Creating and Implementing Breakthrough Technologies

Abstract

Bringing breakthrough technologies to market requires a systematic approach and people with a passion for the idea.I'd like to discuss how we've created new technologies in our lab and how we've created companies with our students to bring these technologies to the public. First, how do you know when you ' re ready to move something from the lab into a company? There are six criteria that I ' ve used as a sort of formula. They are the things I look for in building new technology companies:1. Focus on a platform technology.2. Build credibility for the underlying science.3. Create strong patent protection.4. Demonstrate the technology in practice.5. Seek to create a product company.6. Work with people who have a passion for the idea.Let me define each of these in a little more depth, then talk about some examples. My focus will be on the medical field, which is where I have most of my experience, but I think that these principles are more general than that.First, I try to focus on platform technologies. In the medical field, a platform technology is something that you can use over and over again for different molecules. For example, genetic engineering is a platform technology because you can make all different kinds of proteins that way. Drug-delivery microspheres is a platform technology because you can use the same manufacturing technique to create microspheres to deliver many different kinds of drugs.The second point-and some people might disagree with me on this-is that we try to publish articles on our findings in very high-impact journals like Science or Nature , where they publish big discoveries. That helps build credibility for the technology.Third, we try to build the company on what we call blocking patents. Sometimes when I talk about this in academic circles, people say it's not too nice to have a blocking patent. My feeling is that if you don't have a really good patent, you ' re probably not going to be able to access the money you need to develop your findings.Next, we demonstrate the technology. In the medical area, which is most of what I am involved with, you want to have shown that something works at least in an animal model.Fifth, we try to create product companies, rather than information or licensing companies. If we license the technology to one company, they tend to use it for their drugs. A product company will work with Merck on one drug, Pfizer on another, Lilly on another, and so forth. That way, you have the potential to have more impact.Finally, pretty much every time I ' ve done this, I've done it because my students and postdocs wanted to do it. They have spent five or six years of their lives doing a thesis or postdoctoral project in the lab. Now they passionately want to take that work and get it out to the world. I think that having champions has made a huge impact. If we just handed it offto some other company, maybe they would have developed it and maybe they wouldn't have. My experience is they just don't have the same passion. I'd trade passion for the most part for vast experience. Our students will walk through walls to see their discoveries reach the public.I will give a few examples of what we've done to try to illustrate these points. The first one starts when I was postdoc in the '70s. Judah Folkman asked me if we could find a way to isolate angiogenesis inhibitors, substances that stop blood vessels from growing, with the idea that that may someday lead to a new treatment for cancer, which it has. At that time, there were no such substances. One of the big challenges, as it always is in medicine, is developing a bioassay. In our case, it was critical to have a way to release the substances slowly in vivo. But these were large molecules, and if you have a large molecule and you want to give it therapeutically by having people swallow it, the drugs will be destroyed; they're just too big to be absorbed through the gastrointestinal tract. …