microbial biology at the UI Carver College of Medicine. Because the ‘839 patent is a continuation of the ‘062 patent, which was awarded December 1, 1992, under U.S. patent law both patents would expire December 1 of this year. According to Timothy B. McBride, an associate specializing in biotech patent law with St. Louis, MO-based Senniger Powers, LLP, a patent holder “can only sue on a patent that still has term, or is still valid. Certainly [UIRF] would want to sue now while that is still an active patent.” UIRF’s suit claims the CMV promoter is “a fundamental tool used in the biotech industry to enhance the manufacture of vaccines and therapeutics.” UIRF said that it has granted 112 active licenses to the patents, including 16 linked to royalty-bearing products. According to the Institute’s 2008 annual report, the CMV patents accounted for nearly all royalties received by the school and for approximately three quarters of UIRF’s overall income of $28.6 million. UIRF said that it received approximately $21.5 million from royalties on product sales in 2008, or an average of approximately $1.3 million per royalty-bearing license for the patents. In its complaint, UIRF claims that Abbott Labs and subsidiaries Abbott Bioresearch Center and Abbott Biotechnology “illegally use or contribute to the use or induce the use of compositions covered by one or more claims of the Iowa patents to manufacture the pharmaceutical product Humira.” The complaint does not specify which claims of the patents are allegedly infringed in the manufacture of Humira, a fully recombinant mAb for treating autoimmune disorders in which tumor necrosis factor plays a role, including rheumatoid arthritis, chronic plaque psoriasis, Crohn’s disease, psoriatic arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, and polyarticular juvenile idiopathic arthritis. Worldwide sales of Humira increased to $4.5 billion last year from $3 billion in 2007 and are projected to increase by more than 25% this year, according to Abbott. In a statement, Abbott said that it “believes that Humira does not infringe these patents, and that the patents are invalid.” The company will “vigorously defend against the allegations,” the statement said.

Like NYU, UIRF is seeking “enhanced damages” based on the claim that Abbott’s activities were willful. “It might be a little more difficult to calculate damages when the patent is something that is used along the way in manufacturing the product,” but it’s possible that damages would be awarded just as if the patents covered the core product itself, McBride says. The case is a “perfect example of a university doing wonderful research, creating a product that’s useful, and then obtaining patent rights and being able to exercise those rights to benefit the university,” he adds. The suit also “demonstrates that universities are forces to be reckoned with when it comes to technology and intellectual property. They understand what is at stake in this game, and they’re not afraid to play it.”

Go to: Biotech Transfer Week

Posted July 1st, 2009 by Marie Powers under Tech Transfer. [ Comments: none ]

Last Thursday, the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship unanimously passed the “SBIR/STTR Reauthorization Act of 2009,” sending it to the full Senate for a vote. The bill would — for the first time in eight years — allow venture-backed companies some access to federal funding for innovation. However, the amount allocated to venture-backed companies doesn’t thrill the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), which has lobbied to get venture-backed companies into the SBIR equation. Senate Bill 1233 would allow companies that are majority-owned by multiple venture firms to access up to 18% of SBIR funds at the Department of Health and Human Services and up to 8% at all other participating agencies. Although something is better than nothing, NVCA argues that venture-backed companies do not pose a threat to other businesses applying for the grants. “We’re very disappointed in what was passed,” says Emily Mendell, the NVCA’s vice president of strategic affairs. The SBIR program is scheduled to expire at the end of July and has already been extended twice. A 2001 administrative law judge ruling and subsequent rulings by the U.S. Small Business Administration closed the program to many venture-backed companies. The SBA interpreted the law to mean that start-ups which are majority-owned by venture firms are essentially considered part of the venture firm and all its other portfolio companies. The House Committee on Small Business is working on its own version of the bill, which is expected to come to a committee vote soon. It’s unclear if the House version allows SBIR grant participation — and if so how much — from venture-backed companies. A spokesman for the House committee said only that the bill “allows appropriate participation of venture-backed companies in the SBIR program.”

