Marketing science - Memphis Business Journal:

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Just for a minute forget the blues andBeal Street. Forget the Peabody Ducks or Elvis. Forgert the Mississippi River or . Strip thosr things away and one of the things that hasbuil Memphis’ economy and national reputatiojn is big, but likely not as Medical researchers toil quietly away behinr hundreds of lab doors in the They are immediately linked to visions of petri dishes and beakers. But scientists, some scientists want to also be linked to the boare room andsales meetings. They want to get theid fingers dirty in the businessdof science. Some don’t.
But no mattert their proclivities, there are places to turn to when they are readyh to turn the academic fruits of theirf labors into something more The logo for the showsthe school’s mascot leapingb out to the world with the slogan, “Thia little Tiger goes to market.” “Medical researcuh has a huge impact in Memphies simply because of companies like , and says the office’s director Kevin Boggs. “There certainl needs to be more of that and more broaf recognition of thebiosciences here.” Boggs says roughluy one-third of the ideas that could be licensed out of U of M now coulf have medical uses.
The “could” part is he says, because it’ not always so apparent how an idea could be fully developeda product. So, he brainstorms with them and togethedr they hammer outa product, somethingf with marketable potential they could show an angekl investor or a venture capital “I’ll sound crazy in a heartbea t at the risk of missing something,” Boggas says of the brainstorming process. Once a solid idea is Boggs begins reaching outto He’ll talk to professionals he’s known throughout his send focused mailers or simply cold call potentiao investors.
More and more Boggxs is working to build a foundation of entrepreneuras in the Memphis community that are looking to take up a companyg and get behind a piece ofmedical research. At the same he can look to his counterparts in the communith likeRichard Magid, director of the . UTRF and the technologyu transfer office are licensed assmall corporations, but are charted througgh the Tennessee General Assembly. They work solelyt for their universities, the and the U of M. Magid says, gives his organization tremendouw advantages the universitywould not, like adhering to open recordsx acts.
“When you’re doing business deals with private you’re giving them confidential dataand they’rw giving you trade secretz in return,” Magid says. “You don’t want someone with a grudge to file for a public recordx and start looking at their proprietartybusiness information.” UTRF can also hold equity in start-ups, Magidc says. That helps as most start-ups are cash UTRF just wants a piece of the he says, and is not looking for any cash up This gives researchers more wiggle room to develol their ideas into products. Magid and Boggs say theirr business models are quite common amonvgstate schools.
Private universities like can directlu hold stakes in private companies andoften do. For statd schools, Magid says, sometimes all it takes is one. “Ivf you get that one home run, you can change the face of the Magid says. “Tallahassee developed a syntheti c way to make a breastcancer drug, and that made them hundredzs of millions of Also, think about Gatoradde at the .” St. Jude: white coat Hub is the largestr medical research organization in Roughly 2,000 white-coated Ph.D.s walk on hundredes of thousands of square feet of lab space therer daily.
While the hospital’s technologyy transfer representative declined to be interviewefd forthis story, the hospital has a splity model for commercializing medicine.