Abstract
Abstract The last 50 years have seen an increasing dependence on academic institutions to develop and commercialize new biomedical innovations, a responsibility for which many universities are ill-equipped. To address this need, we created LEAP, an asset development and gap fund program at Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL). Beyond awarding funds to promising projects, this program aimed to promote a culture of academic entrepreneurship, and thus improve WUSTL technology transfer, by providing university inventors with individualized consulting and industry expert feedback. The purpose of this work is to document the structure of the LEAP program and evaluate its impact on the WUSTL entrepreneurial ecosystem. Our analysis utilizes program data, participant surveys, and WUSTL technology transfer office records to demonstrate that LEAP consistently attracted new investigators and that the training provided by the program was both impactful and highly valued by participants. We also show that an increase in annual WUSTL start-up formation during the years after LEAP was established and implicate the program in this increase. Taken together, our results illustrate that programs like LEAP could serve as a model for other institutions that seek to support academic entrepreneurship initiatives.
Highlights
A glance at the headlines over the past year of the pandemic confirms the extraordinary importance of biomedical innovation
Whereas pharmaceutical companies had historically conducted much of the discovery and research of new medicines, these activities were relegated to upstart biotechnology companies and eventually to academic organizations
LEAP Program Structure Application Process To address the pitfalls of Bear Cub, we started by modifying the framework of a conventional business plan competition and created a program that allowed investigators to enter with minimal up-front requirements
Summary
A glance at the headlines over the past year of the pandemic confirms the extraordinary importance of biomedical innovation. Vaccines, devices, and diagnostic assays, which might have required years or decades to develop in the past, have been introduced in a fraction of that time, saving countless lives from the ongoing pandemic [1]. Such breakthroughs are not limited to emerging infections and have been realized in the form of comparable advancements for targeting cancer by redirecting the immune response, robotic devices to assist surgery, and genomic analyses to identify, prevent, and, soon, to intervene against genetic maladies [2,3,4]. Our recent findings have demonstrated a growing reliance upon academic inventors as crucial sources for discovering FDAapproved medicines [7]
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