Abstract

The Evolution of Academic Technology Transfer

Jeanne Farrell, Business Development Director, Ichan School of Medicine

Academia and industry have been working together for decades, and undoubtedly discoveries from academic laboratories have led to commercial products benefitting the public, but there have been recent shifts in the way that pharmaceutical companies interact with both academia and small companies spinning out of the academic setting. Shrinking internal Pharma research and development budgets, decreases in new drug approvals coupled with increasing costs to approval, approaching patent cliffs, shrinking and possibly unreliable NIH funding for academic laboratories…pressures are growing for both academic institutions and pharmaceutical companies. These pressures are bringing to light recognition that there are ways to work together that can provide upsides for both, that can better the bottom line, while achieving their respective missions1. Academic technology transfer offices (TTO) are charged, at least, with the role of protecting the intellectual property generated by its faculty and facilitating the transfer of technologies to the market to benefit the public2. How a TTO fulfils this role varies across academic institutions, but it is clearly a role that poises the TTO as the gatekeeper between researchers and industry. As industry is evolving in the way it is approaching its relationship with academia, must the way a TTO operates evolve as well, and it is even possible to do so while adhering the core mandate of the Bayh-Dole Act3?