Boston University (BU) has a Coulter program. This was one of the first cohort of ten grantees and the director of TTO was part of the management committee. A major success of this program was Dr. Ed Damiano’s artificial pancreas (see Section 3.1.1 on Technological Entrepreneurship of Track III, Topic 1: Start-ups).
BU has had a PoC fund since 1978 and had had some notable successes—at least two medical laser companies were founded based on technologies that had received funding from the program. However, their participation in the Coulter Program informed several changes to their own program:
Key learnings from the Coulter Program were:
- The requirement for co-PIs. One PI would be a basic scientist or engineer who would develop the product concept; and the second would be a clinician who would: ensure that an appropriate clinical target was selected, the solution was compatible with medical practice, and who could start the clinical testing.
- Translational research is more management intensive than basic research. Half the funding was for managing the program and overseeing the projects. At BU, the program director was a senior medical device industry veteran.
- Money management is as important as the funding itself. Academics can do an awful lot with very little money when only small amounts are available. Thus, the program would only fund one year at a time and would only fund two-to-three years in total. These programs are to prepare the technology for more commercial sources of funding. The management committee should have a majority of non-university people from the local entrepreneurial ecosystem to take academic politics out of funding choices.
- The project selection criteria are critical. There must be pre-existing IP. There was pre-existing IP on about two-thirds of the BU projects; the others submitted an invention disclosure to be eligible. If any discovery research needs to be done, it’s too early; researchers should come back once they’ve made all the discoveries. The source of the next-stage funding—where and how much and how realistic those projections are—is critical.
- Quarterly project reviews and progress via GANTT charts are essential. Not all academics like such close scrutiny—they should be told to find funding somewhere else. If they fall behind, give them at least one additional quarter to catch up. Be prepared to terminate if they continue to fall further behind and cannot demonstrate how they’ll get back on track.