3 ms·

>> In early 2022 Krajmalnik-Brown and colleagues patented a specific bacterial formulation and spun-off a commercial company called Gut-Brain Axis Therapeutics.

by _puk 5mo ago

>> In early 2022 Krajmalnik-Brown and colleagues patented a specific bacterial formulation and spun-off a commercial company called Gut-Brain Axis Therapeutics. I was a little surprised to see this. So the university researchers use time and money from the university to make a discovery, extending on previous published research, and then patent it and start their own for-profit? Excuse my ignorance, but is that how it's done generally? Where's the upside for all those who are potentially affected? It kinda makes sense - Presumably the university is involved somewhere still, and it needs to be commercialised somehow, but..

ktallett 5mo ago
Yes this is really common. Not all universities own the research you do. I have a similar setup within my university. They get to use the research technique I've worked on, but I have the rights to take it out of the university and sell it.
hariseldom 5mo ago
Universities often keep up to 50% of rights over IP in such cases but I am unsure about this specific case.
- mkl 5mo ago
  100% is common. Stanford was paid hundreds of millions by Google over the years for the use of the patented PageRank algorithm, invented by Google's founders while Stanford students, and therefore owned by Stanford. Most universities have IP policies giving them ownership of most of the IP their academics create, and student IP may or may not be included. Some exceptions are Duke and Waterloo.
bflesch 5mo ago
Yes, it's really common. Most universities actually support this and there is a specific contractual framework for staff which basically says "If you create a company during or after your work at university which touches the field you were researching in, we get 1% (or 10% or 20%) of your annual revenue as license fees". The alternatives are lengthy court battles between universities and their best (e.g. most commercial) researchers. This creates bad PR for the university and uncertainty for the researcher & their startups because potential investors don't like open court cases. So people came around to make this kind of license fee contract and researchers check it before deciding to join a certain university. Not a fan of gene / bacteria patents though.
an0malous 5mo ago
> So the university researchers use time and money from the university Don’t worry, the money is usually coming from taxpayers so the universities don’t have to dip into their endowments
- dahart 5mo ago
  Funny thing is, that may be a bigger concern here, that the research is often publicly funded while the uses of that research and the profits that come with them are kept private. It’s complicated and I buy the notion that research improves the economy as a whole, but it is also true that when research gets patented and becomes a billion dollar product, those dollars don’t reduce any taxes directly.
  - SoftTalker 5mo ago
    The public funds the research so that it gets done in the first place. It's not a venture investment.
    - dahart 5mo ago
      What do you mean? Research funding absolutely is an investment. Research that is productized is a venture, and the universities involved absolutely do invest in the venture, and sometimes see a handsome ROI. In terms of why the public funds research, your statement might be true, but isn’t addressing the concern that many in the public have raised before: the results of the research should be public, given that the research was publicly funded. We have laws about open access to government functions, so why is research different?
      - SoftTalker 5mo ago
        > In terms of why the public funds research, your statement might be true Yes this is what I meant. We fund research because we think pure research is valuable. It needs to be done without requiring a financial return. Products sometimes come out of it and that's also a public benefit, but direct results of the research are not a "product" they are the starting point to a possible product. There is still a lot of development that has to occur to get to the product stage.
