TTC offers three types of Technology Transfer Fellowship Opportunities: Negotiator, Innovation and Business Development & Marketing. We are currently seeking candidates for our Negotiator and Innovation Fellowships. Our Fellowships offer a unique opportunity to apply a science, legal or business background toward a career in technology transfer and other biotech related professions. Applications for all of our fellowships are accepted on a rolling basis.
A recording from our free technology opportunity webinar on April 26th is now available. To request a link to the recording, or if you are interested in learning more about the technology, please reach out to Joseph.Conrad@nih.gov.
About the Webinar
Hosted by NCI TTC, attendees learned about a new method for administering Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS). This new method improves both the instrumentation used to deliver TMS treatment and the treatment’s magnetic pulse pattern, which when applied to an awake rat treatment model, was shown to provide significant improvement over conventional TMS treatment methods. The webinar highlighted a new instrumentation that overcomes voltage and current limitations seen in devices currently being used for treatment, and novel magnetic pulse patterns that improve TMS’ therapeutic effect. It was presented by Hanbing Lu, Ph.D., staff scientist, Neuroimaging Research Branch, National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health.
Who shoud attend?
Why attend?
Congratulations to Whitney Hastings, Ph.D., a senior technology transfer manager at TTC, who was elected to serve as chair for the Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) beginning in October 2023. The FLC announcement noted that she is "the second consecutive woman elected FLC Chair." Hastings previously served as the FLC Promote Committee Chair which recognizes and communicates noteworthy federal technology transfer accomplishments through the activities of three FLC subcommittees – Communications, Website, and Awards. The FLC is the formally chartered, nationwide network of over 300 federal laboratories, agencies, and research centers, that fosters commercialization, best practice strategies, and opportunities, for accelerating federal technologies out of the labs and into the marketplace. As a federally funded laboratory, the National Cancer Institute is among the member laboratories that comprise the FLC.
Thank you for attending the free NIH webinar on March 22 at 11:00 am ET. Attendees learned about a new method for treating glaucoma using exosomes derived from bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (BMSC). If you are interested in receiving a recording of the webinar, please reach out to Joseph.Conrad@nih.gov.
The webinar will be presented by Stanislav Tomarev. Ph.D., senior investigator, Retinal Ganglion Cell Biology, NIH National Eye Institute) and Ben Mead, Ph.D., neuroscientist, Cardiff University Exosome and Retinal Research Group. They will discuss their discovery that BMSC‐derived exosome administration for glaucoma may confer a significant neuroprotective effect for retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) and prevent vision loss, and how their isolated BMSC-derived exosomes have several immediate advantages for clinical translation compared to potential whole-cell (stem cell) therapies currently being used to treat glaucoma.
Glaucoma is one of the world’s leading causes of irreversible blindness. There is no cure and vision lost from glaucoma cannot be restored. Glaucoma is often associated with fluid build-up in the eye resulting in an increased intraocular pressure (IOP). The pressure may cause damage to the optic nerve and lead to progressive degeneration of retinal ganglion cells (RGC) and vision loss. Currently, available treatments for glaucoma delay progression by reducing IOP, but no therapies exist to directly protect RGCs from degradation and loss. This new method of using BMSC-derived exosomes provides a way to directly target and protect RGCs from degrading because of IOP related damage to the optic nerve. This method for protecting RGCs could also be used in combination with other methods for reducing IOP. The NEI is seeking licensing and/or co-development partners for this technology.
If you missed our December 14th Technology Opportunity Webinar, you can request the recording. Attendees heard from Deputy Chief of the NCI CCR Laboratory of Cellular Oncology, John Schiller, Ph.D. about a new immunotherapy method targeting solid tumors. This invention involves the injection of cytomegalovirus- (CMV) derived T cell minimal peptide epitopes into a solid tumor, disrupting the tumor microenvironment and allowing CD4+ and CD8+ T cells to kill the tumor cells and the generation of T cells to tumor-restricted antigens. The tumor antigen-agnostic nature of this approach makes it applicable across a broad range of solid tumors, regardless of origin. The results of his work show that CMV-derived peptide epitopes, delivered intratumorally into mice with chronic mouse CMV infections, act as cytotoxic and immunotherapeutic agents to promote immediate tumor control and long-term antitumor immunity. This technology can be used as a stand-alone therapy. Please reach out to Joseph.Conrad@nih.gov to request the recording, or if you have interest in learning about co-development and/or licensing opportunities for this techology.
If you missed our November 15 technology webinar that highlighted a new gene therapy method for treating CRX-autosomal dominant Leber Congenital Amaurosis (LCA), but are interested in learning about this technology, please contact us. We can provide a link to the webinar recording upon request.
Attendees heard from Drs. Anand Swaroop, Ph.D. and Kamil Kruczek, Ph.D. of the National Eye Institute about a NEW gene therapy treatment for a dominant form of LCA that counteracts dominant mutations in the CRX gene. LCA is a rare genetic disease that is responsible for about 20% of all childhood blindness. It’s caused by mutations in any of at least 25 genes that control photoreceptor development or function. LCA has both recessive and dominant forms. Currently, there is an FDA approved gene therapy for treating only one of the recessive forms of LCA caused by mutations in the RPE65 gene. In addition to most recessive forms, the dominant form of LCA with underlying mutations in CRX remains untreatable.
