CU Technology Transfer, the Challenges and the Choices
Annual Report 2009-2010

905_ 10/4/10- "Over the last seven years we've (generated) 69 companies, and those are Colorado companies, 57 are still around. Last year was though, we lost a couple companies. It's been brutal. Very tough for early stage technology companies. I see the sun shining through the darker clouds of the innovation economy recession." said David Allen, Associate Vice President for Technology Transfer at the University of Colorado. Larry discussed with David the University of Colorado Tech Transfer (TTO) annual report for 2009 - 2010. While there are many challenges, there are a number of very positive aspects. Here's an overview of the TTO Dashboard:

~ invention disclosures (respectable year with continued pipeline growth)
+ US patent applications (solid year for both TTO and licensee companies)
+ exclusive deals (good year, especially given the soft economy)
-nonexclusive deals (most such deals due to one software program)
~ start-ups (slightly down, but continued high level performance)
~ POC program (strong projects primarily supported by State BDEG)
-overall revenue (expected low revenue, worsened by recession)
-liquidations (sitting on ownership interests in 55 companies)
+ financial reserve (recovery of TTO’s Long-Term Investment account)
-patent reimbursements (shortfall compared to previous years)
-start-up and early-stage licensee financings (very difficult market)
+ support from the business community (continued strong engagement)
+ support from the CU Administration (strategic importance maintained)
+ TTO personnel (capable TTO staff and collaborative team environment)
+ Net, Net TTO had another solid year except for low licensing revenue In addition here are the TTO stats for IP and Licensing Portfolio at a Glance (as of 07/01/2010): Total U.S. Patents in force : 306 - Total U.S. Patents in prosecution: 309 - Exclusive Licenses in good standing: 153 - Non-Exclusive Licenses in good standing: 209 - Bio Licenses in good standing: 176 - Non-Bio Licenses in good standing: 184.
At the BioWest Conference, CU TTO team was a winner of the 'Business Partner of the Year Award'. Click on the link for a complete report...

Related Links: CU TTO Home || CU TTO Performance Metrics and SWOT Analysis || CU TTO Channel || Available Technologies || CU TTO Blog || BioWest Conference || Keywords: David Allen, Technology Transfer, University of Colorado, BioSciences, Patents, Start-up, Early-stage, Bio Licenses - 10/4/10 bytes: 14430775 Listen to: David Allen, Associate Vice President, Technology Transfer, University of Colorado

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Focus areas: Research, education and leadership
936_ 12/6/10- We're at the CU Tech Transfer Office talking with Trent Yang, Director of Entrepreneurship and Business Dev., Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI) and MaryBeth Vellequette, Licensing Associate, Technology Transfer Office. To set the stage, Larry referred to a statement by Interim Provost Stein Sture... "With this initiative, CU is fostering an invaluable working relationship with an important partner, and opening opportunities for CU researchers to collaborate with Stanford, MIT, University of California at Berkley and other major institutions focusing on the development of new solutions." Trent went onto explain RASEI. "RASEI started about 1 1/2 years ago as a joint research collaboration between the University of Colorado at Boulder and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, NREL in Golden. The purpose of the institute is to bring together all of the cleantech and renewable energy research that is occurring on campus and marry it with the collaborative efforts going on at NREL and really make a world-class research institute here in Colorado in Boulder." MaryBeth's focus, since being with TTO, is primarily on chemistry and chemical engineering. A lot of the technologies coming out are clean tech, renewable and sustainable energy. Naturally MaryBeth sort of dovetails into Trent's world when it comes to RASEI and some of the programs that they have going for developing those kinds of technologies. RASEI has three focus areas, one is in research, an education program focused on fostering next generation energy leaders here on campus through the energy certificate program. They also working with industry leaders like Toyota, ConcoPhillips, Excel, etc., who understand what the market needs are. MAP is part of our commercialization effort. It stands for Market Assessment Program, something developed at RASEI in conjunction with the Tech Transfer Office. The goal is to bring an early market analysis and focus to the research that we're doing so that we can most efficiently understand how to take our technologies into the market place. Listen for the challenges and opportunities...
Related Links: RASEI Home || CU TTO || NREL || CU TTO Blog || CU TTO Channel || Keywords: Trent Yang, MaryBeth Vellequette, RASEI, CU Tech Transfer Office, NREL, Stein Sture, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute, Stanford, MIT, University of California at Berkley, Toyota, ConocoPhillips, Excel 12/6/10 bytes=5868672 Chnl: CU TTO
LISTEN to Trent Yang and MarayBeth Vellequette, CU Tech Transfer, RASEI

