Investigators looking for assistance with industry partnerships have access to a wealth of useful information from both School of Medicine and campus resources.

The School of Medicine Dean's Office supports investigators in the early stages of identifying and forming corporate partnerships. The contact is Teri Melese, Director of Research Technologies and Alliances.

The Chancellor's Office provides resources to investigators interested in obtaining research materials from a company or negotiating a sponsored research or clinical agreement with a company. The contact is Erik Lium, Director of the Industry Contracts, Division of the Office of Sponsored Research. Those who want to learn about disclosing an invention for commercial assessment or about possible patent protection, licensing, or new company formation should contact Joel Kirschbaum, Director of the Office of Technology Management.

However, while all these offices assist investigators in their alliances with industry, there is some confusion among investigators regarding which office needs to be contacted for which tasks, and the different roles that faculty and the officers will assume.

To address this issue, two committees appointed by Executive Vice-Chancellor Eugene Washington, the Industry Alliance Coordinating Committee (IACC) and the Research Administration Board (RAB), have joined forces with the CTSI Virtual Home and formed a faculty task force to develop a guidance tool for investigators.

This web resource will be question/answer-based and will present a hierarchy of actions in response to what the investigator needs to accomplish. The task force expects to roll out this resource later in 2007.

The task force developing the web tool are:

• IACC Vice-Chair Teri Melese (Medicine)
• RAB faculty representative Matt Springer (Cardiology)
• Elizabeth Boyd (Clinical Pharmacy)
• Doug Hanahan (Biochemistry)
• Randall Lee (Cardiology)
• Erik Lium (Industry Contracts Division)
• Kathleen Cameron (Manager, Digital Content, UCSF Library)

This web tool will help to demystify the process to form alliances between UCSF and the corporate sector.

Source: Teri Melese