Go to: The Wall Street Journal

Posted July 1st, 2009 by Marie Powers under Tech Transfer. [ Comments: none ]

The University of Colorado (CU) has executed an exclusive license with privately held Illumasonix, LLC, an early-stage medical device company based in Boulder, for a non-invasive method to provide quantitative information on complex blood flow in the treatment of vascular disease. The technology uses ultrasound and FDA-approved microbubbles to track blood flow, providing real-time assessment while also detecting blockages. Invented by Robin Shandas, professor of mechanical engineering at CU-Boulder and professor of pediatrics and cardiology at CU-Denver, the technology combines the high spatial resolution of MRI technology with the temporal resolution and ease-of-use of ultrasound for cardiovascular and neurovascular diseases, which affect millions of people annually. Illumasonix was formed in 2007 in a partnership between CU and Quincy, MA-based Allied Minds, an investment corporation specializing in early-stage university business ventures. The company received undisclosed initial capitalization and research funding from Allied Minds and approximately $250,000 in matching funds from the State of Colorado. Earlier this year, Illumasonix reported positive initial results from its human feasibility study of the technology, and the company expects a commercial product could reach the market as early as 2011. “The Illumasonix technology will provide a substantially more accurate and predictive way to assess cardiovascular health,” says Erick Rabins, vice president of Allied Minds and manager of Illumasonix. “We believe it will become the primary tool used to determine when and if surgical intervention is required.”

Go to: Knowledge Innovation Technology

Posted July 1st, 2009 by Marie Powers under Tech Transfer. [ Comments: none ]

Engineers at Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN, have developed a technique that saves energy and servicing costs by indicating when air conditioners are low on refrigerant. The virtual refrigerant charge sensor is especially practical for automotive air conditioners, which leak refrigerant more than other types of units, and for household central air conditioning units, says James Braun, professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue. Maintaining the proper charge, or amount of refrigerant in a system, saves energy because air conditioners low on refrigerant must operate longer to achieve the same degree of cooling as properly charged units. “Not only does the energy efficiency go down, but you also reduce the lifetime of the unit because it has to work harder, causing parts to wear out faster,” Braun explains. However, checking refrigerant and charging it to specification is a costly and time-consuming process, requiring a technician to remove the refrigerant and weigh it using a vacuum pump. The new technology would eliminate periodic refrigerant checks by using sensors to monitor the temperature of refrigerant at various points along the tubing in an air-conditioning unit. Braun and colleagues created a software algorithm that interprets temperature-sensor data to estimate the amount of refrigerant in the system. Four sensors are attached to tubing running into and out of components called heat exchangers. In air conditioning and refrigeration systems, liquid refrigerant evaporates in a heat exchanger called an evaporator, cooling the air. The refrigerant vapor turns back into a liquid in another heat exchanger called a condenser. During these steps, the refrigerant undergoes dramatic temperature changes. Automotive air conditioning units equipped with the new refrigerant-charge system could activate a warning light on a car’s dashboard. Technicians servicing home air conditioners might simply plug a personal digital assistant into the unit to read the refrigerant-charge information, Braun explains. The researchers tested the system on various types of air conditioners running on conventional refrigerants, including R-22 and the more environmentally friendly R-410A, which replaces R-22 in new units. Their findings were published in HVAC&R Research. Purdue has applied for a patent on the technique. “The method could be commercialized if a company invested some time in the implementation side,” Braun says.

Go to: ScienceDaily

Posted July 1st, 2009 by Marie Powers under Tech Transfer. [ Comments: none ]

What happens when a faculty inventor’s desire to rush his results into publication collides with the TTO’s efforts to protect the new discovery? Often times, unfortunately, the university loses out on the right to patent or reap any financial rewards from the innovation. By 2003, Fred Lee, PhD, the director of the Center for Power Electronics Systems (CPES), an industry consortium assembled by Blacksburg-based Virginia Tech, had seen this scenario play out so many times that he was determined to come up with a better way. Lee’s solution is the Intellectual Property Protection Fund (IPPF), a mechanism whereby a select group of consortium members pays higher annual fees to get royalty-free access to all the technology developed at CPES. The membership fees go toward patenting those innovations that IPPF members decide should be protected, as well as to other research endeavors. There are caveats to the approach. For instance, inventors lose out on the ability to earn any royalties from their inventions. Further, this mechanism does not fully address the rampant patent infringing that goes on in the electronics arena. However, Lee stresses that the IPPF and its fee-based membership approach has doubled the amount of revenue that CPES brings in to the university every year. And he has had no trouble finding consortium members willing to pay the hefty fees required to gain full access to IPPF and CPES technologies.

