The fourth annual Technology Showcase is making a big pivot this year, moving to an entirely virtual event on September 9, 2020. Although the move was made out of necessity, it also offers exciting new opportunities to reach more partners and licensees beyond Frederick, Md.
Frederick has become a key player in biomedical research. That was the clear message from the third annual Technology Showcase, hosted by the National Cancer Institute and the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research. As usual, the event highlighted the numerous technologies developed by NCI and FNL scientists that are available to external groups for licensing and partnership. But this year, it also showcased the strength of the region.
Next month, the annual Technology Showcase will return to the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research. The event attracts research innovators and business professionals who wish to learn about advanced technologies being developed at the National Cancer Institute and Frederick National Laboratory.
Before a crowded auditorium of science and business professionals at the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research’s Advanced Technology Research Facility, Joost Oppenheim, M.D., had just finished his presentation about a compound with the potential to expand the impact of a promising category of cancer therapeutics when he fielded a question from Stephan Stern, Ph.D.
Science and business professionals from across the region will have an opportunity to learn about—and perhaps even commercialize—cutting-edge technologies being used to address some of the most urgent and intractable problems in the biomedical sciences at an upcoming event held at the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research.
The NCI Technology Transfer Center (TTC) facilitates partnerships between NIH research laboratories and external partners. With a team of technology transfer specialists, NCI TTC guides interactions from discovery to patenting, as well as from collaboration and invention development to licensing.
Genetically modified soya beans provide a scalable, low-cost method of producing microbicides that prevent AIDS, a technique sustainable for resource-poor countries where AIDS is spreading rapidly.
According to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, more than 36 million people worldwide are living with HIV. While the number of AIDS-related deaths are decreasing, infection rates are still increasing, specifically in Eastern and Southern Africa.
The Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) presented an Excellence in Technology Transfer award to the group that collaborated to bring Unituxin (dinutuximab, also known as ch14.18), an immunotherapy for neuroblastoma, to licensure.
The Invention Development Fund (IDF) was piloted by the Technology Transfer Center (TTC) in 2014 to facilitate the commercial development of NCI technologies. The IDF received a second round of funding from the NCI Office of the Director and the Office of Budget and Management to establish the Invention Development Program (IDP) for fiscal year 2016. The IDP is using these funds to help advance a second set of inventions.
Background
The NCI Technology Transfer Center (TTC) is undergoing a reorganization that will bring patenting and licensing responsibilities to the Shady Grove and Frederick offices by October 2015.
The reorganization is a result of an effort begun in 2014 by NIH to improve the organizational structure of technology transfer at NIH to meet the rapid rate of change within science, technology, and industry, and to better align the science and laboratory goals with the licensing and patenting process.
