Biomed Buddies : UCI’s Pitch: Both Parties Will Prosper if Private Industry Will Back Public Research

UC Irvine officials encouraged more than 100 Orange County business executives Wednesday to join the university in an ambitious effort to explore the frontiers of biomedical technology and turn a profit in the process.

At a daylong conference at UCI’s Beckman Center, university representatives described a range of current research efforts--from advanced organ preservation to exotic particle accelerators--that could lend themselves to commercial collaboration.

“To fund new technologies so they can be of use to the public, we must promote ourselves to industry,” said Dr. Walter Henry, dean of the UCI College of Medicine.

Henry and other university officials discussed the possibilities for greater exchange of technologies with executives of dozens of Orange County biomedical firms.

UCI has been increasing its efforts to attract corporate investment to fund research efforts because of a decline in federal funding and because of a need for more money to better compete with other research universities.

The university wants companies to take new inventions or processes conceived in UCI labs and to spend their own money to develop them. The public-private collaborations are considered especially useful to get potential new drugs through the lengthy and expensive clinical trials required for U.S. Food and Drug Administration marketing approval.

University officials said they also hope to increase the use of UCI researchers to conduct clinical testing for private firms and to expand the exchange of information between professors and biomedical companies.

At the forum, UCI presented a list of more than 15 new technologies that could form the basis of joint ventures between UCI and private firms. Those technologies included medical applications for a highly advanced acoustic microscope and a three-dimensional memory device.

The simultaneous development of the university and the county’s expanding biomedical industry has speeded the evolution of technology transfer. It has made businesses far more aware of what the university can provide them, and it has given rise to what some characterize as the “entrepreneurial professor.”

A decade ago, UCI officials said, there was little communication between the university and the few biotechnology companies in the county at the time, and the university’s resources were rarely promoted.

Although it is now seeking to expand its cooperation with industry, UCI professors have been involved for several years with local biomedical firms as consultants and company board members. Executives said the university has developed a reputation as a research institution at which that kind of interaction is welcomed and encouraged.

“UCI is one of only two universities I’ve ever dealt with where I can pick up the phone and bounce ideas off of researchers without a lot of obstacles. It’s valuable to a business,” said Donald W. Ashbrook, vice president of scientific affairs for Sigma Tau Pharmaceuticals Inc., an Italian company with U.S. offices in Newport Beach.

Last year, UCI’s corporate involvement took an innovative turn when three nationally known UCI brain researchers formed a private pharmaceutical firm to develop diagnostic products and drugs to help victims of Alzheimer’s disease.

The university, which holds the patent rights to the technology being developed by the company, Cortex Pharmaceuticals Inc., stands to benefit because it will receive royalty revenue from the firm’s future sales.

Although executives characterized the rewards of investing in university research projects as potentially lucrative, some said they had been apprehensive about becoming involved with a university because educational institutions tend to be bureaucratic and place severe restrictions on commercial applications of licensed technology.

Several executives attending the conference recalled waiting more than a year to obtain licensing for products developed within universities, including the University of California system.

UCI Vice Chancellor Leon Schwartz said product licensing has recently been reorganized to speed approval of technology-sharing arrangements. Some executives said they expect that the licensing system will eventually be decentralized so that each campus has its own decision-making authority. As it is, approval is centralized.

“There are clearly some barriers the university is trying to reduce,” Henry said. “But we also must protect the university’s resources.”

Robert Rosenbluth, president of Advanced Surgical Intervention in San Clemente, described the technologies that UCI is developing as promising for potential commercial applications. But Rosenbluth said his company probably won’t attempt to license any.

He added, however, that he hopes the university can handle more of the clinical testing for products developed by Advanced Surgical, which makes devices for urological treatment. Previously, Rosenbluth has gone to Boston for the tests.