“The Role of Academic Technology in the Pharmaceutical Industry”

In the U.S., the largest share of federal funding for university research comes from the NIH.  Since invention follows research funding in a fairly linear manner, it is perhaps not surprising that some of the biggest impacts of academic research on the economy have been in healthcare. We will look at the role of universities in the transformation of Boston into the center of world pharmaceutical research, of the contribution of public sector research in the discovery of marketed new drugs, and of the role of academic medicine in the invention of medical devices

Ashley J. Stevens, D.Phil (Oxon), CLP, RTTP – President, Focus IP Group, LLC
Before founding Focus IP Group, LLC, an intellectual property consulting company, Dr. Stevens was Executive Director of the technology transfer office at Boston University for seventeen years. He is a lecturer in the Health Sector Management Program in BU’s School of Management, where he teaches Bench-to-Bedside, a graduate-level, inter-disciplinary course on Technology Commercialization, and he teaches an intensive version of this course, G-TEC, at Osaka University each summer. He is a Principal Investigator at the National University of Singapore (Suzhou) Research Institute where he teaches professional development courses in technology management.

Before joining Boston University, he was Director of the Office of Technology Transfer at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a teaching affiliate of the Harvard Medical School. Prior to entering the technology transfer profession, Dr. Stevens worked in the biotechnology industry for nearly ten years and founded two biotechnology companies, while he has helped spin-out over 60 companies from Dana-Farber and Boston University. He is a Past President of AUTM and has written and lectured extensively on many aspects of technology transfer.

Dr. Stevens holds a BA in Natural Sciences, an MA and a D.Phil. in Physical Chemistry from Oxford University. He is a Certified Licensing Professional and a Registered Technology Transfer Professional.

"Academic – Industry Consortia"

Commercialisation is far more than filing patents, licensing and spin-outs – traditional Technology Transfer model. It is the entire academic-industry relationship ranging from traditional TT through research collaboration, consultancy to student-industry interaction. Arguably the traditional model is the least effective in transferring the results of publically funded research to the market place for societal, economic and financial benefit. Recently both the UK and Dutch governments published their strategy / vision on publically funded research for the coming years. Strongly featured in both was the need for greater academic –industry interaction to optimize the benefits from the public research base. This presentation will focus on academic – industry research collaboration, particularly consortia. Two different but highly successful consortia will be used to illustrate what can be achieved and can we go even further? Can we go further, giving access directly to institution’s research results even at a prepublication phase? What are the risks and benefits? Is there really a financial loss incurred or are these outweighed by wider benefit