kcyb 5mo ago
It's quite common historically. The Entrepreneurial State by Mariana Mazzucato looks at this phenomenon of companies privatizing the benefits of publicly funded research and, she argues, not giving enough in return
- neves 5mo ago
  The economist Mariana Mazzucato has some eye opening books about innovation and the role of governments. They are eye opening and dispel a lot of myths
helsinkiandrew 5mo ago
Often universities do this, they may own the patent and license it to the company or take a cut etc. Arizona State University appear to do this through Skysong Innovations: https://skysonginnovations.com/startups/list/ https://skysonginnovations.com/startups/list/ It's interesting they got a lot of funding from over 100 families with autism children: https://skysonginnovations.com/startups/list/ https://skysonginnovations.com/startups/list/
jcattle 5mo ago
This is how it works. Universities are doing research, they aren't doing products. If a commercially viable product comes out of their research it is far outside the scope of universities. Also keep in mind that most sciences usually don't produce commercially viable research (think social sciences, archeology, geography etc.) And as others said: how the universities gets a cut from the spin offs differs from university to university.
- notahacker 5mo ago
  Yep. The alternative is usually that the product doesn't get manuactured. And the public funds loads of research which starts within private companies and stays there anyway...
- culopatin 5mo ago
  “Universities” aren’t doing anything. Without the people that drive this they would just be admin people looking at each other and professors teaching to empty desks. Let’s not forget that often if a research was ran by X little group of people, once they move on, the people that come in have their own interests and it’s unlikely they’ll continue the project. How many unpublished papers sit because the student doing the research got a job, a life, doesn’t have time to continue and the PI can’t have some other student relearn the whole thing to finish it? I understand the researchers lean on the infrastructure of the university, but I’m sure they paid their dues both in money payments to the university, depraved sleep and sweat. People need to eat, so I see nothing wrong with them putting their effort to work if that means the research continues and gets to the people, the university likely gets a cut as others mentioned.
markgall 5mo ago
As others have said, very common. A famous example is Lyrica, which made an enormous amount of money for Northwestern, probably around $1 billion dollars. It played a not-insignificant role in the university's rise in the last 10-20 years. Universities love this and encourage it. Any big place will have an office of "technology transfer" or similar to help researchers make this happen.
- an0malous 5mo ago
  The best part for NU is they didn’t even have to pay for the research, it was publicly funded: > Pregabalin was discovered largely on the basis of publicly funded research at Northwestern University https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34493615/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34493615/
graemep 5mo ago
> So the university researchers use time and money from the university to make a discovery, extending on previous published research, and then patent it and start their own for-profit? it happens all the time, and in many countries. Its quite common in the UK.
ornornor 5mo ago
I think the university gets a cut. Kinda like how Gatorade is making I can’t remember which university incredible amounts of money for the last several decades.
- SoftTalker 5mo ago
  Florida. The name comes from the name of their athletic teams: The Gators.
- AshleyGrant 5mo ago
  The University of Florida, thus the name "Gatorade." or "Gator-aid," if you will.
singpolyma3 5mo ago
Yes this is very common and a big part of why scientific progress often seems so hamstrung
- djtango 5mo ago
  Why hamstrung?

