M. D. Anderson Cancer Center
Date: April 2008
Duration: 0 / 17:05
Cathy Swain, the co-host of this course, you have met her before from
UT systems. She is the assistant vice-chancellor, you call it the
I would say Research in Tech Transfer but you have another title for
that, suffice to say a couple degrees in Finance, I think Illinois it
was and some thing post graduate at Stanford at the business school
over there then she over saw something like 20 billion dollars worth of
UT money as the director of the oversight for UTIMCO and now she's a
kinda you know created this TIFF fund with others and she's gonna talk
to you about TIFF funding, okay.
Thank you.
Let me in here, will you?
You want to do the slides?
She can't do slides though.
This is what we did. Okay.
Oh, thank you. And I can do the arrows?
The arrows, yeah.
Hi it's nice to be back, good to see you all still hanging in there
despite the homework and all. You know the chancellor used to
occasionally introduce me as, "This is Cathy, she looks out for my
money." So that really is my background. I haven't told you
that much about my background. Suffice it to say it goes
literally from Wall Street to Main Street, investment banking to hands
on venture capital and I have been a CEO and a COO and a CFO and I've
also served on boards and started up companies and written a bazillion
business plans. So I'm really thrilled at this exposure that
you're getting to another whole area that is completely outside your
disciplines most likely. When I first spoke to you weeks ago I
mentioned our Ignite Texas program that is an initiative that we've
started in the Research Tech Transfer office at UT system that is
multidimensional and I'm just listing three of its major areas up
here. I mentioned the ideas on fire which you're letting in right
now and this is sort of our prototype course with life scientist.
We plan to continue this series in the fall with a broader audience in
broader content and we're just looking forward to your feedback and
feedback of others and other programs throughout the UT system.
We also are working on a system wide IP marketing tech solutions
project that is multidimensional and today I want to talk to you about
the Texas ignition fund which is our pre-seed fund and in many ways is
similar to the fund that you just heard about at M. D. Anderson.
The Texas Ignition Fund I'm gonna eventually call it the TIF is a two
million dollar grant program that was approved by the regions in
December of 2007 to stimulate commercialization of discoveries at UT
systems institutions. It's intended to help bridge the gap
between discovery and marketable product. You've heard the value
of debt and all of these expressions and I think you've all got the
picture as to where we're sitting sort of between research dollars and
real money, real bunch of money and so in that sense where in a similar
position to Oli and Stan's group. The goals of the TIF were
stated, you know, by the regions to support the culture at the UT
system to promote innovation and commercialization of new ideas and
technologies coming out of our research at UT to nurture, these are
great words but they really do believe it or not mean something to us,
viable technologies to avoid their abandonment due to lack of seed
capital. A lot of research leads to good ideas, great discoveries
that never get articulated and never make it to the market place, never
find in an application in real life. They might make it to very
well-regarded journals but they don't make it into the average
household or you know they don't have the impact that they possibly
could if they could get through that period from discovery to
identifying what those applications might be. So that's an
important goal for the TIF. And then finally, to create a robust
infrastructure to support the validation of discoveries, external
mentorship and commercialization. We could talk about those for a
while but I think that's enough of that. Our first round, we've
actually completed our first round of TIF grant funding. The
awards would have been announced on April Fools' Day except that in
keeping with the spirit of April Fools' Day we had a refresh of our
computers that they and they were predictably down so the announcements
did not go out to April 2nd but they did. We had unbelievably 16
proposals and I asked you to put that in the context of what you have
just heard and remember that we're dealing with 15 universities all
over the state. But we only gave two weeks' notice of our
deadline. And frankly we were amazed and pleased that we had that
many, not only that many, but a very high quality proposals from all
over the system. We also set some pretty strict rules as to how
the proposals where to be framed which I'll go through with you.
