Commercialization of Intellectual Property
The Coleman Institute works with faculty and the University's Office of Technology Transfer (TTO) to encourage commercialization of research and development-generated intellectual property for the benefit of people with cognitive disabilities and in some cases, for the advancement of biomedical and biotechnical applications with wider society benefit as well. The Institute also participates in partial ownership of the intellectual property based on invested grant funds to faculty who also have other grant funding. Two of the Institute's funded projects have been leveraged with investments through the State of Colorado and the University of Colorado TTO's Bioscience Discovery Evaluation Grant Program and a third received a Proof of Concept grant from TTO directly. [See below for details.]
Mentor InterActive recently won CU's Annual Technology Transfer Company of the Year Award in Physical Sciences/Engineering/IT Company of the Year at their January, 2010 recognition event. It was one of two companies honored that night that were founded on university research. The company publishes and markets interactive software based on the proven Foundations to Literacy reading program developed at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Through a former faculty member, Ronald Cole, PhD, the Coleman Institute provided significant grant support ($195k, 2001-2005) which led to the intellectual property on which this company was based. Quoted from the Mentor Interactive website: "The first products in the My Virtual Tutor™: Reading line debuted in September 2009 at leading retailers throughout the US and Canada. Mentor InterActive recently signed a licensing agreement with Nintendo of America Inc. to develop My Virtual Tutor™: Reading for Nintendo DS™ and Wii™ video game systems."
Karen Newell, PhD [University of Colorado at Colorado Springs] has received multiple grants totaling $118k from '04-'09, primarily for lab support. As a result, the Coleman Institute has intellectual property agreements including rights to a patent licensed to Viral Genetics related to immune disease therapeutics. The Coleman Institute received its first distribution this year.
Additional intellectual property agreements have been established between the following investigators/labs and the Coleman Institute:
Karen Stevens, PhD, Dan Abrams, MD and Tom Anchordoquy, PhD, [University of Colorado School of Medicine and School of Pharmacy] received a small seed grant from the Institute for new treatments for ineffectively treated mentally ill and epileptic patients through centrally administered medication. A license agreement with Sierra Neuro through TTO is being transferred to ICVRX. Clinical trials are imminent.
Professor Alberto Costa, MD, PhD, [University of Colorado School of Medicine] with co-investigators Professors Curt Freed, MD and Wenbo Zhou, PhD were funded to use newly available technologies to create induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC's) from fibroblasts from person with Down syndrome (Ds)and mouse models of (Ds). The human and mouse derived iPSC lines from this research have the potential to become new and valuable laboratory reagents. These cells represent unique commercialization opportunities in the near future. In a separate agreement with Dr. Freed, the Institute has supported intellectual property development in the discovery of drugs that increase the activity of neuroprotective genes in the brain to prevent decline in cognitive function.
Professor Regan Zane, PhD and Professor Zoya Popovic, PhD, University of Colorado at Boulder, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering were partially supported for research that resulted in patents in the areas of RF energy harvesting and power management with the field of use covering assistive technologies or related biomedical applications. The licensing status is in transition.
Research Associate Professor Alex Repenning, PhD, University of Colorado at Boulder, Department of Computer Science and Professor Lorraine Ramig, PhD, University of Colorado at Boulder, Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences independently developed intellectual property in different fields and went on to license the property to companies they founded.