The IPPF is actually a select group of about 30 companies from the CPES Industry Partnership Program. The highest dues category — at $50,000 per year — gives the companies first crack at evaluating new CPES technologies as well as a non-exclusive license to those technologies that IPPF elects to patent. Participants gain the efficiency of eliminating negotiations and contracting for every patent they wish to license. “They have this blanket agreement so that they have access to all of the IP generated by this mechanism, and they don’t need a lawyer to get involved in the process,” he says. No less important, he adds, is that they get an early look at promising innovations. IPPF is bringing in anywhere from $1 million to $2 million dollars per year in membership fees from the arrangement. “The concept works very well for us to market our IP and for industry to profit from it without any hassle,” says Lee. A detailed article on the IPPF approach appears in the June issue of Technology Transfer Tactics. For subscription information, CLICK HERE.

Posted July 1st, 2009 by Marie Powers under Tech Transfer. [ Comments: none ]

Scotland has followed the example of Great Britain and established the Scottish Academic Health Sciences Collaboration, a partnership among four university medical schools and associated hospitals that’s designed to speed the translation of research into clinical practice. The partnership brings together the university medical schools in Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, and Glasgow to provide a platform for greater collaboration with industry. The initiative was launched with £15 million from the Scottish government’s Chief Scientist Office. A board comprised of representatives from the eight partners and Scottish Enterprise will manage the collaboration, with Harry Burns, the Scottish government’s chief medical officer, serving as chair. Last year, Great Britain underwent a major reorganization of its leading university medical schools and their associated teaching hospitals, creating American-style Academic Health Science Centers (AHSC) at University College London, Imperial College London, Cambridge, and Manchester. The model is gaining traction in other parts of Europe, as well. The Karolinksa Institute in Stockholm plans to migrate to an AHSC structure, and the model has been introduced at University College Dublin, which has formed Dublin Academic Healthcare with its affiliated hospitals, the Mater University Hospital and St Vincent’s University Hospital. Ireland’s medical schools also are partners in a separate entity, Molecular Medicine Ireland, which aims to coordinate biomedical research and education on a national basis.

Go to: Science Business

Posted July 1st, 2009 by Marie Powers under Tech Transfer. [ Comments: none ]

An environmentally friendly washing machine developed by a researcher at the University of Leeds (UK) is heading next year to hotel laundries and commercial dry cleaners. Stephen Burkinshaw, PhD, professor and chair of textile chemistry, discovered the technology, which is being commercialized by Xeros, Ltd., in Leeds. Xeros is collaborating with GreenEarth Cleaning to sell the technology across North America. Product development is being funded by IP Group, a London-based commercialization firm that has partnerships with 10 universities in the U.K. The project team claims the green machine needs just one cup of water to wash a load of clothes — 90% less water than conventional machines and 30% less energy. The work normally done by water is replaced by using thousands of tiny reusable nylon polymer beads, which attract and absorb dirt under humid conditions. The beads are placed inside the smaller of two concentric drums along with the dirty laundry, a spew of detergent, and a little water. As the drums spin, the water wets the clothes and the detergent loosens the dirt, then the nylon beads mop it up. The beads have a crystalline structure that gives their surface an electrical charge that attracts dirt. When the beads are heated in humid conditions, they lose their crystalline structure and acquire an amorphous structure so the dirt is drawn into the core of the bead, where it remains locked in place. The whole process takes about 30 minutes. When the outer drum stops rotating, the inner drum continues to rotate and the beads fall through a slot and are collected in the outer drum. The few remaining beads trapped in the folds of clothes normally fall into a collection trough while the laundry is being removed, and a vacuum wand can be used to remove them from pockets. “We’ve shown that it can remove all sorts of everyday stains including coffee and lipstick while using a tiny fraction of the water used by conventional machines,” Burkinshaw says. And the beads can be reused up to 100 times. “We hope commercial success could act as a springboard to move into the consumer market,” says Xeros CEO Bill Westwater. “We’ve been very encouraged by the response from people, but the proof is in the pudding and that means putting a machine into someone’s operations and justifying the savings.”

