UCSD Needs Liaison to Turn Brains Into Bucks, Study Says
UC San Diego can’t be a fruitful breeding ground for new biotechnology until the university makes it easier for scientists to turn their ideas into marketable products, a two-year School of Medicine study has concluded.
In a report expected to have broad implications throughout the University of California system, a faculty-administration group recommended Wednesday that UCSD establish a special office to facilitate licensing of private business ventures based on research at the medical school.
The technology transfer office would be the first in the UC system specifically set up for that purpose. Currently, the Los Angeles and San Francisco campuses have units within other offices that perform some of the functions the UCSD office would have, said Roger Ditzel, a co-director of the study and director of the UC system’s Patent, Trademark and Copyright Office in Berkeley.
Could Be Model Operation
The new office also could serve as a model to encourage such ventures throughout UCSD and the University of California system, he and other officials said.
Acknowledging the conflict-of-interest issues such deals can raise, the group called for clearer guidelines in potential problem areas, such as faculty members themselves forming new companies. That is currently permitted.
And, advocating a change in current practice, the study suggested that acceptance of stock or equity in a company not automatically be considered a conflict of interest for faculty members.
Medical school researchers are interested in seeing their work lead to useful products, but they are confused by state rules on how to do so, explained Dr. Oliver W. Jones, co-director of the study, in releasing the report.
Likewise, private businesses are interested in potentially golden research ideas, but they want help finding them, the report said.
A campus office to help with those interactions is the solution, it recommended.
Making it easier for the two groups to get together would benefit not only the researchers and businesses but also the public, Ditzel said.
Some Controversy Seen
George Himel, associate vice chancellor for business affairs, said he expected the recommendation about allowing faculty members to accept stock in companies for which they do research to be among the report’s most controversial proposals. That will probably have to go all the way to the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission before it can be adopted, he said.
The UC system receives about $5.4 million a year in royalties from 627 plants, inventions or processes developed by university researchers and licensed to businesses, Ditzel said, adding that UCSD’s 58 patents account for only a small part of that, but its share is expected to increase within the next few years because of burgeoning high-technology research there.
UCSD officials have not identified where they would find $167,255 a year to run the new office. However, the chancellor has approved the report in principle and will include the idea in budget deliberations this spring, said V. Wayne Kennedy, vice chancellor for administration.
Kennedy said he expected the office would handle technology transfer throughout the university, not just for the medical school.
The study’s conclusions resulted from surveys of 168 faculty members and 63 businesses. It was paid for with a $160,000 grant from the John A. Hartford Foundation, a New York City foundation interested in health-care issues.