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Raised about $8 million in first venture round (Part 1 of 3)
872_ 7/19/10 - The GlobeImmune story is interesting both from the perspective of a Colorado creation, a small business job creation and how biotech companies come to be. It was founded by three scientists from the University of Colorado who made an interesting discovery about the interaction of yeast and fungi with the immune system. They filed patents, raised a fairly substantial amount of money through small business innovative research and federal grants and through local and ultimately national venture capitalists. Larry interviewed Dr. Timothy Rodell, President and CEO, GlobeImmune. "We raised about $8 million in a venture round that was lead by Sequel Ventures, a local Colorado firm, and a national VC came into that and subsequently has gotten substantial investment. Not only from a number of VC's in the USA, Asia and in Europe, but also four different large pharmaceutical companies. So we've raised a total of about $150 million." He went on, "The reason why it's important to understand how this works is a prime example of how academic research can ultimately lead to potentially important commercial products that can change the way that medicine is practiced. The grease that makes this happen, the way that this happens in the best sense, is that university scientists can be guided by a technology transfer office. A sophisticated technology transfer office at the University of Colorado, led by Dave Allen, is a classic example of that. I got involved at that point, when I heard the story from the founders, I got excited. We wrote a business plan together, and we put together the initial funding and have been operating independently since about 2002." Then they got into one of their areas of research. "There are now 4 to 5 million people in the U.S. who are chronically infected with Hepatitis C, and 170 million worldwide. it is the primary cause requiring liver transplantation and the primary cause of liver cancer. If you look at patients who are infected with Hepatitis C, there is a very striking observation. If you..." Listen for more...
Related Links: GlobeImmune || CU Technology Transfer Office || CU TTO Channel || TTO Blog || Keywords: Dr, Timothy Rodell, GlobeImmune, Chronic Hepatitis C (HCV) Infection, University of Colorado, Tech Transfer, Sequel Ventures, VC's, Liver Cancer, T Cell, Pharmaceutical Companies, Dave Allen - 7/19/10 - Part 1 of 3 bytes: 5934814
Listen to: Dr. Timothy Rodell, GlobeImmune

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// Complete Interview - 20 minutes - bytes: 14398801 //
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Immune stimulation: The Holy Grail
876_ 7/26/10- "The question is can the immune system be used to fight disastrous diseases like Hepatitis C and cancer? And the answer is it can." Larry continued his interview with Dr. Timothy Rodell, President and CEO, GlobeImmune. Dr.Rodell continued, "People have been trying to do this for 25 or 30 years, what has been missing in all the attempts to stimulate the immune system is the ability to stimulate a T-cell response. Classical vaccines and most of the ways that have been tried generate antibodies. Antibody is important for acute infections, but when we're talking about cancer, we're talking about chronic infections, those are things that happen inside the cell and antibodies can't get inside the cell. T-cells can kill cells that have foreign proteins or malignant proteins in them. Hepatitis is a great example of why this is important. There is a treatment approved for Hepatitis C, which involves using a protein called interferon and... But the problem with that treatment is that it only works in about 40% of patients who have the type of Hepatitis C infection that's generally seen in the United States. So we're treating basically 100 patients to cure only about 40 of them. We've just completed a study, I'm looking at 140 patients who have chronic Hepatits C infection. We treated half of those patients with 'standard of care' what's currently approved. Then we treated the other half of the patients with the same thing plus our product, which is called GI5005. What we were able to show, first of all, was we generated immune responses, T-cell responses that looked exactly like you see in that lucky 20% of patients able to clear the virus acutely. This is actually the first time that anyone has ever shown a meaningful clinical impact on a chronic infectious disease using immune stimulation. So this is the Holy Grail." Listen for more...
Related Links: GlobeImmune || CU Technology Transfer Office || CU TTO Channel || TTO Blog || Keywords: Dr, Timothy Rodell, GlobeImmune, Chronic Hepatitis C (HCV) Infection, University of Colorado, Tech Transfer, Immune Stimulation, VCs, Liver Cancer, T Cell, Pharmaceutical Companies, Dave Allen 7/26/10 bytes: 3693508
Listen to: Timothy Rodell, M.D., CEO, GlobeImmune Part 2 of 3

