This Week’s Biotech Highlights

This week in biotech was all about the early stage, and there is no earlier stage in biotech than university tech transfer offices and their progeny.

Universities’ technology transfer offices (TTOs) lie at the interface between university researchers and industry, often with the mandate to monetize the University’s innovations and technological assets. A new study looked at series of in-depth interviews with 20 senior technology transfer personnel at six Canadian universities and two research hospitals and discovered a disconnect between the social and financial goals of tech transfer. One example of a recent success in this area comes from MaRS Innovation, which announced two transactions this week: an outsourcing and a spin-out. Although financial terms were not disclosed, the licensee notes MaRS Innovation’s transactional savvy.

Just in time for what appears to be spin-out season, I gave a talk as part of Ogilvy’s How to Draft a Patent seminar at MaRS this week in which I outlined ten business law tips for startups. There are lots of collections of tips for startups that have excellent business advice on building your team, hitting product milestones, pitching to VCs, etc.; but not that many that give a corporate lawyer’s perspective. Hopefully this list will be a good reference for tech entrepreneurs.

For the latest on tech transfer and tech startups, stay tuned to The Cross-Border Biotech Blog and @crossborderbio on Twitter.