Overall fiscal year 2014 has been a good one for OTT. As to be expected with some highs and lows. OTT processed 225 disclosures, had an all time low of 7 days in processing material transfer agreements, and had received almost $10 million in licensing revenue.
Licensing
Making deals is the heart and soul of a technology transfer office. OTT completed 40 licensing deals this year that will help seed Emory’s future with new product and revenue opportunities. Three of these deals were with new start-up companies, a cause for celebration when you consider the success our existing startups have had in the past year. A further six of those agreements were what we consider to be high net worth licenses, or those that will lead to a clinical or commercial product with a lifetime revenue to Emory of over $1M.
Start-ups
Two of our start-ups, Apica Cardiovascular and Velocity Medical Solutions, were acquired by publicly traded companies, Thoratec and Varian Medical Systems, respectively. These acquisitions are an indicator that significant value is being created around Emory technologies. We look forward to working with these companies in the future to help assure that new products advance to the marketplace. Our start-ups also saw success in the venture capital arena as Clearside Biomedical raised $16 million in Series B funding and NeuroTrack raised $2 million in Series A funding.
Emory startup, QUE, a joint project between Emory and our partner, Uniquest of the University of Queensland, completed a Phase 1B study for its promising new hot-flash therapeutic. OTT also worked closely with Emory’s wholly owned subsidiary, DRIVE, to help them complete their first sublicense agreement with a major pharmaceutical company. This deal validates the critical role that DRIVE can play in developing Emory’s therapeutic technologies.
Product Pipeline
We also received some bittersweet news from several late stage licensees this year. Unfortunately, Besins Healthcare reported a failure to demonstrate any benefits of treatment in its large Phase III trial for the use of progesterone in traumatic brain injury (TBI). As a result, patients will continue to have a limited number of therapeutic options to combat TBI. Our start-up, GeoVax Labs continues to show promise in the difficult field of HIV vaccines. One of their vaccine candidates continued to receive positive results in its Phase 2a trial. Another vaccine candidate received preliminarily positive results in its Phase I trial. Additionally, on the funding side there was a stock funding transaction with investors, an NIH grant, and a development agreement with a European biotechnology company.
Patents
The Emory Patent Group (EPG) continues to be a key asset for OTT. We regularly receive accolades from our faculty inventors for the efforts of the EPG and we matched an all-time high of 35 issued patents in FY14. These patents are a measure of success of our internal patent efforts to protect Emory’s intellectual property. We continue to provide this high level of service at a substantially reduced cost compared to using outside legal counsel.
As we continue our march towards $1 billion in total licensing revenue, we wish to thank our faculty inventors who continue to work passionately with us to develop their technologies as well as our corporate partners who drive these technologies to market in order to help make the world a better place!