Seven universities submitted, two from the M. D. Anderson. We
funded 14 awards for a total of 465,000, of course everyone asked for
the maximum award. The maximum is 50. We did not fund the
maximum at all the ones that we fund. In fact we funded an
average of around 33,000. Anywhere between 10 to 50,000 was the
range of our funding. So we have a million and a half dollars
left and we're going to be doing rounds of TIF funding every two months
until the money runs out. It really is one difference between our
fund and the M. D. Anderson fund is we don't really have a return on
our investment. It is a grant not a research grant but a grant
program and we're hoping, we're actually working on several fronts to
replenish this fund but at this moment we have a million and a half
dollars left. Our next deadline and I'm gonna let Allie tell you
what it is here because Oli has to bet all the proposals that you
prepared to submit to the TIF. So he has to have a deadline
before ours so he can possibly do that. In other words, we don't
work directly with the PIs. We work in this case with the M. D.
Anderson the Technology Discovery Office. What is your deadline
Oli?
It's tomorrow, after tomorrow. No, it's over.
Oh it's over. Sorry you missed the second round.
I've got plenty today.
Okay, alright well, we will be announcing those awards on June
2nd. And we also have a fairly, believe it or not, rapid funding
cycle where we can actually get the money out fairly quickly. The
two M. D. Anderson proposals just briefly and I'm gonna take a shot at
this Oli and you know I'm not a scientist. I'm very
educated. I go bid you many year but I don't do a lot of these
scientific language so you're gonna hear some of that from me.
I'm gonna briefly describe in my elevator of language. All of
these words are much too long, I don't know. One of the proposals
involved combining bioengineering with cell and gene therapies to
create the technology that is poised to "the liver cells as drugs" in
an effort to commercialize cell-based immunotherapeutics and those of
pretty big words. But that probably says a lot to you. The
second project that was funded was an aerosol lung immune stimulant
that protects against a broad range of pathogens. For example, it
could be a blockbuster in case of bio terror attack or an
epidemic. And in this case, the spin off company is on its way to
clinical trials. It's a very interesting project. So what
are our criteria for funding? I'm going backwards here. I
know I do that. It has to be a proof of concept leading to
commercialization application. It cannot be just continued
research and we really are firm about that. I believe that the
Office of Technology Discovery is also, but this has to be a notion
that you're moving into an application of the concept. We're
giving preference to new startup companies and in fact not every
technology is appropriate for a startup company. Many of our
technologies are more appropriately licensed as add on to other
technologies and you know if you know the story of Edison and the light
bulb and I'll be glad to elaborate. The light bulb was discovered
decades before Edison developed the filament that made it work for 40
hours. He actually bought 2 patents from other people. He
was a wonderful promoter but add on technologies don't necessarily lend
themselves to startup companies but we are giving preference to that
because that is the purpose of the TIF is to create startups as much as
possible. There are two signatures required on every application,
one by the Office of Technology Discovery, another by the authorized
university official and that would be sponsored programs person.
Your grants people will have to administer this and tell us when we can
right a check and ask for the money. So they are approving the
expenditures. You need a regional business connection, some
evidence that you've reached out into the community, the industry or
business in a way that evidences some support for your idea and its
commercial potential. There are a lot possibilities there.
You need a complete TIF application which has to be no more than seven
total pages. It can't be 8 point type, you know what I
mean? Seven total pages and we have a format that you can get
from Oli's office. The costs have to be eligible that you're
proposing although we don't ask for a line item detailed budget.
You have to be proposing eligible costs, your milestones have to be
measurable and they have to be timely. Not two years, trhee years, this
is a relatively be short term program. Preferably 6 months to
kind of an outside of the year. We have metrics and our metrics
are actually similar to what you've heard already today and what you've
been hearing probably a lot in this course. We look at
commercialization activities. That would be both licenses and
startup companies, income from royalties, equity, et cetera. And
this when I really am speaking on the metrics that we're gonna use to
evaluate the program overall, just the way Stan just did the years of
experienced with the fund and the OTD. We look at the protection
of intellectual property, patents, copy rights, trademarks. We
look at outside funding, grants, venture capital and angel investments,
especially, and emerging technology fund state awards.
