[Ip-health] Gates grant requires broad dissemination of knowledge regarding influenza pandemics

[James Love]

It would be nice to have the details.  Jamie

* The University of Wisconsin-Madison has received a $1.3 million grant
from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support research aimed at
understanding the molecular features that lead to influenza pandemics.
UW-Madison will collaborate with Maryland-based Lentigen Corp. on the
project.  As part of the grant, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation
(WARF) and Lentigen Corp. have agreed to broadly disseminate the
knowledge generated in this project to the scientific community. This
means that key pieces of the intellectual property created during the
project will be donated by WARF to the international research community
in an effort to improve human health across the globe.


http://www.news.wisc.edu/14937

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WARF, UW-Madison influenza researcher, Lentigen agree to donate
technology

March 25, 2008

The University of Wisconsin-Madison has received a $1.3 million grant
from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support research aimed at
understanding the molecular features that lead to influenza pandemics.
UW-Madison will collaborate with Maryland-based Lentigen Corp. on the
project.

As part of the grant, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF)
and Lentigen Corp. have agreed to broadly disseminate the knowledge
generated in this project to the scientific community. This means that
key pieces of the intellectual property created during the project will
be donated by WARF to the international research community in an effort
to improve human health across the globe.

Led by renowned influenza researcher Yoshihiro Kawaoka, the project will
use high-throughput screening systems to sift through influenza viral
protein libraries to identify mutations that would allow avian influenza
to infect humans.

Kawaoka, who has a joint appointment at the UW-Madison School of
Veterinary Medicine and the University of Tokyo, created a method for
screening avian influenza sequences to determine when the virus jumps
from birds to humans. World health experts are concerned that such a
jump would trigger a flu pandemic similar to the pandemics of 1918, 1957
and 1968. The global health disaster that occurred in 1918 killed
between 20 million and 40 million people.

The intention of WARF and Lentigen is to make diagnostic tools and
vaccines for avian flu accessible to people in the developing countries
of the world.

"Our work in crafting this intellectual property policy will ensure
broad access to this new tool for monitoring avian flu," says Carl E.
Gulbrandsen, managing director of WARF. "This is what WARF is all about
=E2=80=94 getting new technologies out of the labs into society, where they=
 can
benefit human lives."

The grant is the first made by the Gates Foundation to UW-Madison to
support a global public health initiative. A previous grant from the
Gates Foundation was given to the Division of Library Sciences.

Lentigen Corp. will collaborate with UW-Madison on the study. Tim
Ravenscroft, Lentigen's chief executive officer, states, "We are
delighted to work with the UW-Madison on this important project
supported by the Gates Foundation."

Lentigen is a leader in the development and manufacture of lentiviral
vectors, important tools for the study and manufacture of candidate
vaccines. Lentigen's founder and chief scientific officer Boro Dropulic
comments, "We look forward to working with Dr. Kawaoka and his expert
team on this exciting project. Our lentiviral vectors are particularly
suited to high-throughput screening methods. One goal of this study is
to use our system to help identify influenza protein mutants that would
allow avian influenza to infect humans. The work will be important for
the future development of vaccine candidates targeted to avian influenza
that could cause a human pandemic."

WARF supports research at UW-Madison by protecting the intellectual
property of faculty, staff and students, and licensing inventions
resulting from their work. Through these efforts, university ideas
benefit the public by bringing resources back to the university to
continue the cycle of investment, research and invention. WARF was
established in 1925 as the first university-based technology transfer
office in the world.

Lentigen Corp. is a privately owned biotechnology company focused on the
development of lentiviral vector technology for a wide range of
therapeutic, vaccine and research applications in biotechnology and
medicine. Lentiviral vectors are the most efficient vehicles for the
delivery of genes or gene-silencing sequences stably into cells.
Lentigen is a highly collaborative company, co-developing lentiviral
vector-based products across a broad spectrum of bench to clinical
applications. Partnerships include the National Institutes of Health,
the University of Pennsylvania, ThermoFisher Scientific and the U.S.
Army.



--
_____________________________
James Love, Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
http://www.keionline.org, mailto:james.love@keionline.org
voice +1.202.332.2670, fax +1.202.332.2673, US mobile +1.202.361.3040, Gene=
va mobile +41.76.413.6584

When everyone thinks the same, no one thinks.  Bill Walton remix of Walter =
Lippmann