Go to: Alternative Energy

Posted July 1st, 2009 by Marie Powers under Tech Transfer. [ Comments: none ]

BizWorld, parent company of Tech Transfer E-News and Technology Transfer Tactics, is pleased to present a new line of in-depth market research reports under a newly established partnership with Business Insights, a world leader in strategic market analysis. Business Insights’ portfolio of reports is designed to help you make well-informed and timely business decisions. With an underlying understanding of problems facing today’s research commercialization professionals and executives, these high-value resources will help you crystallize your strategic planning and drive your organization forward. The first three reports being offered under the partnership arrangement are highly relevant to tech transfer and IP professionals. Click on the individual links for full details:

• Technology Transfer Strategies: Maximizing the returns from new technologies
• Evolving Trends in Biopharmaceutical Licensing: Deal assessments, drivers and resistors
• Patent Protection Strategies: Maximizing product revenues

Posted July 1st, 2009 by David Schwartz under Tech Transfer. [ Comments: none ]

Researchers at the Institute of Man-Machine-Interaction at Germany’s Rhenish-Westphalian Technical University (RWTH) Aachen University have combined space and robotics technology to develop a precision forestry positioning system that allows more efficient forest planning and harvesting. The system, which combines remote sensing maps from airplanes with satellite navigation data, has helped catalogue 240 million single trees in the German region of North Rhine-Westphalia. The information is used to plan which trees to cut, and when. Harvesters then use the data to identify specific trees to cut, which improves the efficiency of harvesting, optimizes overall wood production, and reduces costs. The system won the North Rhine-Westphalia Region’s 2008 European Satellite Navigation Competition, which was supported by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Technology Transfer Program Office (TTPO) in Noordwijk, The Netherlands. “We already have one harvester in operation with our system onboard,” says Jürgen Rossmann, the professor at RWTH Aachen University who led the research team. “As the prototype works well, we are fairly close to the stage where we can go into production. Another six to 12 months, and we should be there.”

ESA’s TTPO is responsible for defining the overall strategy for the transfer of space technologies, including the incubation of start-up companies and their funding. The objective of the precision forestry positioning system is to automate and optimize the work involved in foresting, from the early planning of the forest to the final cutting of single trees, to better compete on the world market and to overcome efficiency problems related to the forest ownership structure of the region. “Precision farming is important in today’s agriculture, where farmers can save money with the use of satellite navigation systems,” explains research collaborator Arno Bücken. “However, the accuracy of the GPS navigation system, which is of 20 to 30 meters, is not enough to identify single trees in a forest. We found a solution to this problem, which increases the accuracy to 50 centimeters by using GPS as the initial reference position, and then taking remote sensing data to identify the single trees in the forest.” Each tree is not only known by its geo-coordinate, but trees also are time-stamped and measurement data archived. This makes it possible to see how the trees grow, Rossmann says. “Before the invention of this system, forest workers made their decisions based on visual inspections of the forest — a much slower and less efficient method requiring higher skilled workers on a full-time basis,” he explains. “Equipped with precise sensors and positioning systems, our solution helps locate and coordinate forest machinery and workers.” The system can even remember where a tree was cut and who owns it — a feature that’s well suited to the North Rhine-Westphalia region, where two-thirds of the privately owned forest consists of parcels of 0.5 to 1.5 hectares. The ability to identify felled trees and assign them to the correct owner using geo-tags allows different owners to harvest together, reducing costs.

Go to: ESA Portal

Posted July 1st, 2009 by Marie Powers under Tech Transfer. [ Comments: none ]

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