You can’t work at an academic medical center too long before you hear the term “technology transfer.” Despite the way it sounds, technology transfer doesn’t mean the physical movement of technology from one place to another. It actually refers to the way research-based knowledge gets transformed into a product or a process the world can use.

But technology transfer, or commercialization as it’s sometimes called, is a tricky universe. The motivations of those involved are complex. Researchers are primarily driven by curiosity, while entrepreneurs are motivated by the marketplace. In addition, the process involves huge amounts of government funding, attorneys who know intellectual property law, business interests who can develop a product and market it, venture capitalists, foundations and lawmakers who want their state and country to be economically competitive.

Lesa Mitchell, a vice president at the Kauffman Foundation, has been a long-time observer of technology transfer. She says the key components for a smooth-functioning tech transfer process are: research funding, whether from the government, industry or philanthropy; a network between researchers and the commercial world; and an effective university technologytransfer office which helps guide discoveries through the commercialization process. Not surprisingly, Mitchell says there are also plenty of barriers to a smooth-functioning tech transfer process.

Nearly every major company and research institution has an office of technology transfer, including KU Medical Center. Richard Huston is the director of KUMC’s tech transfer office. “The university’s mission is typically to educate, do research and be involved in community service,” Huston says. “We are not product development centers. That is what industry does. The tech transfer office is the interface between those two very different cultures.”

Huston says KU Medical Center has had more than 330 invention disclosures since it began keeping track of such things. A disclosure is the term for a researcher making a discovery “a matter of record” in Huston’s office because the researcher thinks the discovery may be the basis for a new product or process.

Some disclosures lead to patents. Huston says KUMC has 56 U.S. issued patents in the office right now. Most of those patents are licensed, which means you’re one step closer to the ultimate goal of launching a start-up company. But, cautions Huston, “just one out of seven start-up companies is successful.”

One example of a KUMC project that is going through the technology transfer process involves a chemotherapy drug called Paclitaxel.

The drug is as hard as a rock, so the manufacturer blends it with Cremophor EL to make it soluble. But that blend can lead to some unpleasant side effects.

Valentino Stella, PhD, distinguished professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at the KU Lawrence campus, came up with the idea of making extremely small particles of Paclitaxel so they will dissolve more rapidly and in water, as opposed to Cremophor EL. Stella worked on the project with Dr. Bala Subramaniam at the KU School of Engineering. The resulting drug is called Nanotax.

KUMC’s Kathy Roby, PhD, a research associate professor of anatomy and cell biology who has been conducting research on ovarian cancer, then tested Nanotax by injecting it into the tails of lab mice. She found it worked as well as the marketed pharmaceutical but had none of the negative side effects.

Then Roby got the idea to inject both drugs into the peritoneal cavity – the space below the diaphragm that contains the intestines and otherorgans – of the mice. The Nanotax-treated mice survived about five times longer than those injected with the Paclitaxel blended with Cremophor.

The results were so promising that Nanotax has moved to the next stage of the tech transfer process. Roy Jensen, MD and Scott Weir, PharmD, PhD, of the University of Kansas Cancer Center at KUMC, are working closely with CritiTech, a Lawrence-based biotechnology company to move Nanotax into Phase I clinical trials for cancer patients in the near future.

Sam Campbell, the CEO of CritiTech, says the development of Nanotax is going so well in large part because of the good relationship between his company and KUMC.

“KU Medical Center has made so much progress on how to interact with businesses when trying to bring a product to market,” Campbell says. “They are providing great research and development support to us.” Campbell says not all research institutions are good business partners. He frequently sees a culture gap between researchers and entrepreneurs.

Campbell says technology transfers work best when researchers and business people share a common objective, communicate well and treat each with other respect, and the Nanotax project is a good example of that.

“When it comes to the drug development business, everyone involved needs to have a tremendous amount of patience, stamina and optimism,” Campbell says. “When you have partners like KU Medical Center that understand that, it increases the odds of being successful in the end.” +