Research strengths key to good tech transfer: Penn head

Eminent scientists should remain in the lab producing research results, rather than join a start-up company based on their work, according to the head of one of the most successful technology transfer offices in the US.

Dr Louis Berneman, managing director of the University of Pennsylvania's Centre for Technology Transfer, told last week's Commercialisation Forum in Sydney that his office would consider it a failure if a leading researcher left the lab to join a start-up venture.

"It's the last thing I would want to see," he said. "We want the science to move, but [the researcher] to stay and come up with the next great idea."

Berneman, one of the plenary speakers at the meeting, said substantial investment of public funding in basic university research it should be a priority for policy-makers.

"Universities are birds of a different colour," he said. "Essentially they are tribes of chiefs. Research universities are ideas factories.

"We know that vibrant regional economies have a strong capacity to covert their research results into successful commercial activity. We know that in the US, 29 of the top 30 high-tech regions have major research universities. We know that traditional economic development incentives have limited pull.

"And we know that regions that are seeking to grow their economies must start from their strengths, and build them first."

Berneman said the reasons a university transferred technology were the same worldwide, and included commercialisation for the public good, rewarding outstanding faculty and students ("assets that walk"), forging closer ties with industry, promoting economic growth and generating income -- although, he admitted, a university would perhaps get a better return on investment by opening a Starbucks franchise.

Technology transfer, he said, was "a game of expectations", and university commercialisation offices were often criticised by politicians, academics and the commercial sector. He said the challenges facing the technology transfer community included funding the "technology gap" by expanding public-private partnerships to provide pre-seed funding to make science investable.

"As university tech transfer managers, we know very well how to license patents and create new ventures," Berneman said. "But we don't do a good job in licensing technology in fields where patents are less essential."

Berneman said the Bayh-Dole Act, introduced in 1980, had worked "fabulously well" at generating technology transfer. In the 10 years after the Act was brought in, $US200 billion in funding of basic science had generated 50,000 patents and 2500 start-up companies, 125 of which had generated more than $1m in income.

He said the venture capital experience in Silicon Valley had seen $100 billion invested in 6000 new ventures, 4000 of which continued to exist. "A third of them die quietly, a third become the living dead, and one out of 10 is the home run success," Berneman said.

But he warned that the lessons of the internet bubble were being felt. "I think the rules have changed," he said. "Investors will invest in market risks but they're not willing to invest in technology risks. The bar has been raised."

Nonetheless, drug companies were increasingly reliant on academic collaborations and the biotechnology sector for discovery research, he said: "Evidence suggests that the new science has made drugmakers less efficient in discovery -- in 1997, $US4.5 billion was spent by big pharma on outsourcing development."

Globally, laws were being changed to allow more effective technology transfer -- Japan's new tech transfer laws come into effect in 2004.

"But everywhere, economic development officials 'expect' to be a 'global biotech leader'," Berneman said. "You need to focus, focus, focus on technology domains in which you have both industry strengths and research strengths. NSW, Queensland and Victoria will not all be 'the global biotech leader'."

He said a recent licensing survey showed that Australian activity was on a par with the US, Europe and Canada. "You've proven you were good, now go beyond it," he said. "You need to define success beyond that. It's more than just numbers, you have to look at the impact."