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Healthcare reform and Personalized medicine
877_ 8/2/10- In this part 3 of 3 interview with Dr. Timothy Rodell, President and CEO, GlobeImmune, Larry brought up 'healthcare reform'. Dr. Rodell replied, "I think this a critical thing for people to understand. It's important to me as a physician and it's hugely important to the country. Wherever you stand with respect to the political spectrum, it is impossible to conclude that being able to deliver appropriate healthcare to the maximum number of people is critical from a public health perspective, and it's also critical from an economic perspective. And I think the point that it's important for us all to understand, is that adequate delivery of high level and scientifically validated healthcare is going to have both a positive economic impact and a positive impact on public health. Using hepatitis-C as an example, Chronic Hepatitis-C infection is the primary cause in the developed world of liver cancer and the primary thing that makes patients require liver transplants. As you can imagine both of those are extremely expensive conditions to treat. So if we can improve, increase the percentage of patients that we can cure, this is hugely important and hugely economically important. To give you an idea of the magnitude of what this means, it's been estimated that the cost of taking care of patients in the U.S. with chronic hepatitis-C infection, between now and 2020, is one trillion dollars. So if we can develop therapies that improve the outcomes in those 60% of patients that don't respond to our current treatment, the impact is going to be gigantic. In fact, if we can improve it for all of those patients, the impact would be enough essentially to pay for healthcare reform. The second issue is transferring great academic research into private companies like GlobeImmune..." Listen for more...
Related Links: GlobeImmune || CU Technology Transfer Office || CU TTO Channel || TTO Blog || Podcast Directory || Keywords: Dr, Timothy Rodell, GlobeImmune, Healthcare Reform, Chronic Hepatitis C (HCV) Infection, University of Colorado, Tech Transfer, VCs, Liver Cancer, T Cell, Pharmaceutical Companies, Dave Allen 8/2/10 Chnl: CUTTO bytes: 5910050 Listen to: Dr. Timothy Rodell, GlobeImmune Part 3 of 3

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861_ 6/21/10 - Healthcare, Clean Energy, Carbon Credits,
Patent Office Backlog
Dave Allen hits the nail on the head as he identifies problems facing Tech Transfer at universities. The inability of Congress to handle longstanding, almost criminal neglect of the Patent Office backlog and more comes to light in the Tech Transfer's White Paper responding to a Federal request for information. In this part 2 interview David Allen, Associate Vice President for Technology Transfer at the University of Colorado, discussed issues effecting our economic health. This included Healthcare, Clean Energy, Carbon Credits and the Patent Office Backlog. David started with, "We've just gone through a very long period of discussion, all kinds of right-left-center posturing on healthcare. We ended up with a healthcare bill that has a very interesting aspect to it. Many didn't know about this prior to its actual passage, and that's a therapeutic tax credit. There's been a billion dollars set aside and that's based on this notion of innovation in healthcare. This fund has been broken into two parts, one half is for grants to companies and the other half is in tax credits to companies. In July, the Department of Health & Human Services will be receiving grant applications for basically, pre clinical research projects. This money can be applied to them, to bridge that 'valley of death' that we talk about, from the bench side to get some of this into actual clinical trials. That's a really strong positive. I know that many companies that are licensees, are working on that." He continued, "Another area, unfortunately, in the news of course, is the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. That is having an interesting effect as it's playing out in the clean energy legislation, called the 'American Power Act', that was recently dropped. If this were to be enacted, I personally believe, it will have a major impact on a lot of the clean energy technologies. Dave went onto discuss 'grant applications' and 'patent reform'. Listen for more details...
Related Links: CU TTO Home || CU TTO Channel || Available Technologies || CU TTO Blog || TTO White Papers || Keywords: David Allen, Technology Transfer, University of Colorado, White Papers, Healthcare, Clean Energy, Carbon Credits, Patent Office Backlog 6/21/10 Chnl: CU TTO bytes: 6547240 Listen to: Dave Allen, CU TTO

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856_ 6/14/10 - White Papers, Proof of Concept and Tech Transfer
What’s happening at the federal level? Larry talked with David Allen, Associate Vice President for Technology Transfer at the University of Colorado to get caught up on the very important issue of tech transfer. Dave explains, "Overall, we are finally seeing some attention being given to university tech transfer at the federal level. The biggest shift is a realization that the transfer of research from the lab to a company doesn’t occur through checking boxes or filling out forms, happenstance or luck, rather the work of technology transfer is complex and involves many aspects beyond the university. You just can’t take a complex asset and apply simple (non complex) solutions or you’ll sub optimize the system objectives, which is our case is commercialization. Let’s talk about what’s happening in federal public policy related to university technology transfer." Dave went onto explain, "Overall, interest in university commercialization has never been greater. Some universities get it and do well, and some don’t. Overall, the practice has improved and US is the world model and other countries are adopting the US model. The approach was created by the Bayh-Dole legislation of 30 years ago. Over past few years the Kauffman Foundation has taken on the Bayh-Dole model and proposed a “free-agent” type model. About nine months ago a very thoughtful proposal by USC Vice Chancellor of Innovation Kriztina Holly called Impact! was circulating. Based on lots of blogosphere activity and Obama administration interest, a DC meeting involving high level technology and research people was held about four months ago. This culminated in a call for information about university tech transfer effectiveness and proof of concept centers by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and National Economic Council. TTO responded and our white papers on the two topics are on our blog and website." Listen for more details and an explanation of their white papers...
Related Links: CU TTO Home || CU TTO Channel || Available Technologies || CU TTO Blog || TTO White Papers || Keywords: David Allen, Technology Transfer, University of Colorado, White Papers, Commercialization, Proof of Concept, Bayh-Dole 6/14/10 Chnl: CU TTO bytes:6318187 Listen to: Dave Allen, CUTTO

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CU Announces 8th Annual Tech Transfer Awards
January 20, 2010

DENVER (Jan. 20, 2010)  – The University of Colorado Technology Transfer Office annual awards ceremony, honoring five faculty researchers, two companies founded on university research, and an Aurora organization helping local bioscience companies start up and grow.

