XXII. BIOCHEMICKÝ ZJAZD - Jesseniova lekárska fakulta

Lectures
FrOM baSIC BIOMEDICal rESEarCH TO BIOTECHNOLOGY
Laco Kačáni
CEMIT – Center of Excellence in Medicine &IT GmbH, Innsbruck, Austria
Recent business success of the biotech and pharma industry is mainly based on the commercialization
of basic research discoveries done by researchers at public universities.
As a result of these new economic developments, the strict division between basic and
applied research in life sciences has weakened, thereby linking the research capacities
of universities with the commercial capabilities of industry. The protection of research
results in the life sciences by means of intellectual property rights is a prerequisite for
commercial exploitation of research results in biotechnology. However, increased awareness
among academic researchers for the commercialization of their research is even
more important for the transfer of new biotechnologies to the business sector.
The way, in which academic researchers cooperate and build partnerships with businesses,
as well as the importance of academic research for biotech and pharma industry,
changed dramatically in recent years. Consequently, new models of technology transfer
and collaboration with biotech industry emerged in the last decade, some stimulated by
state interventions and others formed directly between universities and biotech companies.
These models enable a rapid translation of new knowledge into technologies,
reduce the overall costs of R&D and facilitate the launching of new products or services
onto the market place.
In this talk, various models of technology transfer and collaboration with biotech industry
will be analyzed and exemplified from different points of view, using examples of successful
commercialization of academic biomedical research in biotechnology.
XXII. Biochemistry Congress, Martin
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