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Industrial Research Collaborations and
Technology Transfer
More than 20 years ago, the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act --
granting academic research institutions the right to retain
and license discoveries made with federal support -- paved the
way for the explosion of the biotechnology industry and had
a profound effect on the scientific community as a whole in
this country. Further, the act stipulated that recipients of
government research funding find suitable industrial partners
to make its discoveries available to the public in an expeditious
manner.
At TSRI the insights of the scientific staff continue to expand
the frontiers of biology and medicine by contributing knowledge
leading to the understanding of the basic mechanisms of biological
systems, as well as discoveries and inventions that may lead
to the development of new products to prevent, diagnose and
treat human disease. For more than ten years the Institute's
scientists have been filling the technology pipeline with new
discoveries at an accelerated pace, as licensing agreements
and other relationships have been forged with scores of pharmaceutical
and biotechnology companies. As a result of these efforts, new
health care products are beginning to emerge. Leustatin, an
anti-lymphoid medication developed at tested at Scripps, has
been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment
of hairy cell leukemia, and continues to show promise as a treatment
for multiple sclerosis. Other potent cancer fighting drugs are
being studied in the Institute's laboratories and in collaboration
with numerous industrial partners, as are new methods to treat
infectious diseases, neurological disorders and vascular diseases.
Since the early 1980s, the number of biotechnology companies,
potential partners for technology transfer, has skyrocketed
from a handful of emerging companies to well over two thousand,
each focused on new therapeutics, prophylactics, diagnostics,
or the drug discovery process. The success of the technology
transfer enterprise at TSRI lies in its ability to forge meaningful
collaborations with the biotechnology industry while maintaining
its relationships with large pharmaceutical partners. TSRI has
entered into hundreds of technology licensing agreements with
numerous biotechnology companies, including more than 30 companies
which originated from TSRI research. In addition, to these license
agreements, we continue to enjoy a robust relationship with
the biotech industry through sponsored research agreements and
material transfer agreements.
Further, to ensure and perpetuate fair access to the small business
community, The Institute established an Office of Small Business
Collaborations whose purpose is to seek and promote opportunities
for scientific collaborations at TSRI suitable for small business
and administer a "Small Business Fund" to benefit
small business collaborations.
In addition, TSRI has developed research collaboration agreements
with leaders in the pharmaceutical and chemical industries,
including Johnson & Johnson, PPG Industries, and Novartis.
These arrangements not only provide an efficient mechanism for
the smooth transfer of basic scientific inventions into useful
medical products and pharmaceuticals, but provides the Institute
with access to funds to maintain its infrastructure -- construction
of state-of-the-art facilities, purchase of sophisticated instrumentation
-- that are no longer available from the National Institutes
of Health or other federal agencies. Top |
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