The CU Technology Transfer Office will recognize this year’s honorees during a special banquet on Wednesday, Jan. 20, at 5:30 p.m. at the historic Tivoli Turnhalle. The awards will follow a panel discussion about the University’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Over the past two decades, CU researchers have developed technologies that have led to the creation of 94 new companies (view PDF). Of these, 77 have operations in Colorado, seven have “gone public,” becoming publicly traded companies (either through an IPO or via a reverse merger), and 12 have been acquired by public companies. Companies created based on CU technology have attracted a total of over $4 billion in financing.

“Technology transfer is the process of conveying university research inventions to companies. Most of the companies that license CU technology operate in Colorado.This annual event is one way to highlight one often overlooked aspect of CU’s impact on the State’s economy and human betterment,” said David Allen, associate vice president for technology transfer at CU.

Faculty and companies recognized this year represent all CU campuses, and are working on the development of treatments for infectious diseases, programs to help recovering trauma victims,  human eyecare, human medical devices and children’s literacy. This year’s award winners include:

Robert T. Batey; Inventor of the Year, CU-Boulder. Batey, an associate professor of chemistry & biochemistry, works with riboswitches (recently discovered genetic regulatory elements). A large portfolio of riboswitch technologies from Batey’s lab have been licensed by BioRelix, Inc., a company developing novel and highly potent anti-infective compounds against pathogens resistant to currently available drugs.

Robert S. Hodges; Inventor of the Year, UC Denver. Hodges, a professor of biochemistry & molecular genetics, works on understanding protein structure and function through synthetic peptide and antipeptide therapeutic approaches. Antimicrobial peptide technology from Hodges’ lab was licensed to BioAMPS International in 2009; he is currently collaborating on a project to develop a universal vaccine against influenza infection.

Mark E. Rentschler; New Inventor of the Year, CU-Boulder. An assistant professor of mechanical engineering, Rentschler’s work is focused on biomechanics, medical devices and robotics, particularly actuator and sensor design and development for micro-robotic applications. 

Malik Y. Kahook; New Inventor of the Year, UC Denver. An associate professor of ophthalmology, Kahook specializes in the medical and surgical care of glaucoma and cataracts. Kahook recently received sponsored research funds from a pharmaceutical company which may be followed up with an option agreement for one of his inventions, a non-invasive device for lowering intraocular pressure.

Charles C. Benight; New Inventor of the Year, CU-Colorado Springs. Benight, a professor of psychology, studies human adaptation from trauma; over the past 14 years, he has focused research on recovery from natural disasters, man-made disasters,  motor vehicle accident trauma, sexual abuse, domestic violence, and bereavement. In 2009, Dr. Benight’s trauma recovery programs were licensed by BlueSun, Inc.

GlobeImmune, Inc.; Bioscience Company of the Year. GlobeImmune, based in Louisville, CO, is a private biopharmaceutical company developing targeted molecular immunogens (Tarmogens) for the treatment of cancer and infectious diseases. GlobeImmune has two products in randomized Phase 2 clinical trials: GI-5005 for chronic hepatitis C infection (HCV) and GI-4000 for pancreas, lung and colorectal cancers caused by mutations in the Ras oncogene. GlobeImmune has raised over $145M in venture and alliance funding to date.

Mentor InterActive, Inc.; Physical Sciences/Engineering/IT Company of the Year. Mentor InterActive, Inc., based in Boulder, CO, publishes and markets interactive software based on the proven Foundations to Literacy reading program developed at CU-Boulder. The first products in the My Virtual Tutor™: Reading line debuted in September 2009 at leading retailers throughout the US and Canada. Mentor InterActive recently signed a licensing agreement with Nintendo of America Inc. to develop My Virtual  Tutor™: Reading for Nintendo DS™ and Wii™ video game systems.
 
Fitzsimons BioBusiness Partners, Michael Artinger, Director; Business Advisor of the Year. Fitzsimons BioBusiness Partners (FBBp) is the premier advisory group serving the Colorado bioscience community, nurturing bioscience businesses in order to establish a global position for the industry at the Colorado Science + Technology Park at Fitzsimons. FBBp plays a critical part in helping CU Tech Transfer fulfill its role in spinning out new enterprises and helping those enterprises compete for grants and investment  capital, and become sustainable and growing companies.

