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TWST: What is UTEK's value proposition?
Dr. Gross: Currently, the tech transfer market is very inefficient. UTEK strives
to make the market more efficient through its unique U2B model by making it
easier for small public companies to acquire the technologies they need to grow.
We enable small cap companies to rapidly acquire university and federal lab
discoveries with the precise specifications that they need which are relevant to
their product line. UTEK then acquires the licenses to the technology using its
own capital and transfers the technology to our clients for cash or stock. Many
small cap companies prefer to use their stock because they're often short on
cash. The other point that's of interest is that we have assembled, through our
relationship with hundreds of universities worldwide, a proprietary database
combined with a search engine, which contains more than 32,000 new technologies
available for license. TWST: Does technology transfer work?
Dr. Gross: We think it does. Top US, UK, and Canadian universities and medical
centers receive more than $44 billion annually in grants, mostly from government
agencies, to conduct research and this results in the development and disclosure
of more than 17,000 inventions annually. There are a very large number of
technologies being developed as a result of the amount of sponsored research
being conducted by hundreds of universities. University technology has
historically led to some of the most relevant and compelling discoveries over
the past 20 years, including Google from Stanford; Netscape, which was Mosaic
from the University of Illinois; Akamai from MIT; and Lycos from Carnegie
Mellon. In the life science area, Genentech and Amgen licensed recombinant DNA
from Stanford, among many others; Taxol, which is a leading cancer therapeutic,
was licensed from Florida State University; the PSA diagnostic test, the test
for a prostate-specific antigen, was licensed from the Roswell Park Cancer
Institute; and the discovery of the cystic fibrosis gene for diagnosis of cystic
fibrosis from the Hospital for Sick Children and the University of Michigan.
These are just some of the many tech transfers from universities that have
really improved the quality of life and created significant value in the
marketplace for those companies that have commercialized them.
Tickers included in this excerpt: UTK
For more information call (212) 952 7433. The
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not make stock recommendations.
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