News and Events > Newsletters > Monthly Newsletter: February 2006

Today at the TTO

Fitzsimons BioBusiness Incubator: Bio Business is Booming at the University of Colorado
It has been four years since CU revamped and revitalized its technology transfer organization -providing funding, human resources, and a new roadmap for moving inventive discoveries out of the lab and into the marketplace. In 2004, the CU Technology Transfer Office ("TTO") chronicled its approach to the business of technology transfer in an article published in the peer-reviewed Journal of the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) entitled "Creating a Start-up Climate: Ideas for Next-Generation Technology Transfer."

CU Technology and Licensee Companies in the News

Proof-of-Concept: CU Fostering Idea of Ideas for Commercial Application
How do you make it second nature for professors to think that their research results might have commercial value? Well, the University of Colorado has discovered that it helps to have some money to scatter around among people with promising ideas. Not surprisingly, more ideas look promising.

New Spring POC-Investment and POC-Grant Rounds Are Open
Watch for an email announcement coming Feb. 17 to our newsletter readership for complete details about the applications process and deadlines.

Competitive Technologies, Inc. Licenses Homocysteine Assay to Genzyme
Competitive Technologies, Inc. announced that a homocysteine assay license has been granted to Genzyme Diagnostics under CTT's U.S. Patent Number 4,940,658 relating to homocysteine medical tests. The license includes an initial license fee and payments, releasing Equal Diagnostics (a Genzyme business) customers of any obligation to pay royalties to CTT for homocysteine test results obtained using Genzyme's Equal Diagnostics assays in the past. The license also includes royalties on future product sales.

Myogen Announces Sale of Myogen GmbH
Myogen, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery, development and commercialization of small molecule therapeutics for the treatment of cardiovascular disorders, today announced the sale of Myogen GmbH, its wholly-owned European subsidiary, and the sublicense of its rights to Perfan(R) I.V. (intravenous enoximone) in markets outside North America to Wulfing Holding GmbH.

CU Scientists Study Aging, Cardiovascular Disease
Scientists at the University of Colorado's Human Integrative Physiology Lab in Boulder are studying the relationship between aging and cardiovascular disease. Their goal: to make older hearts healthier.

RxKinetix moving from Louisville to Boulder
For all the flak that the city has taken for the recent business departures of companies like WhiteWave and Leopard in 2005, Boulder has picked up a new biotech business to beef up its resume.

ALD Nanosolutions, Inc. Receives 2006 Frost & Sullivan Award forExcellence in Technology
Frost & Sullivan's 2006 Excellence in Technology Award in the field of Advanced Coating and Surface Technologies goes to ALD Nanosolutions, Inc. for developing and commercializing novel atomic layer deposition (ALD) techniques. The two primary techniques that have been developed are Particle ALD^TM and Polymer ALD^TM for nanocoating conformal inorganic films on individual particles and polymer substrates respectively.

Telomerase Research Expands Drug Design Possibilities
Scientists have determined the detailed structure of an essential piece of the telomerase enzyme, an important contributor to the vast majority of human cancers. Understanding the physical shape of the protein has led to a better understanding of how it acts to immortalize cells - and should help scientists design broadly effective cancer drugs. Howard Hughes Medical Institute President Thomas R. Cech, whose laboratory is at the University of Colorado at Boulder, led the study, conducted with colleagues Steven A. Jacobs and Elaine R. Podell.

Spotlight On:

CU HSC's Technology of the Month:
CU1146H - Biomarkers for diagnosis and monitoring of therapy in Chronic Pulmonary Obstructive Disease

CU Boulder Technology of the Month:
CU1431B, Hans Dieter Seelig, Sensor Systems and Methods for the Evaluation of Water Deficit Stress in Plants

CU Company of the Month: ALD Nanosolutions, Inc. has recently entered into a relationship with a second commercial material partner. ALD NanoSolutions and NanoDynamics, Inc., of Buffalo, New York, will design five new materials under technology development and license agreements.