About the Technology Transfer Office
The CU Technology Transfer Office pursues, protects, packages, and licenses to business the intellectual property generated from research at CU. The TTO provides assistance to faculty, staff, and students, as well as to businesses looking to license or invest in CU technology. For more information about technology transfer at CU, visit www.cu.edu/techtransfer.

About the University of Colorado
The University of Colorado is a three-campus system with four locations: the University of Colorado at Boulder, the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and the University of Colorado Denver’s downtown Denver campus and Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora. Nearly 54,000 undergraduate and graduate students are pursuing academic opportunities on CU campuses. CU is a premier teaching and research university, and is ranked sixth among public institutions in federal research expenditures by the National Science Foundation. Academic prestige is marked by the university’s four Nobel laureates, seven MacArthur “genius” Fellows, 18 alumni astronauts and 19 Rhodes Scholars. For more information about all of the CU campuses, go to www.cu.edu.

Interviews 2010:
Dave Allen, Profile of a Leader on w3w3.com 12/21/09
   Tech Transfer, Annual Report 2009-10 10/4/10
   Healthcare, Clean Energy, Carbon credits, Patent Office Backlog 6/21/10
   Feds Request for Information - Tech Transfer Dave Allen 6/14/10
Boulder Innovation Center: Tim Bour and Kate Tallmlan 1/11/10
CID4: Richard Duke & Kevin Smith 2/22/10
Robert T. Batey: Inventor of the Year - Boulder 4/5/10/10
Dr. Charles (Chip) Benight: Inventor of the Year - UC Colo Springs 4/12/10
Dr. Robert Hodges: Inventor of the Year - UC Denver 3/22/10
Dr. Malik Kahook: New Inventor of the Year - UC Denver 4/26/10
Mark Rentschler: New Inventor of the Year - CU-Boulder 5/17/10
Timothy Rodell, M.D.: The GlobeImmune story 7/19/2010
Trent Yang & MaryBeth Vellequette: TTO and RASEI 12/6/2010

843_ 5/17/10 - The Anschutz Medical Campus and Winners
"The big thing we're really trying to focus on is making really small robots that can move around inside the body." Larry talked with Mark Rentschler; New Inventor of the Year, CU-Boulder, who is an assistant professor of mechanical engineering. Rentschler’s work is focused on bio mechanics, medical devices and robotics, particularly actuator and sensor design and development for micro-robotic applications. Larry wanted to know What lead up to his involvement with the Tech Transfer Office. Mark replied, "We have a few different projects going on with some different surgical camera devices for cardiac applications but also laparoscopic surgery, and so we've filed a number of disclosures around that. But, a big part of what we're doing is designing little crawler devices that can move around inside the body. And so, sort of this whole scope of things that we're working on with this group of surgeons down at Anschutz led up to this collaboration and that lead up to this award. I understood, based on my past experience, how important Tech Transfer was. When I came to the University of Colorado, contacting the Tech Transfer Office was one of the first things I did. I had a lot of ideas and talking with the surgeons, we had a lot of concepts that we wanted to push forward and I understood, based on my past experience, how important Tech Transfer was. So within the first three months of my appointment here, I had started talking with them and trying to lay this groundwork - they're a great organization to work with and they make it very easy." Mark had some great advice for students." My stance is that I am a mechanical engineer and I'm focused on robotics and control of dynamics of systems and just now I'm applying those to medical devices. So my advice don't get too focused to quickly, get some depth in certain fundamental areas. Keep yourself broad enough that you're marketable, but make sure you're doing what you love."
Related Links: CU Technology Transfer Office || CU TTO Channel || TTO Blog || Find It || Keywords: Mark Rentschler, CU Boulder, Technology Transfer Office, Bio mechanics, Medical Devices, Robotics, Micro-robotic Applications >
5/17/10 Chnl: CU TTO - Bytes: 4773723 LISTEN to Mark Rentschler; New Inventor of the Year

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831_ 4/26/10 - TTO New Inventor - Preventing Blindness
Malik Kahook, New Inventor of the Year UC Denver named by by the Technology Transfer Office was interviewed by Larry. Dr. Kahook explained, "The invention award was given to us for a non-invasive device that treats Glaucoma. Glaucoma is a disease that involves high eye pressure in the eye, along with other different things that can lead to disease of the optic nerve. With glaucoma, that optic nerve slowly dies. There are three ways of treating this involving medication, laser or surgery, but each has limitations. About ten years ago at the end of my medical school training, I started thinking of different ways we could approach glaucoma therapy without the need for one of those three different approaches, and started doing this work as a resident here at the University of Colorado. The approach was a very systematic study that started looking at preclinical work; eventually moving to preclinical studies; looking at this device and eventually taking it into humans here in the next few weeks. Larry asked, "How do you actually work with the CU Tech Transfer Office?" "TTO was instrumental in moving this project forward. I have to admit that initially I did not know much about tech transfer. As a physician and a researcher, my focus really is on how do I get this device to work, how do I actually get this to show the benefit that would actually make me want to move it forward in further studies. And the last thing on the mind is really, how do I deal with tech transfer, how do I worry about intellectual property?" He shares many other ideas...
Related Links: Malick Kahook || CU Technology Transfer Office || CU TTO Channel || Rocky Mountain Lions Eye Institute || Keywords: Malick Kahook, CU Technology Transfer Office, Colorado, Glaucoma, Researcher, Blinding Disease, Rocky Mountain Lions Eye Institute > 4/26/10 Chnl: News bytes: 6783689 Listen to Malik Kahook , Physician and Researcher, UC Denver New Inventor of the Year!