So, that's how we'll be evaluating the program. So that gives you
a clue if you're applying that those are things that obviously are
important to us. What costs are eligible? We'll fund up to
a maximum of 50,000 in direct cost, no indirect cost. These costs
have to be directed at proof of concept or reduction to practice,
another way put it, prototype product development, business plan
development. That is the general direction we're seeking in these
proposals. Costs that are eligible include supplies, equipment,
instrument use fees, as in the prior fund. Personnel, we will
fund in some cases personnel, but as with the M. D. Anderson fund we
are not looking to extend people salaries. We're not looking to
replace other funding. We are definitely not looking to replace
any other funding. We don't have a lot of money and we have 15
universities to serve and so we're gonna be, you know, fairly selective
about which projects and which costs we're willing to fund. So,
what we found in the last round was absolutely everyone except 1
project went for the maximum. But didn't mean we're gonna fund
50, let's go for 50. Well, I mean you know that you can do that,
but it's gonna and 50 may not be enough also in some cases, we
recognize that. So you have to target your milestones and
articulate your milestones in a measurable way that links to your
estimated cost and that make sense, not only to us but to you,
especially to you. What doesn't makes sense probably isn't gonna
make sense to us either. Oh, and market analysis,
financial. I'm gonna leave out my heart throb here.
Business plan cost, develop of cost, what do we mean by that? Market
analysis, financial analysis, things that are outside your skill set
and for many of you intimidating, boring, otherwise useless
activities. These are things that are critical parts of a
business plan and these are activities that we will support with TIF
funds. What's the process? The application is
non-confidential. You submit it to the office of technology
discovery, they screen it, they submit it to us, it has to be approved
by them. I mean their signature we're assuming is approval.
And then it also has to be signed by the authorized university
official, it also needs to be accompanied by, and this is in addition
to your maximum of seven pages, evidence of your business community
contacts that have been made in support of your project. RTT and
external reviewers will then review all the proposals. We have an
ignition funded advisory board. We have to have initials for
everything. You know how that goes. It's very intimidating
to me when I first came to work for the system. I still haven't
gotten used to it, but anyway, so we have an IFAB that will approve
which consist of--two minutes. Oh, two minutes, okay. Then we
will gonna try to communicate back quickly unless we're having yet
another refresh on our computers, negotiate the contract which is a
very standard simple form among friends. We will review the
program metrics every 6 months. We will require a final reporting
of the milestones met in funds expended. This is an example of
the chart that is required on the application. We're looking for
you to provide milestones, what are your targets and when, how much do
you estimate it will cost and for what? Don't put in your use of
funds, build a prototype. That doesn't tell me how you're gonna
spend your money. That might be a milestone but it's not use of
funds. Tips, I just gave you one. These are TIF funding
will not be given for basic research. We ask that when you title
your proposal, please keep it simple less than 10 words, less than 10
syllables in each word. Think, I mean, I'm thinking of you know
developing an 8th grade language course for this, as a segment of this.
You know imagine that you're having to describe this to your
middle school child or the PTA, okay, or your golfing buddies who are
not at all related to your field. Keep it simple. Give us a
tag line, something that we can recognize your proposal by. In
the synopsis, use cocktail party language. You're at a cocktail
party, someone says what do you do, you have no idea if the person is a
train engineer. You have to explain what you do. You'd like
to have the conversation last more than a minute. You know give
us a synopsis that we can really understand. Tell us the
commercial market potential. That's a huge emphasis and don't
just say this is a multibillion dollar market growing at the rate of 7% a year. Provide us some evidence to that. How do
you know that? Give a short milestone. I mentioned that
already months not years, forget about years we're not funding for
years. And please articulate clearly, eligible uses of funds in
your milestones charts. Questions? Wow! That was easy.
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