NIH launches Web service to connect inventors with commercial partners

[GenomeWeb staff reporter]— The National Institutes of Health has started a web-based program designed to connect NIH licensees and grant awardees to potential commercialization partners, the NIH said Wednesday. The NIH Pipeline to Partnerships initiative, known as P2P, is designed to enable licensees and awardees, especially early-stage developers, to “showcase their technologies and product development for an audience of potential strategic partners, investors, and licensees,” NIH said. "In the last decade, many successful biomedical products have come from pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies that licensed early-stage technologies from NIH," said Mark Rohrbaugh, director of the NIH’s Office of Technology Transfer, which helped develop the initiative with the NIH Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs.

"Faced with less demand for early-stage technologies, this pipeline provides an avenue for potential partners to find NIH licensees along the spectrum of product development to share costs, infrastructure, and expertise as the research and development progresses to later stage clinical trials," he added. The NIH said researchers can view the pipeline of technologies, searchable by category and stage, on OTT’s website.