When Mass General went looking for a partner to develop its cancer microchip, scientists there had already made it through the so-called “valley of death.” The term refers to the research that needs to take place after the discovery of a potential drug, device or diagnostic but before the finding is commercially viable. Often, academic scientists and their tech transfer mentors are not equipped or funded to move discoveries beyond the patent stage. So, the vision of creating a product out of promising research dies along the way.
By the time the Globe reported on the hospital’s $30 million deal with Johnson & Johnson yesterday, MGH researchers had already developed a prototype of a chip that can detect circulating tumor cells or CTCs. But, the money didn’t come from the Accelerator Fund, a pool of money Harvard donors have put up to render university research market-ready. It came from Hollywood. So, of course, it came with a movie about the scientific “dream team.”
Back up a little bit first. None of this would have happened without initial funding from the National Institutes of Health. NIH has supported the BioMEMS Resource Center that spawned the chip with a $7.5 million funding since 2004 and spent another $6.7 million on the group’s CTC detection research over the past four years.
The project was then picked up by the star-studded group called “Stand up to Cancer.” The clip on the MGH group’s work ran during the group’s telethonish special in September – along with appeals for funding from a long list of celebrities from Adam Sandler to Stevie Wonder.
Now that the chip is ready for the pipeline, J&J will be funding the work. What does that mean? In a phone interview with NNB, Dr. Mehmet Toner of the BioMicroElectroMechanical Systems Resource Center at Massachusetts General Hospital described the arrangement at a “straight forward” tech transfer deal. Harvard and the inventors own the patent, J&J subsidiaries pay for the research and get first dibs on licensing the chip if it works.
Toner said it was all worked out by the tech transfer office, which for MGH, is run by Partners.
None of the researchers own any interest in the companies and while Mass General and Dana Farber, J&J will run the clinical trials needed to win FDA approval, he said. That is, if they get that far. And, if J&J pays royalites, they will go back to Harvard, the lab and the “inventors” — researchers whose names are on the patent.
Toner also said the arrangement complies with the hospital’s conflict of interest rules. We’ll have to take his word on it because it is almost impossible to figure out which rules apply. Partners and Harvard have overlapping rules and both seem to be in a state of flux at the moment.
All of which is to say that tech transfer seems to percolate up through the Harvard and Partners system in various forms.
Note that Leonard Lichtenfeld’s American Cancer Society blog injects some caution into the optimism about the MGH cancer chip deal. After all, this is a business story, not a science story. He notes: "It is not a new breakthrough. It is not something that has been proven effective in improving cancer detection and treatment. Not that it is anything less than stunning to develop and demonstrate that this technology works-but as with all research it is a giant step to go successfully from the laboratory phase of development to the clinical phase of making a real difference in patients’ lives.
Some patients are raising the same questions. See the comments page of the Boston Globe story.
One poster writes:
This sounds promising—a new way to monitor the presence and level of cancer cells in the blood which might otherwise be undiscovered and therefore untreated. Go for it!
Another worries:
I hope the test doesn’t have lots of false positives to drive people into unnecessary panic. Otherwise, it will be wonderful and should be as routinely used as a CBC!
For the record, Toner said the test is very sensitive but that the specificity varies from cancer to cancer and patient to patient.