Is it a good idea for Harvard to start doing product development?
Tinker Ready
Isaac Kohlberg’s office is located in stately Gordon Hall, at the end of the Harvard Medical School quad. But despite having a perch at a power center for academic research, Harvard’s first chief technology development officer wasn’t hired to think like an academic.
Kohlberg arrived in May as part of outgoing president Lawrence Summers’s push to make the university more entrepreneurial and industry friendly. And while Summers’s last day as president is next week, Kohlberg says he’s just beginning to implement his plan to improve the marketability of Harvard research.
Universities have long engaged in technology transfer: patenting discoveries and licensing them to companies with the capacity to develop, test, manufacture, and market new products.
But Harvard aims to take technology transfer a step further. Rather than letting outside companies do early-stage product development with its research, Harvard wants to do product development itself. The plan is to raise $15 million from wealthy individuals to pay for preclinical development of a handful of promising products such as drug candidates, diagnostic tests, and medical devices, Kohlberg says.
By taking research into the area of technology development, work by Harvard scientists may become more valuable to companies, he says. For example, the new money would fund projects like Harvard biochemist Robert Rando’s work testing a drug candidate for macular degeneration. Last month, the pharmaceutical company Merck signed a $3 million licensing deal for the molecule. Kohlberg says he intends his new fund to encourage more work like Rando’s.
Since Kohlberg’s arrival, the name of Harvard’s technology transfer office has been changed to emphasize technology development and the office is now directly within Provost Steven Hyman’s purview, reflecting how serious Harvard is about doing what has historically been the job of industry. “It is clear that on the leadership agenda of Harvard University, you will see technology development,” says Kohlberg, who led similar programs at the University of Tel Aviv and New York University before coming to Harvard.
This stepped-up strategy is not entirely new in the world of academic licensing, but it is at Harvard. Though not a minor player, the university is hardly a leader in commercializing research. In 2004, Harvard brought in $16.7 million from its licensing deals—less than Emory University, the University of Minnesota, or the University of Colorado, according to the latest figures from the Association of University Technology Managers.
“We’re behind the curve,” says Hyman. “We’re trying to catch up.”
While Kohlberg says that Summers’s departure will not affect his plan, there’s still some uncertainty concerning what the new president will think about pushing an institution strong in basic research into such a foreign realm. Harvard’s incoming interim president, Derek Bok, has been much less enthusiastic about research commercialization. In his 2003 book, Universities in the Marketplace, he urges vigilance against conflicts of interest and placing limits on academic freedom, both of which can result from deals with industry. Bok, who takes over on July 1, has not formally reviewed the effort, but Hyman says he sought Bok’s input when developing it.
Harvard is responding to a broader trend. Large pharmaceutical and medical device companies aren’t interested in results from basic research anymore, says Carl Gulbrandsen, director of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, which licenses technology—including a major stem cell line—for the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “They’re good at marketing,” he says. “They don’t want the [drug] candidate right away. They want to take it after a smaller company has taken the risk in doing the preclinical studies.”
At the same time, universities are feeling the pressure to take on these development risks. Approaches vary. Some schools fund early stage development by acting as a sort of venture capital firm; others seek private donors to fund proof-of-concept studies.
The changes at Harvard have happened quietly. Kohlberg has made no official announcement and the office’s outdated Web page awaits a planned makeover. Potential donors have seen a glossy fundraising brochure—with a quote from Summers. But Kohlberg says he won’t publicize the fund until later this summer, when he hopes to reach 35 to 40 percent of his fundraising goal.
MIT has one of the oldest and most active technology transfer programs in the country, but even its director of tech transfer, Lita Nelson, is wary of development funds.
“I have just not yet seen an incubator or step-up fund model for universities that shows enough success to warrant the difficulties of conflict of interest, the direction of resources away from basic research, and other issues that arise from the many attempts that have been made to date,” she says.
But over at a bioengineering lab a few blocks from Harvard Yard, there’s more excitement for this new direction. David Mooney and his team are working on biomaterials that mimic the body’s mechanical signals that regulate tissue development. He presented his work at a workshop last month where Kohlberg discussed his plans.
As Mooney’s lab moves closer toward developing products such as new drug delivery systems, the gap between academic research and technology development could prove an obstacle, Mooney says. “I think the approach Mr. Kohlberg is proposing could be extremely valuable in bridging this gap, and I personally am enthusiastic about this experiment.”
Tinker Ready is a freelance writer in Cambridge, MA.