Licensing innovation
Drug development is always a blend of science and commerce, discovery and application. Dana-Farber's Office of Research and Technology Ventures (ORTV) is where they come together.
"We're the commercialization conduit for Dana-Farber," says the office's leader, Anthony del Campo. "Our goal is to help faculty and staff transfer their discoveries into the commercial sector where they can be developed into products and services that benefit patients and the broader scientific community."
It accomplishes this by licensing Dana-Farber's "intellectual property" – discoveries of potential drug targets, new diagnostic or lab tests, cancer-fighting antibodies – to private companies so they can be developed into useful products. Licensing agreements ensure that the practical value of scientific advances is realized and that Dana-Farber and its researchers receive a fair financial return for their roles in the process. Revenue from licensing arrangements is plowed back into research.
In fiscal year 2007, Dana-Farber investigators filed 81 "invention disclosures" – descriptions of potentially marketable discoveries – with the ORTV. As at most academic research centers, about half were submitted for federal patent protection. Among them were genomic drug targets, mouse models, therapies involving monoclonal antibodies, and potential biomarkers for different types of cancers. About 35 licensing agreements are signed with industry every year.
Sometimes, companies want to fund early-stage research in a Dana-Farber laboratory to gauge a product's potential value. In those cases, the ORTV negotiates an agreement that compensates the investigator and gives the company an early opportunity to license his or her discoveries for commercial development.
"Our strategy is to place as much intellectual property into commercial development as we can," del Campo says. "Dana- Farber excels at early-stage innovation. Our job is to establish a strong proprietary position for this work in the medical and health care marketplace."
