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Nonprofit foundations for open-source biomedical technology development

Nature Biotechnology volume 30, pages 928–932 (2012)Cite this article

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For academic discoveries eschewed by traditional venture capital business models, there is now an alternative path.

New biomedical technology starts life as an endangered species. Even when everyone agrees that it might have tremendous societal value, the odds of an academic discovery reaching the market are depressingly low. Part of this attrition is explained by regulatory uncertainty. To a lesser extent, it is also explained by legal and ethical uncertainties (e.g., for such products as embryonic stem cell–derived therapies). But a major determinant of whether a product makes it to market is how well that product fits within the biotech industry's existing business models. Products destined for developing countries and/or neglected diseases have traditionally been shunned as poor commercial propositions. Even for those discovery assets that do make it out of academia into industry, the high number of handoffs in the commercialization process—from academic laboratory to institutional tech transfer office, to small startup, to publicly listed corporation, to multinational pharmaceutical company (and different combinations and variations thereof)—means that products can often be shelved or stalled at various stages of development not only because of scientific challenges, but also for 'strategic' business reasons.

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Acknowledgements

I thank P. Ariniello, C. Colecchi, M. Herman, J. Hoppin, L. Keys, S. Levin, A. Lo, S. Madigan, L. Moffitt, F. Monti, J. Murgia, B. Preston, M. Rosenberg, J. Rosenbloom and M. Tweedle for many helpful discussions and L. Gendall for editing.

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  1. John V. Frangioni is at Harvard Medical School, Center for Molecular Imaging, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.,

    John V Frangioni

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  1. John V Frangioni
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Correspondence to John V Frangioni.

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Competing interests

FLARE technology is owned by Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. It has been licensed to the FLARE Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on promoting the dissemination of medical imaging technology for research and clinical use. J. Frangioni is the founder and chairman of the FLARE Foundation. The Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center will receive royalties for sale of FLARE Technology. J. Frangioni has elected to surrender post-market royalties to which he would otherwise be entitled as inventor and has elected to donate pre-market proceeds to the FLARE Foundation. J. Frangioni has started three for-profit companies, Curadel, Curadel Medical Devices and Curadel In Vivo Diagnostics, which may someday be non-exclusive sublicensees of FLARE technology.

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Frangioni, J. Nonprofit foundations for open-source biomedical technology development. Nat Biotechnol 30, 928–932 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.2392

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