Center brings profs' work to the market

Research is turned into profits at Penn's Center for Technology Transfer. University professors may be great researchers, but they usually need help navigating through the process of patenting their inventions to see their ideas break into the commercial world. Steering through the obstacles between a discovery and its public use, Penn's Center for Technology Transfer works to bring the latest scientific breakthrough to local pharmacies, grocery stores and malls. "Our job here is to move research discoveries from the lab to the marketplace," explained Louis Berneman, managing director of the CTT. To help facilitate that move, the CTT -- which is also in charge of licensing the Penn name to outside companies -- takes the results of University research and evaluates the business potential of these discoveries. If the potential is high enough, the center finds a way to commercialize the product. Working out of their offices at 3700 Market Street, the CTT staff of 16 employees judges the disclosure on technical merit, commercial potential and protectability -- whether an idea is unique enough to be safe from copycat technology. By providing this service, the CTT takes the commercial burden off of the faculty members who make the initial discoveries, giving them more time for research and teaching. The University owns all discoveries made on campus using its resources, and professors are required to disclose any new discovery to the CTT. They are also not permitted to leave Penn to market the product on their own unless the University licenses them the patent. Most disclosures are patented and then licensed out to large companies where the discovery will improve or replace the technology currently being used. For the 1998 fiscal year alone, the center executed 48 patent licenses, filed 128 new patent applications and generated $8.7 million in revenue for the University, according to its financial report. The faculty member responsible for the discovery receives 30 percent of the net revenue generated from a patent and his or her lab receives an additional 15 percent. Occasionally a discovery will be so unique that no company has a similar technology and no market exists for the product. The CTT then starts a new company by finding investors to fund the venture and experienced managers to run it. One example of this is Protomed Inc., which was started to develop cancer therapies and other products using a unique production process invented by Ann Kennedy, a professor of Radiation Oncology. Kennedy said that when investors approached her with a funding proposition, she referred them to the CTT, which worked out the funding and legal agreements to officially found Protomed. Berneman said he believes the center will grow in importance as the factors of globalization and the information age shape the future's economy. "We've moved from an energy-based economy to a technology-based economy," Berneman said, adding that technology stems from knowledge. "Universities will increasingly become more important in applying knowledge." Technology transfers at universities, however, is already a big business. Stanford University's, in Palo Alto, Calif., has the largest income for a single university, with a gross revenue of $51 million for fiscal year 1997, according to its fiscal report. While few technology transfer offices generate income in the $50 million range, most large research institutions have an agency devoted to bringing the discoveries of their faculty to the public. "The real thing that we do is get the technology developed, we get new companies created, we get new jobs created, we get new medical cures created," said Lita Nelsen, the director of the Technology Licensing Office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "That's our real job." "The money is small and secondary," she added.

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