Innovation and Commercialization in Biomedical Research with Lisa Dhar, PhD

[00:00:00] Erin Spain, MS: Welcome to Science in Translation, a podcast from NUCATS, Northwestern University Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute. I'm your host, Erin Spain. This season on the podcast, we have focused several episodes on innovation and how commercialization of biomedical research can be critical to expediting the delivery of technologies and interventions to the public. The NUCATS Institute's Center for Translational Innovation partners closely with Northwestern University's Innovation and New Ventures office, known as INVO, to help its members bring biomedical research to market. Here to discuss this topic and the resources available to our investigators is Lisa Dhar, associate vice president for innovation and new ventures at Northwestern University and the director of INVO. Welcome to the show.

 [00:00:56] Lisa Dhar, PhD: Great. Thank you so much, Erin.

[00:00:57] Erin Spain, MS: Lisa, let's start with a little bit about you. I know that you lead INVO, but you've been at Northwestern for some time working in this space of entrepreneurship and startups. Share with us your background.

[00:01:08] Lisa Dhar, PhD: I have been at Northwestern since 2016, so coming up on eight years And I think the position here is just such a great mix of a lot of the different things that I've gotten to do over my career. I am a scientist by training. I have a PhD in physical chemistry and after finishing graduate school I went off to Bell Laboratories at Lucent Technologies, and that was just a wonderful time at Bell Labs, really the heyday of telecom. And people found different paths to translate. The project that I was working on became the focus of an internal venture capital group that Bell Labs had, and we spun it out as a company. So I got my first taste of entrepreneurship and commercialization there, and I have to say that was a very exhilarating time. I worked for the company for a number of years. At some point we hit the financial crisis of 2008, 2009. So there's a little bit of restructuring. I moved to the tech transfer office at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and that was really a great opportunity to continue my work with early-stage technologies, but marry that with this wonderful life of entrepreneurship. So I stayed there for a number of years. I became the senior associate of the office there. And then, as I mentioned, in 2016 moved up to Northwestern to join the Innovation and New Ventures Office.

[00:02:23] Erin Spain, MS: What is it about working in this space that really excites you and gets you excited to get up every morning and go do this work.

[00:02:30] Lisa Dhar, PhD: Oh, so many things. I think the opportunity to really be immersed in the cutting edge of technology and then to be able to move that out to the public is just a huge opportunity. And so I feel very, very lucky to do that. And then the other component is the people I get to work with, certainly the faculty, the researchers, some of the most talented people you might find the chance to meet. And then my colleagues at INVO are really just a wonderful family. And so I was just telling my son the other day I hope this for him, as he moves into his professional career, that you find a position or a job where you just love to get up in the morning and go work.

[00:03:05] Erin Spain, MS: I want to talk a little bit more about INVO, your mission is to catalyze the translation of Northwestern innovations to benefit the public and promote economic growth, but tell me what makes this office so special.

[00:03:16] Lisa Dhar, PhD: Most major research universities have the function within their offices of tech transfer. So usually there will be groups that work with the faculty and researchers to understand the innovations that are coming out of the office and figure out ways to get that to the public. But I think INVO is really unique because it's set up as an umbrella organization that can bring so many resources and programs and collaborations across the university to bear on this mission to get our research out to the public. And so INVO, the way it's set up at Northwestern, has three sort of main pillars. One is the classic tech transfer operations for the university. So we have a team of people who work with our faculty researchers, understand the new inventions that are coming out of the laboratories, coming out of the research. Understand if there is a need to protect the intellectual property that's emerging out of these innovations and then find ways to get that intellectual property or those innovations out to the public. And those are often taking place in terms of getting those technologies licensed to existing companies or maybe licensed to startup companies that are the ones that are going to take those technologies out. That sits as one pillar of INVO. And then the other two pillars are our two hubs for entrepreneurship. And so one is called The Garage and it's all about student entrepreneurship. So these are opportunities coming out of the ideas of our wonderful students, and it's our undergraduate students, students at Kellogg, our students at Feinberg, our graduate students at McCormick. So it's really this wonderful melting pot for student opportunities. And then the third pillar, which is more recently launched, is called the Querrey InQbation Lab for entrepreneurship coming out of our research lab. So these are startup companies, translation opportunities in some sense science-based, opportunities. That came together in the last about two years. It's located in Evanston on some space that we have downtown. We've got 15,000 square feet of lab space, of office space. Just in the last year and a half, we've already become the home for 12 Northwestern startups, which has been really exciting, and that continues to grow. Associated with The Garage and with the Querrey InQbation Lab is a whole host of programming and resources because space is one thing and that's wonderful and very enabling, but you've got to have programs and resources and the reason that innovators and inventors want to come work with us. With the launch of the Querrey InQbation Lab, we were very fortunate to receive a very generous gift from Kimberly Querrey, and with that, we've been able to launch all sorts of things from fellowships to seed funding to a gap fund to a whole host of other things.

