$400,000 grant creates new fund for translational research at Rockefeller

by TALLEY HENNING BROWN

With a $400,000 grant from the Achelis and Bodman Foundations, Rockefeller University’s Bridges to Better Medicine Forum has launched a new fund devoted to advancing translational research that is on the cusp of commercial viability. The Technology Innovation Fund will finance four short-term projects a year, each with $30,000 to $70,000. The Office of Scientific and Facility Operations, which is administering the fund, began accepting project proposals yesterday and expects to award its first projects by March 3.

The Technology Innovation Fund is aimed at research that is no longer in its early stages but has not yet been developed into a market-ready product — research that is particularly difficult to fund through traditional sources.

“The National Institutes of Health and other such organizations offer very few individual funding opportunities for this kind of research, because they don’t consider it basic research. Similarly, industry resources like pharmaceutical and medical technology companies don’t want to fund something until there’s a product they can market,” says Associate Vice President for Technology Transfer Kathleen Denis. “With this kind of dedicated funding, we’re poised to give these important projects the push they need to continue.” Grants may pay for further experimental data, for example, or to reduce an invention to practice, enable a successful patent application or make a technology more commercially interesting to investors.

Project proposals will be judged along several criteria, including novelty, proof of concept, feasibility and market potential.

Proposals will be reviewed and chosen by a committee of life sciences, industry and investing professionals: Peter Goodfellow, former discovery executive at GlaxoSmithKline and a Rockefeller University visiting scholar in 2007; Teena Lerner, Rockefeller alumna and founding head of hedge fund management firm Rx Capital; Paul Maddon, member of The Rockefeller University Council, former Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher and founding executive of Progenics Pharmaceuticals; and Lewis Sanders, Rockefeller University trustee and CEO and chairman of investment research firm AllianceBernstein.

Established in 2003, the Bridges to Better Medicine Forum encourages knowledge exchange among scientists and investors, analysts and industry executives, for the purpose of advancing “bench-to-bedside” research. With the seed grant, the Bridges initiative is now contributing to the research enterprise at Rockefeller.