Advancing Promising Discoveries to Market

The road to the medical world market crosses the intersection of innovation and collaboration.

The Center for Technology Commercialization (CTC) identifies and protects innovative research and delivers them to the market through licensing and the creation of start-up companies. It also provides crucial funding for emerging projects and facilitates collaborations with external partners.

In the past year, the CTC established three new research collaborations with leading industry partners to identify and advance discoveries towards the market where they can have the greatest impact on patient lives. These partnerships combine Cincinnati Children’s research strengths with the drug development and commercial capabilities of world-class pharmaceutical and biotech companies. The collaborations were:

Shire Research Alliance  – a multi-year research collaboration designed to discover and develop novel therapies to treat rare diseases with high unmet medical need. This collaboration will provide funding and laboratory research support to selected projects. Shire’s therapeutic focus areas include rare diseases, gastroenterology, nephrology and neurology.

Alexion Rare Disease Innovation Award – a unique funding opportunity within Cincinnati Children’s Innovation Fund to advance rare disease therapeutics towards commercialization. Alexion is focused on rare and ultra-rare disorders. 

GSK Discovery Partnerships with Academia (DPAc) - GlaxoSmithKline R&D is collaborating with Cincinnati Children’s to identify and advance innovative therapies. Projects selected are eligible to receive support from GSK such as large scale protein production, medicinal chemistry and PK-PD modeling. 

“Cincinnati Children’s researchers discover dozens of health innovations every year. Whether they are prospective molecular targets for treating or diagnosing disease or concepts for new medical devices, many discoveries require additional support get them to the market,” says Margaret Hostetter, MD, director, Cincinnati Children’s Research Foundation. “This is where our Center for Technology Commercialization comes in—they help innovators leverage internal funding programs and external relationships with industry to advance discoveries towards commercialization.”