Technology Developed at Penn State Licensed to Pharmaceutical Company
A collaboration among Penn State faculty, staff, students, and alumni has resulted in a licensing agreement based on the research of an Eberly College of Science professor. Davis Ng, assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, has developed technology that has the potential to revolutionize the production of drugs to make them more affordable and available to the consumer.
Yeast Protein Sciences, Inc., of Burlingame, California, has entered into a licensing agreement with the University. Robert Leach, '65 B.S. Chem and '66 MBA Mktg, who is president, chief operating officer, and managing partner of Tenex Greenhouse Ventures, LLC, is acting CEO.
Ng's research centers on making yeast a more useful "protein factory." For years, pharmaceutical companies have relied on a much more expensive process involving Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cell cultures to produce proteins from which to manufacture drugs. Experiments with producing this class of proteins in yeast have been complicated because these proteins often would not fold properly in yeast. Ng's team believes it has solved that problem.
"The advantages of using yeast instead of CHO cells is primarily safety, cost, and capacity," Ng said. "This technology has the potential to revolutionize the production of drugs to make them more affordable and available to the consumer."
Once Ng made his research breakthrough and recognized its potential, he submitted an invention disclosure to the University's Intellectual Property Office (IPO), where it was assigned to technology licensing officer Matthew D. Smith. Smith, in turn, asked Matthew S. Hales, a Science BS/MBA Program graduate who was undertaking an internship with the IPO, to explore potential marketing and licensing opportunities and to begin writing a business plan that might be used for a company specially incorporated to develop Ng's unique technology.
While Hales drafted the business plan, the invention went for consideration before the University's Patent Review Committee. The committee, after deciding Ng's technology should be patented, authorized the IPO to have a patent application prepared. After the patent application had been filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Hales finished the business plan, which he marketed to various venture capitalists, including Leach.
"This license agreement resulted from the valuable contribution of second-year MBA student-intern Matthew S. Hales," Smith said. "He wrote an excellent business plan, which gained the interest of Robert Leach." Once Leach obtained a copy of Hales' plan, it piqued the venture capitalist's interest.
"Most plans come to us with at least part of a management team," Leach said."In this case, there was none, but the idea for the business was right." Leach initiated licensing discussions with Penn State and ultimately licensed the technology. Leach utilized Hales' business plan as the framework from which to form Yeast Protein Sciences, Inc.'s initial business plan and Leach has since raised capital from other investors. This capital will support the further development of Ng's technology.
Hales -- who now works as an associate manager of business analytics for Ortho Biotech Products, L.P., a Johnson & Johnson company -- said his ability to understand Ng's invention and then incorporate that knowledge into a market-ready business plan stemmed directly from the Science BS/MBA Program. "The combination of skills -- being able to understand the science and being able to create a business case for the science -- is essential to market such technical products to industry," Hales said.
The Science BS/MBA Program is the result of collaboration between Penn State's Eberly College of Science and the Smeal College of Business Administration. In this accelerated program, students can earn a B.S. in science and an M.B.A. in five calendar years after graduation from high school. Typically during the first four years, including the first year of the M.B.A. curriculum, students are enrolled as undergraduates in the Eberly College of Science. For the remaining year, participants are formally enrolled as graduate students in the Smeal College of Business Administration MBA program. Successful completion of this program results in a B.S. in Science being awarded by the Eberly College of Science at the end of year four and the M.B.A. from the Smeal College of Business Administration at the end of year five.
CONTACTS :
Davis Ng, 814-863-5686 / dtn1@psu.edu
Matthew D. Smith, 814-863-1122 / mds126@psu.edu
Matthew S. Hales, 908-541-4909 / mhales2@obius.jnj.com
Robert E. Leach, 650-651-3131 / bleach@10xgreenhouse.com
Barbara K. Kennedy (PIO), 814-863-4682 / science@psu.edu