Upcoming Events

CTEK Colorado Entrepreneurship Competition
February 16, 2006, Longmont, CO - CTEK & Seagate Technologies, in conjunction with CU-Boulder, CU-Denver, CSU, and DU are proud to present the first ever joint business viability competition, The CTEK Colorado Entrepreneur Competition. An extension on the traditional "business plan" competition, this contest seeks to support the student group with the most viable business idea, essentially giving the group a runway to launch their new startup. With awards ranging from advisory services, possible office space, PR, hosting, accounting, and more, the winning team will have a real-world opportunity to grow their ventures.

Silicon Flatirons Telecommunications Program
February 19-20, 2006, Boulder, CO - The Digital Broadband Migration: Confronting New Regulatory Frontiers. This conference will examine several pressing regulatory challenges that policymakers have yet to fully grapple with.

First Annual Sustainable Opportunities Summit
February 22-24, Boulder, CO at Millennium Hotel - come listen to senior executives from Ford Motor Company, Sun Microsystems and Merrill Lynch explain why they get sustainability and what they're doing about it.

Venture Workshop on Technology Entrepreneurship: Opportunities in Sustainability
February 22-24, Boulder, CO at Discovery Learning Center, CU Boulder Campus - The Engineering for Developing Communities Program, in conjunction with the First Annual Sustainable Opportunities Week, is proud to present the second Invention to Venture workshop hosted by the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The AUTM Western Regional Meeting
July 16-18, Boulder, CO at St. Julien Hotel - The Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM), which is the professional association for TTOs, is holding its summer regional meeting in Boulder this year.

CU Resources

Leeds School Business Research Division (BRD)
The Leeds School of Business, where internationally recognized faculty engage in cutting-edge research, serves various outreach functions and links academic programs with businesses and the community. Its research arm, Business Research Division, has conducted research that assists companies, associations, nonprofit organizations, educational institutions, and state and local governmental agencies in making sound business and policy decisions.

Innovation in the News

Bits & Bytes: Universities Welcome Tech Transfer Aid from State, Heinz
Imagine a nifty little product that promises to better your golf swing simply by analyzing your gait. The technology exists -- its working title is the "portable wireless wearable posture tracking system" and it was developed by Carnegie Mellon University's very own assistant professor of robotics, Yoky Matsuoko.

Venture Capital Investing Steady at $21.7 Billion in 2005 Holding on to 2004's Gain
Venture capitalists matched 2004 by investing $21.7 billion in 2,939 deals in 2005, according to the MoneyTree Survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers, Thomson Venture Economics and the National Venture Capital Association. Full-year 2004's $21.6 billion marked the first increase in venture capital investing after three years of consecutive declines.

VC Investment up 48 Percent in 2005
Colorado venture capital investment rose 24 percent in Q4, to $115 million, according to the MoneyTree survey released in January by PricewaterhouseCoopers, Thomson Venture Economics and the National Venture Capital Association.

The Corporation for Enterprise Development Presents Development Report Card
The Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED) has compiled an annual report called the Development Report Card (DRC). This report compares how states perform relative to each other, rather than to an absolute standard. The honor roll recognizes those states that earn all As and Bs in the report card's three graded indexes: performance, business vitality, and development capacity. Colorado is one of the states receiving As and Bs.

New Fee Policy in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) under the Administration's FY07 recommendation would keep all the fees it will collect. USPTO would use the $1.843 billion in spending authority contained in the president's FY07 budget request to reduce application processing time and increase the quality of its products. This funding would allow for increased staffing of 682 full-time equivalent positions. The mission of the USPTO is to ensure that the intellectual property system contributes to a strong global economy, encourages investment in innovation, and fosters entrepreneurial spirit. This proposal has been made by the Administration in previous years.

External Resources

The New International Patent Classification (version 8) will be in Force in January 2006.

Patent Search Site for U.S. and International Patents

German Patent Office (in German)

Parting Quotes

Lita Nelson, for the last 20 years the director of the Office of Technology Licensing at MIT, has this to say about university technology transfer: "It's a very uneven distribution of money, a few universities hit the jackpot, [but] you can't plan on it. You may just barely break even, money in has to be shared with inventors and go back to research by law. But nobody's in it for the money. Do you buy lottery tickets? I don't. You're in it for other reasons, getting academic research out to industry and inventions brought to market."