ROCKY MOUNTAIN REGION

      Tech transfer heads at the University of Utah,
Utah State University and Brigham Young University all came to their
respective jobs from industry. They have a collaborative relationship
and meet quarterly for lunch.

      Dr. Jayne Carney, head of technology transfer
at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, says the university
produces between three and eight startups a year. Many become part
of the area’s biotech and medical device clusters. Carney came to
Utah about two years ago after working for Arch Chemicals.

      “We have an extremely entrepreneurial faculty
and they are interested in being very involved in commercializing
their inventions,” Carney says. “It’s also interesting how so many
of our entrepreneurs become serial entrepreneurs. We’re very fortunate
our angel investors fund a company and move on to another to fund
it.”

      Dr. Ted Stanley has been director of research
at the university for more than 20 years. In 1985, he started Anesta,
a company based on technology he invented for delivery of medicine
for cancer pain. That delivery system, Actiq, is now a $400-million
annual product for Cephalon, which acquired Anesta in 2000. Stanley
is now involved in another startup, Zars,
which is developing technology to deliver pain medicine through
the skin.

      Stanley is also mentoring young faculty in
the process of technology transfer. Carney describes him as a good
example of someone doing well while doing good.

      “The university has historically been pro this
concept and very supporting of doing these kinds of things,” Stanley
says. “It’s part of the can-do mentality here. Although there are
not that many venture capitalists here, there are lots of people
with lots of entrepreneurial ideas. I’m trying to stimulate young
people in the medical departments who have creative ideas to do
the same. I try to help them through the difficulties of never having
done that before because I can see some of the pitfalls.”

      The latest launch is Sentrx
Surgicals, a medical device company that will specialize
in adhesion-free healing of surgical wounds. Founder Richard Kuehn
is one of those serial entrepreneurs Carney talks about. Kuehn was
CEO of Salus Therapeutics, which he
sold to Genta last fall. Salus also was based on technology licensed
from the university.

      Kuehn, who says his new company will seek to
commercialize a chemistry that can be applied to many post-surgical
applications, is putting together a venture syndicate to raise $3
million in initial funding.

      “That will get us started and located and through
some critical milestones,” Kuehn says, adding that the company will
probably find space at Research Park. Kuehn expects to recruit chemists
from the Wasatch Front, but will likely cast a wider net for his
management staff.

      Kuehn says that Utah hasn’t quite reached the
level of entrepreneurship seen in other areas.

      “It’s not like being in Palo Alto where every
third person you bump into has been through two or three companies,”
he says. “It’s tougher here to find people who have that kind of
vetting.”

      Steve Kubisin, vice president, technology commercialization
for Utah State University’s Research Foundation, came to the university
about two years ago following a long career in industry with companies
such as Union Carbide, Alcoa and GE. His mission: to invigorate
the university’s economic development and commercialization efforts.

      About 50 companies had come out of the university
over the last 25 years, but most are small cottage industry companies
and aren’t closely affiliated with the university. After two years,
he says efforts are “gaining traction” and he expects the number
of startups this year to be up 300 to 400 percent. All are based
on the university’s proprietary technology.

      “We are trying to better leverage the technology
we have here, make sure it’s protected via patents and use our stronger
position to form larger companies that have further reach,” Kubisen
says.

      Technology in the works includes development
of seeds with increased crop yields; a project that detoxifies animal
waste to generate methane and create electricit; robotics and the
twisteron, a development that modifies air flow over airplane wings
to produce a reduction in induced drag without a reduction in lift.
Kubisen also says a California group is interested in licensing
USU technology for an application in consumer electronics. He says
the technology helps overcome performance limitations.

      Brigham Young University, with 30,000 students,
is the largest private university in the U.S. And despite the fact
that its primary mission from the Mormon church is to educate rather
than be a research frontrunner, the school is getting a lot of bang
for the research buck. A 2002 study by the Chronicle of Higher Education
found that BYU ranks number one in startups produced per dollar
of funding.

      “The amount of research we do is relatively
small, but what we do tends to be fairly productive,” says Dr. Lynn
Astle, director of BYU’s technology transfer office. “We spin out
three to four companies a year.”

      While BYU was once known for its software design
— Novell and WordPerfect came out of the university in the late
1980s — today the major focus is on engineering in a diverse group
of sectors. There have been plenty of success stories in recent
years, most notably Sonic Innovations,
a developer of digital signal processing technology that allows
hearing aids to be tuned to the hearing loss of an individual. The
company is the fastest growing maker of hearing aids in history
and was ranked number 117 of the 2003 Deloitte Technology Fast 500.

      The latest company is Procerus,
a developer of an auto pilot system with potential applications
for the military, firefighting, the border patrol, searches for
lost people and traffic reports. The technology allows a computer
to control the flight of an airplane with a 20-inch (51-cm.) wingspan,
much smaller than any drones in current use.