[00:05:44] Erin Spain, MS: So biomedical research. This is an area that's absolutely exploding and you partner with NUCATS Center for Translational Innovation very closely. Tell me about that partnership and what's happening right now in this space in biomedical research and innovation at Northwestern.

[00:06:02] Lisa Dhar, PhD: That's been a tremendous area of activity for us. So with NUCATS, it's been a great collaboration. Obviously, you know, NUCATS, as its name indicates, is very focused on the translational sciences and that's in many different aspects. Everything from understanding the patient- or the customer- driven approach to understanding how you shepherd things clinically from our labs out to the public to understanding things like how you disseminate biomedical information out to our public. And so we're very closely coupled in terms of funding opportunities, communication opportunities, programs, resources with NUCATS on that front. In terms of, you know, taking a step back and looking at what's happening with biomedical translation as a whole, that's tremendously active. I mean, you can categorize it in a couple of different areas. We have biomedical innovations and inventions happening in the therapeutic space, so the things that are going to become the drugs of tomorrow. We have it happening on our devices and diagnostic space, so these are things where you see the very close coupling of engineering and medicine. And then of course, as everyone is aware, the implications of the digital frontier is really important, and that's everything from computational tools to how artificial intelligence is being incorporated in so many aspects of medicine. And so for all those different areas, we have a whole host of ways to make sure our sort of early-stage discoveries and inventions can make it out towards commercialized opportunities.

[00:07:31] Erin Spain, MS: For NUCATS members who may be listening and they're interested in commercialization, they want to get started, what should they turn to first? What are some things that they need to think about, and how do they just begin this whole process?

[00:07:43] Lisa Dhar, PhD: It is a little bit of a white glove service. Depending on the type of technology or the stage of discovery, the approaches can be very different. So the best thing to do is, is really , to get in touch with our Innovation and New Ventures Office. Certainly send me an email, come to our website, put in an inquiry, because we have a team of what we call invention managers. And those invention managers are, first of all, very well-versed in the types of research that's going on at Northwestern. And they're very closely coupled to understanding how to assess the intellectual property potential, understand, you know, what might be the next steps to assess the commercial feasibility of the invention and also understanding you know, what resources, what external advisors might be useful, what types of programs out there, what type of seed funding might accelerate the process. Our office, and the Querrey InQbation Lab have seminars that we host throughout the year, everything from what we call the Q Founder series, where we bring in experts that talk about the nuts and bolts of, for example, starting a company, of understanding the regulatory process, intellectual property. And then as part of INVO, we kind of go out and do roadshows, so we visit different institutes, centers, departments, divisions and give customized talks in terms of everything ranging from IP 101 to how to start a company, how to translate your opportunities.

[00:09:02] Erin Spain, MS: There might be some people out there listening who think this is very exciting. They might want to jump into this space, but they're concerned about some of the potential risks of working with industry. Tell me about that and how you're able to help folks navigate some of these risks.

[00:09:17] Lisa Dhar, PhD: Our office works very closely with the Office for Corporate Engagement and the Corporate Relations team at Feinberg. And these people are really our ambassadors out to industry. Many of them have been in industry themselves for a number of years, and so know the ins and outs, and they serve as,not only guides but really great advisors as to not only how to manage those relationships but also better position your science so that it becomes more interesting to outside industry.

[00:09:44] Erin Spain, MS: How do you collaborate with physicians and clinicians who may have really specific needs?

[00:09:49] Lisa Dhar, PhD: I feel very lucky at Northwestern because we do have these very close partnerships with Northwestern Medicine, with the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab and with Lurie Children's Hospital. And so, each of those institutions have their own tech transfer offices, innovation offices, but we all work really closely together. And so, you know, that's something that I think really accelerates what we do.

[00:10:10] Erin Spain, MS: Tell me about some of those programs that are really aimed for the physician or clinician audience.

[00:10:15] Lisa Dhar, PhD: One program that we've recently launched  is in conjunction with Northwestern Medicine, the NMQ Medical Device Studio. We have, over the years, often been contacted by physicians, clinicians, who have wonderful ideas of tools or devices that would really, in essence, help their job. These are things that they know need to be invented that come out of clinical need, and they are looking for expertise or ways to sort of prototype these inventions or, in some cases, sort of napkin ideas that they have. So we put in place a fund where we and Northwestern Medicine jointly fund a competitive program where some of these designs can be partnered with external engineering firms and get our clinicians and physicians to that first physical prototype phase. This has been our first year of running that program. It's been a great success. We funded four projects so far. The first prototype, which is in the area of women's health, just made its debut in the simulation center, and we'll be rolling out the remaining three and then we're going to be renewing the program. And so that's been really an exciting way for folks to kind of dip their toes into this whole area of translation, because I think oftentimes, like you say, the hardest thing is knowing how to get started.

