Research.Duke-Coulter Translational Partners Program

The Duke-Coulter Translational Partners Grant Program is a new Duke University internal grants program that funds collaborations between clinicians at Duke and Biomedical Engineering faculty on early stage projects that will ultimately impact patents and likely have significant commercial potential.

Four grants will be awarded each year with a total direct cost of $800,000.

Deadlines:

• January 8 - Proposals due
• January 8 - February 25 - Review of proposals and selection for oral presentations
• February 26-28 - Oral presentations and selection of project recipients
• March - Announce winners and launch projects
• April 1 - Launch projects
• June 30, September 30, December 31, 2008; March 2009 - Progress Reports Due (Download the Coulter Progress Report Template)

Collaborations are an essential component of the partnership. If you are interested please contact Barry Myers, George Truskey, or Melda Uzbil.

What is the Duke/Coulter Translational Research Partnership?

Duke BME is one of nine BME programs to receive a Partnership award in 2005 from the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation to support collaborative translational research projects that involve co-investigators from the Department of Biomedical Engineering and a clinical department in the School of Medicine. This Award will provides $500,000 for the first year and $1,000,000 each year for the following four years (2007-2011). The goal of this program is to support collaborative research that addresses unmet clinical needs and leads to improvements in health care and to commercial products.

Examples of desirable outcomes include inventions, patents, improved diagnosis and treatment of disease, follow-on funding (e.g. grants, SBIR, angel investment) commercial products, licenses, commercial partnerships and start-up companies. Through this Award, the Foundation is forming a working partnership with the Biomedical Engineering Department to promote, develop, and support translational research through such activities as funding promising research projects, increasing and supporting effective collaborations between biomedical engineers and clinicians in the School of Medicine, increasing awareness of the importance of moving promising technologies to clinical application, and developing and supporting sustainable programs and processes that will increase, enhance, and accelerate this movement. The goal of this partnership is to focus on outcomes which would improve patient care.

Each translational research proposal must have co-investigators, at least one whose primary appointment is in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Duke University and at least one clinical investigator from the Duke University School of Medicine. The research must relate directly to applications in health care, and the objectives of the project should include an outcome that will benefit patients.

What is Translational Research?

Translational research is driven primarily by considerations of use and practical applications of the research results, as opposed to basic research, which is driven primarily by a quest for knowledge. Translational research must develop a practical solution that addresses a particular clinical problem or unmet clinical need. Because translational research involves clinical application as a goal, it requires a transition (a translation) of the research from the laboratory to the clinic (“bench to bedside”). Translational research involves commercialization activities, and therefore requires a transition (a translation) of the technology (technology transfer) from the academic institution to a commercial entity for final product development, manufacturing and sales. Translational research results generally include protectable intellectual property.

What about Intellectual Property?

The policy of the Coulter Foundation is that the entire right, title and interest to any invention or discovery and which is conceived or first actually reduced to practice in the course of performance under a grant from the Foundation, shall be assigned to and retained by the institution receiving the grant, unless the institution is proscribed from doing so by Federal laws or regulations. If the institution decides not to patent or otherwise develop the invention or discovery, the inventor(s) shall be free to patent or otherwise develop the invention subject to any rights that the institution may retain under its patent policy.

Oversight Committee

A seven member Coulter project management team, led by Coulter Project Director, Anderson-Rupp Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Senior Associate Dean for Industrial Partnerships & Research Commercialization Barry Myers and Associate Director, Melda Uzbil, will assist selected projects with issues related to business planning, licensing and patents. George Truskey, Professor and Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, is the program manager for the grant.

The team includes Kevin Schulman, Director Professor of Medicine, Duke University School of Medicine, Professor of Business Administration at The Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, and Rose Ritts, Executive Director, Office of Licenses and Ventures, Duke University.

The Oversight Committee will review grant applications and make awards. Other members of the Oversight Committee include: Robert Anderson, M.D., M.B.A., Chair Emeritus of Surgery, Duke University School of Medicine; Eugene Oddone, M.D., M.H.S., Division Chief, General Internal Medicine, Vice Dean for Research, Duke University School of Medicine; Mara Neal, Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer, Wallace H. Coulter Foundation; Darrel Untereker, Ph.D., Vice President of Research and Technology, Medtronic; Vipin K. Garg, Ph.D., President & CEO, Tranzyme Pharma.