823_ 4/12/10 - Scientific work leads to commercialization
The Tech Transfer Office at CU (TTO) celebrates the 8th Annual Tech Transfer Awards and Dr. Charles (Chip) Benight was named 'New Inventor of the Year' for CU-Colorado Springs. The road leading to this honor began in 1992 when Dr. Benight moved to Miami for a post doctoral fellowship and ran head-on into hurricane Andrew. As part of his work there in behavioral medicine, they did a major research project, sampling from the disaster survivors, including his own neighborhood. He switched his career focus which had been in cardio vascular behavioral medicine to looking at disaster and trauma adaptations. From that work he got very interested in how people adapt and cope with some of the worst things that can happen to us, everything from natural disasters to terrorist bombings, to of course, interpersonal trauma. "Over the past 16 years now, I've actually been able to look at the primary coping mechanisms that people use to recover from these kind of events. What I saw over and over again was, a person's ability to generate a sense of confidence in managing the coping demands that they are facing relative to the trauma is a very important predictor in eventual successful coping." After all this time and multiple studies, he decided what he really wanted to do was find a way to reach out to the mass populations who are experiencing and being exposed to these different traumas in a way that can help us empower them to recover. "So, it is from those basic findings that I actually went in to thinking about designing this web based intervention program." In 2009, Dr. Benight’s trauma recovery programs were licensed by BlueSun, Inc. There are many interesting points brought out in this interview...Listen...
Related Links: BlueSun, Inc. || CU Trauma, Health & Hazards Center || CU Technology Transfer Office || CU TTO Channel || PodCast Directory || Keywords: Dr. Charles (Chip) Benight, New Inventor of the Year, CU-Colorado Springs, Blue Sun, Web Based Intervention, CU Boulder, Technology Transfer Office, > 4/12/10 bytes: 6846696 Chnl: TTO LISTEN to Dr. Charles Benight, New Inventor of the Year, CU Colorado Springs

819_ 4/5/10 - Getting your research commercialized
At the 8th Annual Tech Transfer Awards Dr. Robert Batey was named 'Inventor of the Year' for CU Boulder by the Technology Transfer Office (TTO). Larry asked what was his focus that lead him to this award? Dr. Batey repled, "In the last year our primary focus has been looking at the structure of nucleic acids called RAs that bind small molecules in bacteria. And basically what these RAs are, are elements that basically are allowing the R&A to determine its own fate, whether it's going to express a gene or not. The amazing thing, the amazing discovery in the last few years is that these RAs can basically sense all kind of small molecules around them in the cells and exploit that information to direct their own expression." Robert Batey, an associate professor of chemistry & biochemistry, works with riboswitches (recently discovered genetic regulatory elements). A large portfolio of riboswitch technologies from Batey’s lab have been licensed by BioRelix, Inc., a company developing novel and highly potent anti-infective compounds against pathogens resistant to currently available drugs. His advice to young researchers is, "The best advice I can give, despite the harsh financial times, there is still a lot of support in the government and private sector for academic research. You may have to beat the bushes a little bit more, convince people that what you're interested in has application in the real world. But I think it's worth spending some time, thinking along those lines and presenting your research in a way where it's clear to people in both the government and the private sector that this could result in some innovative discoveries that could be commercialized." Listen for more...
Related Links: Robert T. Batey || CU Technology Transfer Office || BioRelix || CU TTO Channel || PodCast Directory || Keywords: Robert T. Batey, Inventor of the Year, CU Boulder, Technology Transfer Office, BioRelix, Riboswitch, Anti-infective Compounds, Pathogens > 4/5/10 bytes 4739555 Chnl: CU TTO, LISTEN to Dr. Robert T. Batey, University of Colorado at Boulder