[00:11:28] Erin Spain, MS: That coupling of engineers and physicians, this is something that it's necessary, but it can be hard to facilitate those relationships outside of a program such as this, isn't that right?

[00:11:40] Lisa Dhar, PhD: Yeah, but I think what's wonderful about Northwestern is we have such a collaborative environment. We have lots of great examples of close collaborations, for example, between faculty within Feinberg School of Medicine and faculty at McCormick School of Engineering. And so there's a number of cases where faculty who have their home appointments in McCormick actually have lab space downtown at the Simpson Querrey Biomedical Research Center, and so you just have that natural immersion that brings these collaborations to bear. And then, you know, there's many initiatives or events that bring faculty from the schools together. And then there are people that have a number of joint appointments that themselves foster that cross-collaboration.

[00:12:21] Erin Spain, MS: Describe to me the landscape of innovation at Northwestern University and the role that NUCATS members could play in this landscape.

[00:12:31] Lisa Dhar, PhD: Innovation really at Northwestern is part of our DNA, part of our culture. Innovation is never, and certainly not at Northwestern, a top-down approach or endeavor. Innovation, as I was mentioning, lives in many different formats. I think NUCATS members can approach innovation from many different angles. One is that their clinical experience or their patient experience is so crucial for our innovators because that perspective in terms of how innovations that we may have in hand could, you know, apply in the clinic or could be advanced in the clinic is something crucial. So NUCATS members as innovation advisors are very valued. NUCATS members as innovators themselves, of course, are highly sought after. And again, getting in touch with INVO to talk about how we can help you advance those innovations is very important. And then I think using or having NUCATS members as integral parts of our different programs and resources are very important. So for example, for The Kellogg Entrepreneurial Residency program, having NUCATS members involved as mentors or advisors, having them as part of our Executive-in-Residence Program where they're working with us on the different workshops and seminar series and things like that could also be really interesting.

[00:13:47] Erin Spain, MS: NUCATS and INVO have also collaborated to support mentorship of women academic innovators and entrepreneurs, particularly those who are in the early stages of their commercialization journeys through the FoundHer fellowship. Can you tell me a little bit more about this program and the impact that it has had so far?

[00:14:05] Lisa Dhar, PhD: If you look at the companies that are being launched from Northwestern, for a host of reasons, we still do not have a large number of women-founded companies. In fact, I could probably count on one hand how many companies that we have where women are either the scientific founders or the CEOs of the companies. And so we want to put together a program that would really increase that pipeline, encourage women to look at entrepreneurship through a different lens. And so we launched what's called the FoundHer program, and that's really to amplify and support first-time women academic entrepreneurs. The FoundHer program consists of two components. One is a seminar series where we invite women serial entrepreneurs, very successful women investors and women in related areas to come and talk about their experience in starting a company, you know, what they look for when they invest in companies. And that's been going on for the last two years and it's been really successful. I was really interested to see as we launched the seminar series if our audience would be predominantly women. And these are such accomplished people, period, and so our audience has been everybody, which has been wonderful. And then the second component of FoundHER has been a fellowship. The first year we focused on first-time women faculty founders and so we chose a cohort of three first-time women faculty founders and developed a program where they received mentorship, communications, coaching, we had graphic designers come and help them develop a pitch deck, and then most importantly, we launched into initiatives that would help them expand their network. And so the entire fellowship program culminated in two events, one was a pitch presentation to an audience of investors in the Chicagoland area. And then the first year we took our cohort of fellows out to Boston to undertake what we call the VC blitz, where we had them in, I think a two-day period, meet with over a dozen of the blue chip venture capital folks in Boston. And just back-to-back feedback sessions about the companies they were in the process of launching. And then this past year, we focused on first-time women founders coming from our graduate student or postdoctoral population. We just had that cohort of fellows go out and do a similar program meeting with venture capitalists out in the San Francisco area. I think it's really built a great community of women considering entrepreneurship. And then I think very specifically, the type of feedback, the expansion of the network, the ability to be with like-minded people as you develop and launch your companies has been tremendous, I think, for the individual fellows.

[00:16:35] Erin Spain, MS: Well, that is very exciting. What's next for that program? Where do you see it going?

