Technology Transfer at the Wellcome Trust

 
• By Melanie Senior

The Wellcome Trust has initiated a new approach to helping accelerate the transformation of scientific research into useful medicines. Through its University Translation Awards and Strategic Translation Awards, the Trust hopes to encourage collaboration between university researchers and tech transfer operations, fill funding and support gaps as they arise, and back high potential, targeted projects that may otherwise have difficulty finding finance.

The Wellcome Trust is an independent charity that supports up to 7000 researchers across 40 countries with funds of approximately £500 million ($845 million) per year. Its mission—to improve the health of humans and animals, through supporting research—is a clear and practical one. Yet technology transfer got off to a slow start at the Wellcome Trust, just as it did across the UK's universities, many of which only really begun embracing tech transfer over the last five to ten years. The notion of commercialising research is even newer across much of continental Europe.

Nor has Wellcome found that its first shot at encouraging technology transfer was the optimal one. Tech transfer subsidiary Catalyst...

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