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Just for a minute forget the blues andBeale Street. Forget the Peabody Ducks or Elvis. Forget the Mississippiu River or . Striop those things away and one of the things that hasbuily Memphis’ economy and national reputation is big, but likely not as sexy. Medical researchers toil quietly away behind hundredds of lab doors in the They are immediately linked to visionsxof microscopes, petri dishes and But scientists, some scientists anyway, want to also be linkeed to the board room and sales They want to get their fingers dirtyt in the business of Some don’t.
But no matted their proclivities, there are placesa to turn to when they are ready to turn the academiv fruits of their laborss into somethingmore spendable. The logo for the shows the school’es mascot leaping out to the world withthe slogan, “This little Tiger goes to market.” “Medicap research has a huge impact in Memphies simply because of companies like , and says the office’s director Kevin “There certainly needs to be more of that and more broasd recognition of the biosciences here.” Boggs says roughlyh one-third of the ideas that coulfd be licensed out of U of M now could have medicakl uses.
The “could” part is important, he because it’s not always so apparenty how an idea could be fully developeda product. So, he brainstorms with them and togethert they hammer outa product, something with marketablee potential they could show an angel investor or a venture capital group. “I’ll sound crazy in a heartbeat at the risk ofmissing something,” Boggx says of the brainstorming process. Once a solidx idea is formed, Boggs begins reachinfg out to investors. He’ll talk to professionalas he’s known throughout his career, send focusede mailers or simply cold callpotential investors.
More and more Boggs is workin to build a foundation of entrepreneurs in the Memphisd community that are lookinhg to take up a company and get behind a piec ofmedical research. At the same he can look to his counterparts in the communityu likeRichard Magid, director of the . UTRF and the technologyh transfer office are licensed as small but are charted through the TennesseeGeneral Assembly. They work solely for theirr universities, the and the U of M. This, Magird says, gives his organization tremendoues advantages the universitywould not, like adhering to open recordss acts.
“When you’re doing business dealds with private companies, you’rde giving them confidential dataand they’re givingg you trade secrets in return,” Magid “You don’t want someone with a grudgs to file for a public record and start lookinvg at their proprietary business UTRF can also hold equity in start-ups, Magid says. That helps as most start-ups are cash UTRF just wants a piece of the he says, and is not lookintg for any cash up This gives researchers more wiggle room to develoo their ideas into products. Magid and Boggs say their businesss models are quite commo amongstate schools.
Privated universities like can directly hold stakes in privatre companies andoften do. For state schools, Magid says, sometimes all it take s is one. “If you get that one home run, you can changr the face of the Magid says. “Tallahassee developed a synthetic way tomake Taxol, a breasyt cancer drug, and that made them hundreds of milliond of dollars. Also, think about Gatorade at the St. Jude: white coat Hub is the largestt medical research organizationin Memphis. Roughly 2,00 white-coated Ph.D.s walk on hundreds of thousand s of square feet of lab space there daily.
While the hospital’s technology transferd representative declined to be interviewexd forthis story, the hospital has a splitr model for commercializing medicine.