2021 Technology Showcase Returns with a New Focus on the Patient’s Voice

By Victoria Brun, contributing writer, Partnership Development Office
Image of the Technology Showcase graphic: a blue "T" in a green background, adjacent to text announcing the title of the event

Block off the afternoon of September 1, 2021, in your calendar because the Technology Showcase is returning for its fifth year. The event will be fully virtual and, as always, feature exciting biomedical technologies, panels on important topics for industry stakeholders, and various poster pitches. New this year is an increased focus on the patient’s voice.

“The voice of the patient and patient community—including foundations and philanthropies—is critical when developing medical solutions,” said Michael Salgaller, Ph.D., supervisor of the Invention Development and Marketing Unit, National Cancer Institute (NCI) Technology Transfer Center. “Patient-centered health care is care that hears and respects individual needs, wishes, and input. Such stakeholder involvement results in treatments, diagnostics, and devices more likely to be adopted and advocated.”

Event Highlights

There will be two keynotes. The first speaker is Mark Stewart, Ph.D., who is a vice president at the Friends of Cancer Research, an advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C., that drives collaboration across the health care sector, with the goal of accelerating drug development for cancer patients. The second keynote speaker is James Cherry, Ph.D., chief of the Research Technologies Branch at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He helps oversee the NCI Serological Sciences Network, a nationwide effort to study the immune response to SARS-CoV-2.

There are some new panel topics this year, including one on how foundations and philanthropies serve as strategic partners. Jamie Troil Goldfarb, cancer survivor and patient advocate with the Melanoma Research Alliance, will moderate the panel. In 2012, Goldfarb participated in an NCI clinical trial to treat her stage IV melanoma, and she is now disease free.

The other three panels cover how to tap into the many resources available at the Frederick National Laboratory (FNL), obtain government and for-profit funding for start-ups, and collaborate with NCI and FNL.

“The ‘How to Work with the NCI and the FNL’ panel opens up a dialogue about partnering with NCI and the FNL,” explained Maggie Scully, Ph.D., of the FNL Partnership Development Office, who will sit on the panel. “The aim is to bring a face to the partnering opportunity and overcome a perception that partnering is challenging. It will also showcase a successful example of an NCI collaboration.”

Other panelists include experts from the research community, investors, foundations, and government. See the agenda for the full list of panelists and presenters.

Staying true to its origin, the event continues to highlight novel technologies that can advance cancer research and therapies. NCI has over 250 available technologies, and NCI and FNL inventors will present a handful of these in 10-minute sessions. Technology Transfer Ambassadors will present virtual posters on additional technologies. All the technologies presented at the event are available for licensing or collaborative development.

Attend the Event

The event runs from noon to 5:30 p.m. and is co-sponsored by NCI, FNL, the Frederick County Office of Economic Development, the City of Frederick Department of Economic Development, Maryland Technology Development Corporation, and the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer.

The Technology Showcase previously won the 2021 Federal Laboratory Consortium Award in the State and Local Economic Development Category for the effective partnerships that enable this annual event. The team also won a 2020 NCI Director’s Award.

Register now for the free virtual event.

 

Victoria Brun is a partnership project manager in the Frederick National Laboratory Partnership Development Office, where she provides project management support across the office’s broad portfolio of collaborative projects. The Partnership Development Office establishes the partnerships and collaborations among Frederick National Laboratory scientists and external researchers in government, academia, industry, and the nonprofit research sector.