809_ 3/22/10 - Winners for health and wellbeing... Saving 30-50,000 lives a year!
"We've come up with a way to have one vaccine that will treat everyone against all kinds of flu, whether it be seasonal flu, swine flu, bird flu or some new flu strain that comes around. This means that people won't have to get flu shots every year and with seasonal flu if they predict the wrong strain it's ineffective. I think this is a huge problem because millions of people get infected with flu every year in the U.S. And of course there are a lot of deaths between 30 to 50,000 every year. If you have the right vaccine it would prevent those deaths," said Dr. Robert S. Hodges. He is Inventor of the Year, UC Denver. This is an annual award given by the University of Colorado Tech Transfer Office. Hodges, a professor of biochemistry & molecular genetics, works on understanding protein structure and function through synthetic peptide and antipeptide therapeutic approaches. Larry asked Bob, "What is something you would like to pass on to young people following in your footsteps?" His reply, "The most rewarding part of basic research is to be able to see what you've discovered become a drug and actually treat disease and be effective, so that's the goal. I encourage all researchers to go that route but it is more difficult than just doing great science. You have to do the clinical aspect and of course when you get involved in the translational research things sometimes don't work out. That's the risk." There's more...
Related Links: Robert S. Hodges, Ph.D., F.R.S.C. || CU Technology Transfer Office || BioAMPS International || CU TTO Channel || Keywords: Dr. Robert Hodges, CU Technology Transfer Office, Antimicrobial Peptide Technology, Flu, UC Denver, Dr. Robert Hodges, Inventor of the Year > bytes: 5664917 Chnl: CUTTO LISTEN to Dr. Robert Hodges, Inventor of the Year

Check the CU Tech Transfer Archives: 2009; 2008; 2007

759_ In order to do that he had to give up his tenure
David Allen, Associate Vice President for Technology Transfer at the University of Colorado is featured in the Profile of a Leader Series here on w3w3® Media Network. Before they got into the Leader Profile, Larry asked for David's forecast for the coming year. David said, "It's going to be a tough year. The economic horizon is looking a little brighter than it has for the last 12 months or so, but we're not seeing any financing, very little activity in M&A at our level; We see some of the ice starting to crack and hopefully melt; But for new companies and new ventures, which is our bread and butter, there's very little. I'm an eternal optimist and I know it's going to get better. For years we've known we would be in a revenue trough (we talked about this on your show before). We planned for that, we're going to be able to make it through that." David has a very interesting background and Larry had many questions including, "Who influenced you the most, he said his parents more than anyone else. But he thought about Elinor Ostrom who has won the Nobel Prize for Economics this year. She was David's advisor when working on his PhD at Indiana University. She is an absolutely wonderful person. What I learned from her was a sense of patience, to challenge yourself and surround yourself with bright intelligent people. I am immensely pleased to see her win, the first woman to ever have done that." Larry asked, "Can you imagine a failure you couldn't overcome, you had to live with?" David was a professor at Penn State, he had an opportunity to go to the Business School - in order to do that he had to give up his tenure. Tenure is hard earned, a torturous process and he was turning his back on it. His friends and colleagues thought he was insane...there are many leadership suggestions...listen for more...
Related Links: CU TTO Home || CU TTO Channel || Available Technologies || CU TTO Blog || Profile of a Leader || Keywords: David Allen, Technology Transfer, University of Colorado, Profile of a Leader, Elinor Ostrom, Nobel Prize for Economics > Channel: Profiles
Bytes: 13415939 - 12/21/09 LISTEN to Dave Allen

765_ Here there are service providers and funding sources
This is part 2 of 2 of a Profile of a Leader interview with David Allen, Associate Vice President for Technology Transfer at the University of Colorado
The turning point in Dave's career was coming to Colorado. The thing that continually amazes Dave is the nature of the business community here in Colorado compared to where he was in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Dave continued, "Here the entrepreneurial climate, the DNA of the community, whatever you want to call it, it's not a difference in degree, it's a difference in kind. Here there are service providers and funding sources, but more than anything else there are people who understand it - that's different than most other places. They are willing to put in the time to support to younger people (TechStars), or what we do at the Boulder Innovation Center." Dave describes much more and he also gives some great advice to young people, "Constantly put yourself in situations where you are surrounded by smart people and figure out ways you can provide value, be prepared for those interactions, it can relate to school, your business community, friends, but challenge yourself." Listen, there's more...
Related Links: CU TTO Home || CU TTO Channel || Available Technologies || CU TTO Blog || Boulder Innovation Center || TechStars || Keywords: David Allen, Technology Transfer, University of Colorado, Profile of a Leader, Boulder Innovation Center, TechStars, Entrepreneurs Channel: Profiles 14638810 bytes - 1/4/10
LISTEN to Dave Allen, Associate Vice President, CU TTO