by _puk 5mo ago

ktallett 5mo ago

Yes this is really common. Not all universities own the research you do. I have a similar setup within my university. They get to use the research technique I've worked on, but I have the rights to take it out of the university and sell it.

hariseldom 5mo ago

Universities often keep up to 50% of rights over IP in such cases but I am unsure about this specific case.

mkl 5mo ago
100% is common. Stanford was paid hundreds of millions by Google over the years for the use of the patented PageRank algorithm, invented by Google's founders while Stanford students, and therefore owned by Stanford. Most universities have IP policies giving them ownership of most of the IP their academics create, and student IP may or may not be included. Some exceptions are Duke and Waterloo.

bflesch 5mo ago

Yes, it's really common. Most universities actually support this and there is a specific contractual framework for staff which basically says "If you create a company during or after your work at university which touches the field you were researching in, we get 1% (or 10% or 20%) of your annual revenue as license fees". The alternatives are lengthy court battles between universities and their best (e.g. most commercial) researchers. This creates bad PR for the university and uncertainty for the researcher & their startups because potential investors don't like open court cases. So people came around to make this kind of license fee contract and researchers check it before deciding to join a certain university. Not a fan of gene / bacteria patents though.

an0malous 5mo ago

> So the university researchers use time and money from the university Don’t worry, the money is usually coming from taxpayers so the universities don’t have to dip into their endowments

dahart 5mo ago
Funny thing is, that may be a bigger concern here, that the research is often publicly funded while the uses of that research and the profits that come with them are kept private. It’s complicated and I buy the notion that research improves the economy as a whole, but it is also true that when research gets patented and becomes a billion dollar product, those dollars don’t reduce any taxes directly.
- SoftTalker 5mo ago
  The public funds the research so that it gets done in the first place. It's not a venture investment.
  - dahart 5mo ago
    What do you mean? Research funding absolutely is an investment. Research that is productized is a venture, and the universities involved absolutely do invest in the venture, and sometimes see a handsome ROI. In terms of why the public funds research, your statement might be true, but isn’t addressing the concern that many in the public have raised before: the results of the research should be public, given that the research was publicly funded. We have laws about open access to government functions, so why is research different?
    - SoftTalker 5mo ago
      > In terms of why the public funds research, your statement might be true Yes this is what I meant. We fund research because we think pure research is valuable. It needs to be done without requiring a financial return. Products sometimes come out of it and that's also a public benefit, but direct results of the research are not a "product" they are the starting point to a possible product. There is still a lot of development that has to occur to get to the product stage.

kcyb 5mo ago

It's quite common historically. The Entrepreneurial State by Mariana Mazzucato looks at this phenomenon of companies privatizing the benefits of publicly funded research and, she argues, not giving enough in return

neves 5mo ago
The economist Mariana Mazzucato has some eye opening books about innovation and the role of governments. They are eye opening and dispel a lot of myths

helsinkiandrew 5mo ago

Often universities do this, they may own the patent and license it to the company or take a cut etc. Arizona State University appear to do this through Skysong Innovations: https://skysonginnovations.com/startups/list/ https://skysonginnovations.com/startups/list/ It's interesting they got a lot of funding from over 100 families with autism children: https://skysonginnovations.com/startups/list/ https://skysonginnovations.com/startups/list/

jcattle 5mo ago

This is how it works. Universities are doing research, they aren't doing products. If a commercially viable product comes out of their research it is far outside the scope of universities. Also keep in mind that most sciences usually don't produce commercially viable research (think social sciences, archeology, geography etc.) And as others said: how the universities gets a cut from the spin offs differs from university to university.

notahacker 5mo ago
Yep. The alternative is usually that the product doesn't get manuactured. And the public funds loads of research which starts within private companies and stays there anyway...
culopatin 5mo ago
“Universities” aren’t doing anything. Without the people that drive this they would just be admin people looking at each other and professors teaching to empty desks. Let’s not forget that often if a research was ran by X little group of people, once they move on, the people that come in have their own interests and it’s unlikely they’ll continue the project. How many unpublished papers sit because the student doing the research got a job, a life, doesn’t have time to continue and the PI can’t have some other student relearn the whole thing to finish it? I understand the researchers lean on the infrastructure of the university, but I’m sure they paid their dues both in money payments to the university, depraved sleep and sweat. People need to eat, so I see nothing wrong with them putting their effort to work if that means the research continues and gets to the people, the university likely gets a cut as others mentioned.

markgall 5mo ago

As others have said, very common. A famous example is Lyrica, which made an enormous amount of money for Northwestern, probably around $1 billion dollars. It played a not-insignificant role in the university's rise in the last 10-20 years. Universities love this and encourage it. Any big place will have an office of "technology transfer" or similar to help researchers make this happen.

an0malous 5mo ago
The best part for NU is they didn’t even have to pay for the research, it was publicly funded: > Pregabalin was discovered largely on the basis of publicly funded research at Northwestern University https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34493615/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34493615/

graemep 5mo ago

> So the university researchers use time and money from the university to make a discovery, extending on previous published research, and then patent it and start their own for-profit? it happens all the time, and in many countries. Its quite common in the UK.

ornornor 5mo ago

I think the university gets a cut. Kinda like how Gatorade is making I can’t remember which university incredible amounts of money for the last several decades.

SoftTalker 5mo ago
Florida. The name comes from the name of their athletic teams: The Gators.
AshleyGrant 5mo ago
The University of Florida, thus the name "Gatorade." or "Gator-aid," if you will.

singpolyma3 5mo ago

Yes this is very common and a big part of why scientific progress often seems so hamstrung

djtango 5mo ago
Why hamstrung?