Mann Gift Promotes New Model for Technology Transfer

NEWS TRENDS

Alfred Mann, well known as an innovator and philanthropist in medical device circles, is breaking more ground by establishing institutes at universities specifically for technology transfer.

The institutes are designed to connect the academic world with the device industry and to accelerate the process of successfully pushing products into the market. In March, Mann's nonprofit medical research organization, the Alfred Mann Foundation for Biomedical Engineering, gave Purdue University a $100 million endowment to establish an Alfred Mann Institute. It's the largest single gift that Purdue has ever received.

According to the foundation's president and CEO Stephen Dahms, the institute at Purdue's Discovery Park is the third of at least 12 sites that the foundation plans to establish by 2012. The first one was launched at the University of Southern California in 2001; the second was set up last October at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, located in Haifa, Israel.

The institutes aim to “increase the certainty of success and the speed to development of medical advances from raw innovations,” Mann said at a news conference to announce the agreement between his foundation and the Purdue Research Foundation. He also pointed out that the chance of a product making it to market and being successful can increase by more than five times when these kinds of institutes manufacture the prototypes.

“The product development conducted by the Alfred Mann Institute at Purdue will result in a substantially greater probability of the technologies reaching the market and the patient than if the technologies were handled through the traditional steps used by universities,” stated Dahms.

Past reports on Mann's efforts to establish partnerships with universities have claimed that the entrepreneur demands too much control over picking which technologies are further developed. This has allegedly led several universities to decline Mann's offers to set up institutes. However, the powers-that-be at Purdue don't see this as the case. Joseph Hornett, senior vice president, treasurer, and COO of the Purdue Research Foundation, has embraced the arrangement as an equal partnership.

This latest agreement gives preference to companies in Indiana that want to license the technologies further developed at the 30,000-sq-ft institute. Each year, the institute will identify about two projects that have commercialization potential. Once the institute is in full operation, the number could expand to six projects per year. Purdue's president, Martin Jischke, estimated that the partnership could greatly affect economic development in Indiana.

When evaluating technology, the institute will work through four phases:

The market analysis process of a product includes assessing possible end-users and competitors, reviewing intellectual property, and establishing regulatory and reimbursement strategies. During the product development phase, the Indiana University School of Medicine will conduct some of the research and clinical testing.

The staffs at the institute and at Mann's foundation also have relationships with outside groups that could aid in the process of licensing or selling the technologies.

Mann was named one of MD&DI's 100 Notable People in the device industry in 2004.

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