A new study by Nature Biotechnology urges caution with respect to anticipating the payoff of California’s $3 billion dollar investment in stem cell research, reports the San Jose Mercury News.

The San Jose Mercury News reported that the study warned that "assessing the benefits of stem cell research is likely to be a complex undertaking."  Moreover, any treatments that come out of the research could prove to be only "marginally useful or too costly for many patients to afford."

On the other hand, the up-side of the research could be tremendous.  The San Jose Mercury News reported:

[E]ven if the institute makes just one treatment – say, for juvenile onset diabetes mellitus, which strikes about 13,000 children every year in the United States – the economic implications could be enormous, the study concluded.

Assuming the treatment halves that ailment’s impact by about 2030, the study estimated, health care expenditures among diabetes sufferers might be reduced by $319 million in today’s dollars, and the patients’ productivity boosted by $4.5 billion.

An even bigger benefit might result from the patients’ improved quality of life, the study said. Assuming that each year of a patient’s improved life would be worth $50,000 – a figure sometimes used to assess the value of new drugs – the authors calculated an additional benefit of $10 billion.

Did California make a good investment when it allocated so much money to stem cell research?  Certainly, it was a boost to the biotech industry, but was it a good use of limited state resources?  Only time will tell.  I think I speak for most Californians when I say that I am hoping for the big payoff.

The event The Neurotechnology Industry Investing and Partnering Conference will be held on May 17-18, 2007 at the Westin, San Francisco Airport in Millbrae, CA.  This event is the premier partnering and investing conference for the neurotechnology industry including pharmaceuticals, medical devices and diagnostics. The event will provide a first-hand glimpse of What’s in the Pipeline

The event RX Drug Pricing Boot Camp on Thursday, May 17, 2007-Friday, May 18, 2007 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in San Francisco, CA.  The event has been designed to give notices and  experienced practitioners alike a complete understanding of core pricing competencies and applicable changes in the reimbursement structures of key payor programs under recently enacted legislation.  The event will highlight the following:

• The Deficit Reduction Act and its impact on pricing methodologies relative to Medicaid and other payor programs.
• The role of the National Rebate Agreement in various payor programs.
• AWP: what is it, when is it still used, and what is its relationship to WAC?
• 340B entities: how are they defined and how is 340B pricing set?
• The essentials of Medicare Part B pricing, including the interrelation of ASP, CAP, and WAMP
• The ins and outs of government contracting relative to GSA FSS, VA/DOD, and Tricare
• Pricing concepts and reimbursement challenges relative to Medicare Part D, including: fraud and abuse risk areas — PAPs, off-label use, and Part D marketing guidelines; LTC pharmacies and PBMs; the position of CMS on legal issues affecting the drug benefit; formulary negotiations; and policy concerns.

The event How to Prepare a Budget? Identifying Key Assumptions, Statistical Inputs. . . .   will be held on Thursday, May 17, 2007 from 11:30 to 2:00 at the San Jose BioCenter, 5941 Optical Court, San Jose, CA  95138.

BIOCOM’s Monthly Breakfast Meeting: Private Equity Investing and Alternative Financing Models will be held on Wednesday, May 16th from 7:00 to 9 a.m: at Marriott La Jolla, 4240 La Jolla Village Dr., San Diego, CA  92037.  The speakers for this event will be as follows:

• Andrew L Busser, Principal, Symphony Capital LLC
• Kathy Conte, Managing Director, Hercules Technology Growth Capital
• Leigh P. Ryan, Partner, Chair of Corporate Department, Paul Hastings, Janofsky & Walker
• Matt Wotiz, Associate, Paul Capital Healthcare.

The early registration deadline for this event is May 14, 2007.

The event  Beta Amyloid as a Therapeutic Target for Alzheimer’s Disease: Where Are We After Twenty Years? will be held on Wednesday, May 16, 2007 from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Clarion Hotel, San Francisco Airport, 401 E. Millbrae Ave., Millbrae, CA  94030.  Ivan Lieberburg, PhD,  MD, Chief Medical Officer, Elan Clinical Professor of Medicine, UCSF will speak at this event about where we are in the fight against Alzheimer’s Disease.

http://www.efipweb.org/

The Practicing Law Institute event Handling Intellectual Property in Business Transactions will be held in San Francisco on April 30-May 1, 2007.  The event will cover the following issues:

• Strategies in creation of intellectual property assets;
• Obtaining ownership of intellectual property assets;
• Strategies for licensing of intellectual property assets;
• Trademark licensing and branding issues;
• Understanding and analyzing intellectual property assets;
• Maximizing the value of intellectual property assets;
• The impact of Sarbanes-Oxley and FAS 141/142 on IP issues;
• Critical open source issues; and 
• Protecting IP assets in the event of bankruptcy.

The ABA Science and Technology Section’s Biotechnology Law Roundtable Teleconference on Regulatory & Policy Implications of Personalized Medicine & Pharmacogenomics will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. PST on April 30, 2007.  The speakers for this event are Janet Woodcock, Deputy Commissioner & Chief Medical Officer, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Rockville, Maryland, and Ellen Flannery, Partner, Covington & Burling LLP, Washington, D.C.  The event will explore the regulatory and policy issues that will arise as researchers, industry, and government regulators move towards implementing a pharmacogenomic approach to medical care.

 A Kansas City Business Journal report, citing a report released by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Research Foundation, concludes that  a "’home run mentality’ in university technology transfer offices may be keeping many valuable research projects from reaching first base in the commercialization process."

The Kansas City Business Journal stated:

According to the report, universities tend to focus their limited technology-transfer resources only on the patenting and licensing of technologies that promise big, fast paybacks.

The report — written by Kauffman researchers Robert Litan, Lesa Mitchell and E.J. Reedy — argues that universities should shift from a sole focus on that patent/licensing model, which seeks to maximize income, to a volume model. A volume model emphasizes the number of innovations that university research generates and the speed at which those innovations are commercialized.

The Report outlined four volume models as follows:

• Free agency model: Faculty members have the power to choose a third party (or themselves) to negotiate license agreements for entrepreneurial activities, provided they return some portion of their profits to the university.
• Regional alliances model: Multiple universities form a consortium that develops mechanisms for commercialization. Economies of scale allow for lower costs of the commercialization function overall, and the universities are able to share costs among multiple participants. This model may prove particularly attractive for smaller research universities, which may not have the volume to support a seasoned and highly able licensing and commercialization staff independently. 
•  Internet-based model: Closely related to the regional alliance model, Internet-based approaches use the Web to facilitate commercialization. The iBridge Network, a program funded by the Kauffman Foundation that works with a consortium of universities, is an example of such a model.
• Faculty loyalty model: This calls for universities to consider giving up their intellectual property rights, anticipating instead that loyal faculty will donate a portion of their commercialization proceeds back to the university.  

The argument raised is an interesting one–there is a good argument that the focus of universities should be on commercializing good research for the societal good rather than making as much money as possible with "home runs".  From a commercial perspective, "home runs" make good business sense, but universities take pride in their higher purpose and there is certainly a good argument that tech transfer policies should reflect this higher purpose.