770_ A valuable resource for commercializing Part 1 of 2
Kate Tallman, Director of Tech Transfer for CU Boulder and Tim Bour, Executive Director, Boulder Innovation Center discussed commercialization of innovative ideas and inventions as well as support offered entrepreneurs. Kate introduced him, "Tim's been with the Boulder Innovation Center for a little over 3 years, and he has built the program from one focus mainly on software and organics and natural into one that now works with all kinds and sectors of technology including clean tech and the biosciences space. So the BIC has become a valuable resource for commercializing university technology. Can you give us some background on what the BIC is?" Time replied, "First of all, most traditionally, people think of the BIC as an incubator, but with some important differences. We're structured as a nonprofit, as a 501c6 nonprofit. We don't have any incubator space, we don't take any equity in our clients and we don't charge any success fees. This is different than many incubators you'd find around the country. But we find that it's really dealt well in terms of working with universities and it also does well in terms of growing jobs in the community, and that's one of our key outcomes. We currently have six market segments; we work in the area of clean tech which includes bio fuels, solar, software, building materials, anything that has a reduction in energy and efficiency in energy. Currently we have 750 advisors in our network and they're pretty evenly divided in those six segments. We currently have 35 outside clients and we work with between 70 and 100 companies a year that become BIC clients. Now of those 35, today right now, 24 of the 35 are based on CU research." Listen for more entrepreneurial support systems...

775_ An opportunity for angel investors and startups
Part 2 of 2 Tim said, "There are two elements of the financial picture. One is how do we get funded and the second one is what do we do to help the companies we work with get funded." Kate Tallman, Director of Tech Transfer for CU Boulder and Tim Bour, Executive Director, Boulder Innovation Center continued their discussion about commercialization of innovative ideas and inventions. He continued, "Our operating budget is around $350k a year, I'm happy to report we are in the black for 2009 and we project we'll be in the black for 2010. It's been a very difficult year, we've been able to inspire the people who sponsor us to continue to do so, because of the work we're doing trying to create more jobs and start new companies. Of the $350k we get about $150k from CU, different sections of CU that have an interest in clean tech, the Tech Transfer Office, bioscience, but all together $150k. The City of Boulder is also a funder of the BIC, the Boulder Chamber of Commerce and the Boulder Economic Council. Now with public sector, the University has a very clear goal which is to commercialize research. Kate continued with the 'angel investors'. Tim explained, "We've taken on investment into our companies as a strategic goal for 2010. We started our effort back in November. We have about 100 investor types, mostly angels, some others, in our network right now. We took a look at them and realized a lot of the investors had an affinity to one of our segments. So in November we put together what we called an Angel Showcase where we had about 20 angel investors in clean tech, we brought them into a showcase with three companies two of which were from CU and happy to report that those companies are in talks with some of the investors." Listen for more...
Related Links: Boulder Innovation Center || Tech Tranfer Channel || CU Technology Transfer Office || CU TTO News || Keywords: Tim Bour, Kate Tallman, Boulder Innovation Center, CU TTO, Tech Transfer, Commercializing, Clean Tech, BioScience, Engineering, IT, Natural, Organic, Space. Channel: CU TTO 8969899 bytes 1/11/10 LISTEN to Tim Bour & Kate Tallman 7979034 bytes 1/18/10 LISTEN to Tim Bour

2/22/10 - 796_ First round of funding solicitation is March 1st
CID4 is an acronym for the Colorado Institute for Drugs, Device and Diagnostic Development, (it was started about three months ago when they received funding from the State of Colorado). Larry interviewed Richard Duke, President and CEO of CID4 along with Kevin Smith, Exec VP and COO. Richard explained, "The mission of the CID4 which is a 501c3 nonprofit organization, is to bridge the gap between the lab bench and the clinic. It's to provide funding for technologies we hope to move that have come out of research institutions or from private individuals who are actually trying to seek that first professional funding." Kevin added, "Back in late October when we last talked, we were poised to start operations, doing a lot of planning but we hadn't really started yet. The good news is since then we've finalized our grants with the State of Colorado and our grant with the Fitzsimmons Redevelopment Authority and we're ready to start operations. We've actually launched that first solicitation for technology. But in order to do that we've brought together a business and technical advisory committee consisting of some of the top leaders in the State of Colorado, both in the financing of early stage companies as well as folks with understanding of the medical drug technology development process and the medical device technology process." Larry asked, "Rick could you tell us about the solicitation process and what kind of investments you're actually looking for?" "We have a solicitation process that involves a very simple and straight forward application that's available on our web site and it's open for private companies as well as research institutions or even individual inventors to submit. The caveat is we are looking for technologies that are ready to enter clinical development." Submissions are due March 1, 2010 and commercialization is a key word. Listen for more details...
Related Links: CID4 Home Page || Application/Submission || CU TTO Channel and Archives || CU Technology Transfer Office || Keywords: Kevin Smith, Richard Duke, CID4, Funding, Fitzsimmons Redevelopment Authority, Grant, Colorado Institute for Drugs, Device and Diagnostic Development 2/22/10 bytes: 15179758 Chnl: CU TTO/Bi LISTEN to Richard Duke and Kevin Smith, CID4