ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, March 20, 1996 TAG: 9603200003
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-10 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE
SOURCE: Associated Press
Academic research is often tedious, esoteric and confounding. But, as University of Virginia officials have discovered, it can be lucrative.
The university is among the top institutions in the country in royalties it receives from faculty discoveries - thanks largely to a team of heart doctors.
UVa earned $4.6 million from royalties on licensed inventions in 1994, according to a survey released recently by the Association of University Technology Managers. It placed 12th in the country, moving up from 14th the previous year.
``Every technology office has to have one slugger and we've got one,'' said Ralph Pinto, executive director of the university's Patent Foundation, its nonprofit licensing arm.
Stanford, the top institution in the survey, earned $37.7 million in royalties in 1994, while the University of California system made $50 million. UVa finished just above the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which earned $4.5 million.
More than 91 percent of the university's royalties currently come from the heart drug Adenocard, patented in 1983 by UVa physiologists Dr. Robert Berne and Dr. Raphael Rubio and cardiologist Dr. Luiz Balardinelli.
The drug, used to restore regular heart rhythms, has annual sales of about $40 million and is the drug of choice for arrhythmia, Pinto said.
Royalties are split between the foundation and the university, each of which receives 42.5 percent, and the inventors, who receive 15 percent. Officials use the money to fund future research.
Changes in federal law in the early 1980s gave universities more power to patent and sell licenses for faculty discoveries, even those made under the auspices of federally funded research, said Teri Willey, president-elect of the Association of University Technology Managers.
``Ten years ago you had very small offices that did this,'' she said, adding: ``The university has an obligation to the public ... to see that the results of the research benefit the public in a meaningful way. One way to ensure that occurs is to get the research into the public pipeline.''
At the university, Pinto and two other full-time employees handle about 45 to 50 faculty discoveries per year, the vast majority of them medical. Many of those eventually receive patents, but only one out of 100 may lead to a lucrative license that brings in thousands of dollars per year, Pinto said.
UVa chemist Donald F. Hunt and several colleagues are among those recently who have cashed royalty checks. They patented a type of mass spectrometer - a device that precisely weighs microscopic molecules - that earned $68,750 in royalties in 1995.
But their work also illustrates another hot trend in academia: turning research into fledgling industry.
Using Hunt's patented spectrometer - more than 100 times more powerful than its predecessors - UVa surgeon Dr. Craig L. Slingluff Jr. and microbiologist Victor H. Englehard identified peptides on cancer cells that trigger the human immune system and could lead to a cancer vaccine.
Cytel, a San Diego company, bought the rights to develop the vaccine, and a Cytel East laboratory is expected to open in Charlottesville next month, employing at least six people, Hunt said.
``It shows you can take discoveries, patent them, license them out and here is a business coming to Charlottesville as a result of that effort,'' Hunt said.
Pinto says university research has spawned eight start-up companies in Charlottesville, seven of which are still located in the area.
``We'd like to start more companies and create more jobs,'' Pinto said.
The foundation, which started in 1977, also is trying to expand its profile at UVa and get professors thinking more about the marketability of their research.
For the past several years it has organized yearly banquets at which Pinto hands out gold-sealed patents to researchers and honors an inventor of the year. Last year, the honor went to Hunt and his colleagues.
Said Gene D. Block, the university's vice provost for research: ``It only takes one to win the lottery and everybody thinks it might be them.''
LENGTH: Medium: 78 linesby CNB