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| Issue
No. 7 | UCLA's Research Collaboration Newsletter
| Spring, 2004 |
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Additional Articles
Company Spotlight: Nanogen, Inc.
Our
Company
Spotlight series features a behind-the-scenes perspective
into university-industry relationship building at UCLA.
by
Jeyling Chou
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Contact
Dr. Elaine Weidenhammer
Associate Director,
Business Development
Nanogen, Inc.
eweidenhammer@nanogen.com
tel. (858) 410-4778
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Industry members are becoming acquainted with the faces behind the science on the UCLA campus.
Elaine Weidenhammer, associate director of business development for San Diego-based Nanogen, Inc., made the two-hour drive to meet with three professors in the David Geffen School of Medicine last month.
Face-to-face meetings expand the foundations for potential collaboration between industry and the university beyond a non-confidential research disclosure.
Surprisingly, they also save time.
“It's more efficient, and gives you a chance to build a relationship if you go talk to the people one on one,” Weidenhammer said. “In half a day, I was able to get a nice overview of several different opportunities.”
Weidenhammer met with Jian-Yu Rao, an associate professor
in the department of pathology and laboratory medicine,
obstetrics and gynecology associate professor Robin Farias-Eisner
and Daniel Geschwind in the neurology department.
As a supplier of reagents
for the development of molecular diagnostic tests, Nanogen
holds a specific interest in licensing genetic markers that
are correlated with disease or response to drug treatments.
UCLA's Office of Intellectual
Property Administration drew the initial connections between
the academic research interests of the three faculty members
and the company's strategy, but the purpose of the meeting
goes beyond the discussion of current technologies.
“You're not just
looking at what the researcher might have available on the
day that you're visiting,” Weidenhammer said.
“You're hopefully
building up a relationship that will enable the researcher
and the university to think of the company you represent
the next time something comes along,” she added.
The ability to put
a face to the name or technology can strengthen the relationship
of the company and the institution, and increases the chances
of future collaborations and licensing opportunities.
As the benefits of
collaborating with universities become increasingly evident
in the realm of industry, many companies like Nanogen are
taking the initiative to reach out to their academic counterparts.
“We at Nanogen
have started being more proactive with respect to contacting
tech transfer offices and letting them know what we're looking
for— rather than just assuming that they're going to
find us,” Weidenhammer said.
Direct contact with
an industry representative also benefits the faculty in
establishing a link that may bring their technology to the
marketplace. Interaction with a company like Nanogen could
potentially enable the commercial—or bench to bedside—applications
of the medical research done in UCLA labs.
“A lot of the
research that these principle investigators are doing, they
would like it to ultimately benefit mankind, cure diseases,
help the patients,” Weidenhammer said.
“That commercialization
is not going to happen in the university, so there has to
be that transfer at some point of the basic science discoveries
to a commercialization entity like ours.”
Weidenhammer hopes
to make another UCLA visit within the next six months.
 
Related Links
Nanogen, Inc. www.nanogen.com
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