The University of Texas (UT) at Dallas is leading a new initiative to educate its researchers about commercialization, and thereby identify more potentially marketable biotechnologies and move them from the laboratory bench to the bedside. With $172,500 in funding from the UT System’s Office of Technology Commercialization’s Entrepreneur Network, the school is establishing a Medical Technology Lean Startup Course at the UT MD Anderson Cancer Center. The course is designed to teach biomedical researchers at UT system schools how to launch start-ups and transfer their life science discoveries more quickly into the clinic.
“This is a technology transfer initiative, where entrepreneurship meets medicine,” says Will Rosellini, principal investigator for the project and director of commercialization at the Texas Biomedical Device Center at UT Dallas.
“There are several aspects to commercializing a technology or a medical discovery that scientists might not be familiar with or comfortable with,” Rosellini says. “Because of this gap in knowledge, many biomedical start-up companies waste time and money in their initial efforts, and many fail altogether. This course is aimed at eliminating those mistakes and helping researchers more efficiently move their discoveries to market.”
This summer, UT Dallas will launch a six-week pilot program of the course, which is based on the successful National Science Foundation I-Corps program. According to Rosellini, UT Austin personnel who will present the course are NSF-certified I-Corps faculty.
The cost-free course will be aimed at faculty, postdoc researchers, and MD/PhD students who may have an idea for a product or company but don’t know the next steps toward the marketplace. “If the pilot course is successful, we plan to expand the program to other UT System medical institutions and ultimately obtain funding to maintain the program in perpetuity,” says Rosellini.
Source: UT Dallas
