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Once-stuffy tech transfer adopts entrepreneurial stance

Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute caught the eye of the business community
when it recently lured Anthony del Campo from the private sector to head its
technology-transfer program — the licensing of its budding technologies to private
industry.

Allison Connolly American City Business Journal Staff

Like other members of the
Harvard system, the
hospital had been
considered by licensees
and venture capitalists to be
conservative and even
bureaucratic.

But that reputation is now
changing, as tech-transfer
officers like del Campo are
turning their backs on their
ivory-tower past.

"My role here is to try to
bring a more business-like
approach to the office of
technology transfer, with the focus on customer service," del Campo said.

Dana-Farber gave the tech transfer office a new name, Research and Technology
Ventures, to better reflect its entrepreneurial approach. And the hospital hopes to
expand its portfolio of partners, including exclusive deals with the likes of
AstraZeneca and Novartis, which has signed on for $8 million.

In fact, del Campo hopes to announce a
couple of deals in the coming months. He
hopes to increase income from licensing
deals by 15 percent each year. In 2001,
before del Campo came on board, the
hospital reaped $4.7 million in revenue on 34
licensing deals.

"After all, you have to get the technology into
the hands of industry to get products in the
hands of doctors to treat patients," del
Campo said. "We have an obligation to get
technology transferred from the bench to the
marketplace."

He spent three years as senior director of corporate development at
Waltham-based Genome Therapeutics Corp., just as the company was
transforming from a services company to a pharmaceutical company. Prior to
that, he was director of business development at BCM Technologies, the for-profit
tech-transfer office at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. And earlier in his
career, he was a biologist working at the Bethesda, Md.-based National Cancer
Institute.

"I understand the science as well as the business issues that both parties face,"
he said.

Hospitals depend on their own tech-transfer offices to be savvy about interacting
with industry. And they are getting better at it.

"There is a perception that Harvard is on the extreme right in its overall approach
to industry, and our affiliates share that perception," said Mark Chalek, director of
technology ventures at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, another
Harvard-affiliated hospital. "But I think Harvard gets a bad rap. They work very
hard and certainly do a number of deals."

Many credit Chalek with the surge in licensing deals at BIDMC. In the four years
since Chalek has come on board, the hospital has spawned eight startups, done
80 licensing deals and has seen revenue increase 1,000 percent.

"A lot of it is the attitude you have," said Chalek, who regularly meets with
venture capitalists and industry executives and has signed deals with companies
around the world.

Lita Nelsen, a chemical engineer who worked in the private sector for 20 years
before becoming director of the Technology Licensing Office at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said tech-transfer offices are trying to
make it easier for industry to license technology, but hospitals may take longer
because they deal with patients.

"Every institution has to evolve with their own style," Nelsen said. "For hospitals,
which have liability and legal considerations, it may take them longer to evolve
their policies, but they are getting there."

And she says it is helpful to have industry experience.

"It’s a cross-cultural job," she said. "You need people who speak both
languages."

Having come from private industry, del Campo said he would like to see more
startups founded from the hospital’s technology, something that is rare for
hospitals compared with traditional licensing deals. Yet, one successful
Dana-Farber spinoff that he points to is Cambridge-based GenPath
Pharmaceuticals Inc., which secured $15.5 million in venture capital even before
it officially opened its doors in May.

Todd Foley, senior associate at Boston-based MPM Capital, which led the
investment in GenPath, said the deal was relatively smooth because the two
Dana-Farber scientists were eager to license their technology to start a
company. He said he is starting to see that same enthusiasm among Boston’s
tech-transfer offices.

"It’s a jump-start in starting a company rather than starting one from scratch," he
said.

Copyright 2002 American City Business Journals Inc.

http://boston.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2002/07/01/story7.html

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