Vol.25, No. 01	Sept. 3, 1999

Columbia Is first Among U.S. Research University in Technology Licensing Income: $95.8 Million

Columbia University led all American research universities in technology licensing income in fiscal 1999, the first time the University has topped the field.

The University reported income of $95.8 million, enough to place it ahead of the University of California system and Stanford University.

Adding private research sponsorship to the total, Columbia had $113.5 million in technology-related income as of June 30, the close of fiscal 1999.

Columbia's technology licensing increase, a 32 percent gain over 1998 figures, continues a series of dramatic earnings rises averaging nearly 30 percent annually since 1990. In 1998, Columbia overtook Stanford to head the list of private American universities in licensing income.

Much of the responsibility for the University's stellar performance lies with Columbia Innovation Enterprise (CIE), the University's technology transfer office, which manages income from more than 250 active U.S. patents and signs as many as 100 technology licenses annually. Most of Columbia's licensing income is earned from pharmaceuticals, though new media, Internet and digital video applications are expected to contribute more in the coming years.

Begun with a single administrator in 1982, and known at the time as the Office of Science and Technology Development, CIE was one of the first university technology transfer offices organized after passage in 1980 of the groundbreaking Bayh-Dole Act, the law that allows universities to claim royalties from innovations developed by their faculty. Those royalties are divided among the researcher, his or her department and school and the university. Columbia plows its share of the money back into research, often providing funding to young researchers who have yet to compile a track record that would attract outside research grants.

The CEI office now employs more than 20 staffers involved in technology examination, patenting and marketing. It is part of the Office of the Provost, and Jack Granowitz, CIE's executive director, reports to Executive Vice Provost Michael Crow.

"Our success is very simply a result of building on what we've done in the past, with the help of a very competent staff," Granowitz said. "Usually there is a lag of from five to eight years between licensing an innovation and realizing income, so the results we see today represent work done nearly a decade ago."

Several technologies that Columbia patented and licensed in the 1980s and early 1990s are now producing income. A glaucoma drug, latanoprost, sold under the trade name Xalatan, was developed by Columbia researcher Laszlo Bito and has been licensed to Pharmacia & Upjohn Inc. It helps relieve pressure in the eye more effectively than other drugs on the market.

A method of making chimeric antibodies—proteins that might include elements from two different species, such as a mouse and a human—was developed by Sherie Morrison, a Health Sciences researcher who has since left Columbia. That process is being used by Centocor Co. to make abciximab, trade name ReoPro, an antibody that prevents blood clotting in high-risk angioplasties, and infliximab, trade name Remicade, an antibody treatment for Crohn's disease, an autoimmune disorder of the stomach. Because the Morrison technology can be used to make several other drugs, CIE officials expect Centocor both to sublicense the process and develop more pharmaceuticals based on it—both of which would increase Columbia's licensing revenue.

Finally, another series of patents developed years ago by Columbia researcher Leonard Chess has been licensed to Biogen Corp., which is producing 5c8, an antibody treatment for rheumatoid arthritis. It eventually may have applications to other autoimmune diseases.

Columbia's technology office looks for unusual opportunites to develop innovative licensing agreements, often involving start-up companies in which Columbia takes an equity position. In 1997, CIE administrators finalized an unprecedented agreement among more than a dozen corporate holders of some 40 patents pertaining to a digital compression standard called MPEG-2. That standard is behind a host of new video technologies, including DVD, personal computer video and high-definition television. A major part of the technology and the only one developed at a university, the compression algorithm, was developed by Dimitris Anastassiou, professor of electrical engineering at Columbia.

In the last three years, CIE has helped create more start-up companies than previously, especially in the booming fields of biotechnology and the Internet. Columbia Innovation Enterprise will work with an inventor to find investors and a management team, and to develop a business plan, and under those circumstances will take an equity interest in the start-up, said Joseph Flicek, who heads new enterprise development for CIE.

Among the 23 companies that CIE has incubated, about half were started in the last three years, said Flicek, who added that he expects the number of Columbia-backed companies to reach 35 in a year or so, since faculty members and administrators had gained experience in creating new companies. Among the more promising technologies licensed to Columbia start-ups are memory-enhancing pharmaceuticals (Memory Pharmaceuticals Corp.), methods of recycling waste glass into useful products (Echo Environmental, Inc.) and Internet-based telephone services and appliances (SIP.COM).