LCA is a rare genetic disease that is responsible for about 20% of all childhood blindness. It’s caused by mutations in any of at least 25 genes that control photoreceptor development or function. LCA has both recessive and dominant forms. Currently, there is an FDA approved gene therapy for treating only one of the recessive forms of LCA caused by mutations in the RPE65 gene. In addition to most recessive forms, the dominant form of LCA with underlying mutations in CRX remains untreatable. This new technology shows promise as a viable treatment for a currently untreatable rare disease condition.
UPDATE: The recording for the 2022 Technology Showcase is now available. Those who want to learn more about the programs, collaborative opportunities, technologies and resources featured at the event can reach out to ncitechtransfer@mail.nih.gov.
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The 2022 Technology Showcase took place onSeptember 7. The sixth annual event highlighted opportunities to license technologies and partner with the NCI and Frederick National Laboratory (FNL).If you were unable to attend, you can now view the recording.
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Who should attend?
Great opportunity for companies, investors, entrepreneurs, technology scouts looking for technologies to commercialize and all biotech stakeholders.
Thank you for attending "Use of TP5 for the Treatment of Cancer," a TTC-hosted technology opportunity webinar held on October 12. If you were unable to attend, but would like to receive a recording of the webinar, please reach out to us at ncitechtransfer@mail.nih.gov.
Attendees will hear from the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI’s) Drs. Herui Wang and Zhengping Zhuang about a new small peptide inhibitor, designated as “TP5”, that blocks the activity of the abnormal CDK5-p25 complex, which is associated with the development of various cancers, including glioblastoma (GBM) and colorectal carcinoma (CRC). More specifically, increased cyclin-dependent kinase 5 (CDK5) activity has recently emerged as a contributor to cancer progression. Researchers from the NCI and National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) have shown that TP5 which is modified the facilitate passage through the blood brain barrier (BBB), has potential therapeutic benefits in the treatment of GMB and CRC.
Learn more about this tech here.
Thank you for joining us for a TTC-hosted webinar on May 25th. If you have questions, or missed the webinar and are interested in learning more, please reach out to Dr. Joseph Conrad, NCI TTC.
Attendees heard from NCI’s Dr. Peng Jiang about a new Cytokine Signaling Analyzer called “CytoSig.” This novel software-based platform provides both a database of target genes modulated by cytokines and a predictive model of cytokine signaling cascades from transcriptomic profiles. CytoSig covers 20,591 curated human cytokine, chemokine, and growth factor response experiments, and can reliably predict the activity of 43 cytokines in both tissues and single cells based on the transcriptional effect of cytokine target genes. CytoSig therefore provides a significantly more comprehensive analysis of cytokine signaling than the currently used Interferome and GSEA databases.
Cytokines are a broad category of intercellular signaling proteins that are critical for intercellular communication in human health and disease. Current methods for systematic profiling of cytokine signaling activities are challenging due to: (i) cytokines’ short half-lives; (ii) pleiotropic functions; and (iii) cytokine activity redundancy within specific cellular contexts. Additionally, existing cytokine signaling target databases only cover a small fraction of cytokines, leaving most cytokine-induced target changes unexplored.
CytoSig solves these challenges with its significantly larger database content coverage and uses transcriptome data to model cytokine signaling activity and regulatory cascades in human inflammatory processes. CytoSig couples large-scale automatic data processing with natural language processing functions to assist expert metadata annotations with RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) and MicroArray big-data analysis. CytoSig is therefore, an excellent tool for leveraging big-data resources in public domains to predict clinical outcomes of anticancer therapies that inhibit cytokine signaling. The NCI is seeking parties interested in licensing and/or co-development of this technology.
The NCI is seeking parties interested in licensing and/or co-development of this technology.
Peng Jiang, Ph.D.
Stadtman Investigator
NCI Center for Cancer Research, Cancer Data Science Laboratory
Register for the webinar
Contact us NCITechTransfer@mail.nih.gov
On January 26th, TTC hosted a webinar entitled "Detection of SARS-CoV-2 and other RNA Virus Using a Novel Improved RT-qPCR Method that Increases Detection Sensitivity and Improves Safety" to highlight a novel Covid-19 diagnostic technology from the National Eye Institute. NEI is seeking partners for collaboration and licensing to accelerate technology development and clinical impact.
If you are interested in learning more, including requesting a copy of the presentation, please reach out to Dr. Joseph Conrad, NCI TTC.
Date and Time |
About the Presenter |
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| January 26, 2022 11:00 am - Noon (EST) |
Robert B. Hufnagel, M.D., Ph.D. Chief, Medical Genetics and Ophthalmic Genomics Unit Chief, Ophthalmic Genomics Laboratory |
DNA or RNA-based diagnostic tests for infectious diseases are critical in modern medicine. In particular, the current gold standard for COVID-19 detection is testing SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA by quantitative reverse transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-qPCR). The current clinical detection of SARS-CoV-2 involves collection of a patient’s sample with a nasopharyngeal swab or saliva, storage of the sample during transport, extraction of RNA, and detection assay (RT-qPCR). National Eye Institute (NEI) researchers developed a simple preparation method using a chelating resin, which eliminates the RNA extraction step and shortens the overall testing time. Viral detection is similar to the current method with RNA extraction using patient samples. Furthermore, the initial sample heating step inactivates SARS-CoV-2 infectivity, thus improving workflow safety and eliminating the need for a BSL-2 facility. This fast RNA preparation and detection method can be used for a variety of sample types, is safe for clinical staff, and is suitable for standard clinical collection and high-volume testing for both DNA and RNA.
Why attend?
Who Should Attend?
Please contact Dr. Joseph Conrad, NCI TTC