Universities pursue technology transfers: Academic research can lead to money-making products
BYLINE: Jason Gertzen and Mara Rose Williams, The Kansas City Star, Mo.
Jan. 21--Scott Weir hunts for treasure in University of Kansas laboratories.
A veteran of the pharmaceutical industry, he's scouting for researchers' innovative ideas that could provide cures for cancer, neurological diseases or other maladies -- and just maybe reap millions of dollars for the university.
"Our vision is to become the top academic institution in advancing promising anti-cancer agents from the test tube into patients," said Weir, who spent 20 years working with major drugmakers before joining KU and the KU Medical Center in 2006. He leads KU's office of therapeutics, discovery and development.
Across the country, universities have intensified their search for professors' inventions that could be sold in commercial markets. Dwindling state funding and pressure from the business sector and taxpayers to produce high-tech advances are driving the technology transfer trend.
The heart stent, the nicotine patch and the sports drink Gatorade are inventions that originated with a professor's idea.
Kansas and Missouri universities have yet to experience such blockbuster success, but technology developed by their researchers is behind some intriguing products.
Consider that Captisol, which improves the solubility of certain drug compounds, was invented at KU.
Zegerid, a fast-acting heartburn and acid reflux drug, sprang from a University of Missouri-Columbia laboratory.
And a Kansas State University scientist invented nanoparticles able to neutralize a sulfuric acid spill, a mold outbreak or other toxic mess. NanoScale Materials, a spinoff company that developed the technology, has won business from hazardous-materials teams and the U.S. military.
A part of the mission
University leaders such as KU Provost Richard Lariviere and University of Missouri-Kansas City Chancellor Guy Bailey are committed to making sure innovations do not languish in academic laboratories.
The heart stent, the work of UMKC bone biologists and discoveries by KU cancer researchers all are examples of university innovations and research with the potential to save lives, Bailey said.
"We have an obligation to get inventions to the general public," he said.
Lariviere said KU scientists are fast learning that technology transfer claims a significant place in the university's mission.
"Science is important, and intellectual property is important, but they are only marginally important to society until they are translated into something that can be used by someone who needs it," Lariviere said. "Otherwise it is just interesting."
KU professor Steven Barlow learned that lesson last year when a neonatal unit at a Topeka hospital began testing the motorized pacifier he and Don Finan, a University of Colorado professor, developed to help premature infants learn to suck.
It took nearly two decades of research before the device, called the Actifier, evolved into a product with commercial value. It probably will be several more years before it is on the market, Barlow said.
The Actifier, which is in clinical trials, is a hand-held instrument about the size of a pencil with a motorized nipple. It stimulates sucking and swallowing, shrinking the time preemies spend learning to nurse.
Until Barlow saw the Actifier changing the quality of life for preemies and their families, he never thought about its commercial value. But now Barlow is so sold on tech transfer that he says it should be added to the curriculum for all graduate students.
In December, the Actifier license was sold to a local startup company -- K.C. BioMedix. Barlow and Finan stand to profit from that sale, but most of the money will be divided between their respective universities.
One challenge is teaching professors about tech transfer and its benefits to the university and society.
"The challenge for the academe is to get the best pure scientists and let them do their work but steer them in the areas that have commercial application," Lariviere said.
Some professors, however, warn that too much focus on commercialization could tilt a university's mission away from the pursuit of knowledge.
"I think it is dangerous territory, because it could present a shift in what is seen as important and ... in where the funding goes," said Patricia Brodsky, a UMKC foreign language professor and president of the American Association of University Professors. "When we make commercialization the goal, we start going more toward the idea of profit and competition instead of discovery, teaching students what we know and encouraging them to join in the discovery."
Brodsky worries, too, that academic areas with the most potential for producing marketable products will get attention and funding at the expense of other areas.
Lariviere recognizes, though, that universities bringing in big money from technology transfer form an elite, and relatively small, group.
"If the only reason universities engaged in the commercialization of intellectual property was to generate money," he said, "then tech transfer would be a gamble."
Benefits and pitfalls
Prospects for potential financial jackpots, however, also clearly factor into the equation.
After a researcher discloses a discovery, a university can obtain a patent. Pharmaceutical manufacturers, other large corporations or even startup companies may pay big money for patented technology that can lead to a new drug, medical device or other successful commercial product.
The University of Wisconsin has reaped $850 million from technology transfer successes over the years. A large portion of that came after one of its leading scientists, Harry Steenbock, discovered a way to add vitamin D to food in the 1920s.
The University of Florida has enjoyed a windfall of more than $80 million from the Gatorade sports drink invented by professor J. Robert Cade in the 1960s.
University of Missouri officials have not tallied wins this large but are counting on growing licensing income from rising sales of the drug Zegerid, a treatment for heartburn and reflux based on an MU researcher's work.
A problem occurs when universities seek high licensing fees for technology that requires development before it can produce a marketable product. That can discourage potential industry partners.
"Schools want to get paid enormous sums for what is discovered on campus, yet they have invented a huge bureaucracy that slows the process tremendously," Carl Schramm, president of the Kauffman Foundation, said in The Entrepreneurial Imperative, his recently published book.
Attempting to speed up the tech transfer process, University of Missouri system officials have revamped their operation.
Until this year, technology transfers from the four campuses were funneled through the system's research office. In September, each chancellor was given governance over technology transfer on his campus.
Jim Coleman, vice chancellor for research at the Columbia campus, said the business community had been frustrated by MU's inability to support technology transfer.
"We are focusing now on just getting deals done," he said. "The odds of getting the big deal is better the more deals you do."
In January 2004, KU directed Jim Baxendale to focus on tech transfer at the Lawrence campus after he had split his time between the medical center in Kansas City, Kan., and the Lawrence campus.
In the past two years, the university has increased the number of discoveries in the technology transfer pipeline by about 25 percent.
This year KU has 105 technologies at different stages of being marketed.
"The technology transfer office produces major benefits for the university," Baxendale said, citing jobs for students and professors, enhanced reputation and research dollars.
Tracy Taylor, who heads the Kansas Technology Enterprise Corp. in Topeka, said the broader benefits are "being able to have more effective goods that will help people's lives, plus the creation of wealth and higher-paying jobs."
And don't forget the return to Kansas and Missouri, which pony up $1.8 billion annually to support higher education.
"Society is making a massive investment in universities," said David Audretsch, a scholar-in-residence at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation who is studying the impact of university innovations. "People want a return."
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To reach Jason Gertzen, call (816) 234-4899 or send e-mail to jgertzen@kcstar.com. To reach Mara Rose Williams, call (816) 234-4919 or send e-mail to mdwilliams@kcstar.com.
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