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These grants were made available as a result of revenue generated from the licensing of technology created at UNMC.
The University of Nebraska Board of Regents Patent and Technology Transfer Policy requires one third of net proceeds generated from the licensing of university technology be given directly to the inventors.
The policy encourages the campus to invest the remaining revenue in additional research that has the potential to generate more technology with commercial potential.
Ken Cowan, M.D., Ph.D., director of the UNMC Eppley Cancer Center, said, “This policy is helping to stimulate innovative research by allowing revenue generated from scientific discoveries to be disbursed back to the investigator, but also to be used as seed money to promote further discoveries with commercial potential.”
Jim Linder, M.D., president and CEO of UNeMed said, “The ultimate goal of technology transfer, and UNeMed, is to grow research at UNMC. Returning revenue to faculty and academic units is the best way to achieve this goal. Through their efforts we anticipate that the rate of return can rise to millions of dollars.”
The UNMC Department of Radiology received $195,000 from UNeMed to fund software development for advanced analysis of brain images, including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
Michael Boska, Ph.D., professor and vice chairman for research in the department, said, “Currently, high end programs exist for analyses of images but do not address some of the important issues in automating analyses to maximize throughput and accuracy. Secondarily, the software will be used to correlate images with different spatial resolution from different sources in order to correlate data from multiple sources. This is particularly difficult when analyzing results from small animal imaging for a variety of technical reasons.”
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“Royalty income generated from the licensing of this novel knock-out mouse created by Dr. Wagner will assist his scientific program, as well as support other cancer researchers that are developing novel technologies with commercial potential,” Dr. Cowan said.
Dr. Cowan described Dr. Wagner as a “leader in the development of animal models to study mammary gland development and mammary cancer.”
In addition, Dr. Cowan said Dr. Wagner “was among the first to investigate the development of mammary gland conditional gene knock-out models and these models have been used by investigators around the world to study the factors that influence the development of breast cancer and to identify novel agents to treat and prevent breast cancer.”
“We have been addressing the issues of small animal imaging with software development over the last two years and are now in a unique position to develop software for advanced automated analyses,” Dr. Boska said. “This will be a great advantage for research focusing on brain abnormalities, including characterization of animal models of neuronal diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and viral attacks on the brain.
“The software under development will streamline the analysis process, allowing research into new therapies to combat these diseases to move more rapidly, and allowing methods used in animal studies to be immediately translated to human trials. The immediate impact will be in the competitive advantage for Nebraska biomedical researchers to perform translational research into cures for neurological disorders. The commercial potential will be for sales of the software to biomedical researchers and pharmaceutical companies involved in this line of investigation.”
The grant was a direct result of revenue generated by the sale of the LeVeen Probe. The probe was developed at UNMC by Robert LeVeen, M.D., in 1994 and uses radiofrequency ablation to destroy tumor cells with heat while sparing the healthy tissue. It has been brought to the market place by Boston Scientific and is one of the leading tools used to treat solid tumors today.
Dr. LeVeen was named UNeMed’s first recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award in August 2007.
Furthermore, the UNMC Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences was granted $57,750 for two projects. The first is a project that is designed to add to UNMC’s current creatine ethyl ester patent portfolio and is being led by Jonathan Vennerstrom, M.D.
The second allows for additional testing of a compound led by Dong Wang, Ph.D.
“This support from UNeMed has been essential for two research groups in the department to develop their technologies that have demonstrated exciting potential,” said Dennis Robinson, Ph.D., chairman of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences.
The funds used to support these projects were a result of a licensing agreement for nanoparticles created in the laboratory of Vinod Labhasetwar, Ph.D., courtesy professor in the College of Medicine.
Dr. Robinson added, “both projects may provide significant advances in several therapeutic applications and the continued development of these technologies would not be possible without UNeMed support.”