[00:16:39] Lisa Dhar, PhD: We want to continue the seminar series, continue the cohort of fellows, but I think we also want to see if we can develop the pipeline a little bit earlier. So I think what we're going to be doing is programs focused on probably women graduate students, maybe even undergraduate students, have programs where maybe over a two-day session we have something called an entrepreneurial sprint, give people a very quick taste of entrepreneurship. I think we'd like to also do quick exposures to different aspects of what we immerse our fellows into in their longer program. So have a little bit of that communications coaching, have a little bit of that pitch presentation, coaching, in short spurts for sort of our younger population so that that pipeline continues to grow and expand.

[00:17:21] Erin Spain, MS: Talk to me about some success stories that have come out through INVO and NUCATS. So you've gone through this process. you've started your company. It's now in that stage where it exists out in the world and it's been brought to market. Can you share some of those success stories with me and things that people could look forward to if they decide to go down this route?

[00:17:41] Lisa Dhar, PhD: The success stories really come from the mentorship the NUCATS team is available to provide. You know, a lot of our early-stage startups are companies that are still just coming out of the research labs. And so, they don't have a fully fleshed out clinical team. There's not a chief medical officer sitting within the company and things like that. So the ability to be able to go to NUCATS to understand, how best to position their regulatory path or where they could find answers to certain issues that are coming up I think has been one of the best examples of how we continue to partner NUCATS and INVO and the ecosystem that's coming out of that. And so, for example, one of our startups that came out of one of our faculty at Feinberg, Dr. Steve Miller, is Cour Pharma. And so Cour Pharma has established themselves as one of the leaders in nanoparticle delivery. They recently announced a very large series A. Launch. They've had partnerships with a number of pharma companies, have a number of therapeutics in advanced clinical trials. We have, you know, a number of startups that have been launched from our Center for Synthetic Biology. And so that's really an exciting example of where engineering and biology or engineering and medicine work together very closely. AndSwift Scale launched out of our Center for Synthetic Biology, was acquired a couple of years ago. Other ones have been making a lot of impact in areas from everything from cell and gene delivery to different types of diagnostics and sensing capabilities. And then of course we have, you know, wonderful examples coming out of our Querrey Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics, where there have been a whole host of companies, everything from enabling advanced remote monitoring to consumer products where products have been launched in conjunction with companies like Gatorade and others. So it's really been gratifying to see that biomedical research really just spans the gamut, from consumer applications to advanced clinical applications

[00:19:42] Erin Spain, MS: So when someone in academia starts a company through INVO and they're working closely with the university, tell me about the ownerships. Who owns the patents and then, if it does go to market, how does that work?

[00:19:55] Lisa Dhar, PhD: Oh, that's such a good question because I think, oftentimes, you hear Northwestern startup, what does that mean? Does that mean that Northwestern owns the startup? So maybe I'll just walk you through the process. You know, research is done at Northwestern and inventions, intellectual property, emerges. And this is true of all universities. Northwestern actually owns that intellectual property. But when there's the opportunity to start a company based on that intellectual property, what happens is the faculty member may want to be involved. The faculty member may be partnering with outside collaborators. Those folks that are interested in starting the company are the co-founders of that company. They're the ones that can determine how the equity in that company is divided up between the co-founders. Northwestern does not own that startup company. Then that formed startup company will come to Northwestern to get a license to get rights to that intellectual property. And so what's put in place is a license agreement, legal framework by which rights to the intellectual property is then granted to that startup company so that the startup company can develop technology appropriately. And in the license agreement there are certain financial terms, so there might be a royalty payment that's made by the startup company back to Northwestern if products emerge based on that intellectual property. Northwestern may request a small amount of equity in the startup company. But again, it's a small amount. Northwestern does not ask or take a board seat on the company. Northwestern does not have a controlling interest or anything like that. So that company is actually an independent entity. It's really important for us to continue to provide support for those early-stage Northwestern startups. So it's not at all the case that once the company is formed, it's hands off or anything like that. We very much value what that startup actually comes and brings back to the Northwestern ecosystem because, oftentimes, those startup CEOs come back and mentor our startup CEOs in the making. And so, actually, we've started a program called CEO Round Tables, where our early-stage CEOs on a sort of once-a-month basis get together with more experienced CEOs, maybe startups that have now been out in existence five, six years, and those CEOs come back and share their experiences, help guide and mentor our often first-time and very early-stage CEOs. So for a whole host of reasons, we love keeping those Northwestern startups close by.

[00:22:13] Erin Spain, MS: And it's true that you don't have to give up your day job if you have a startup. You can still have your lab, you're still doing your research, you're still being a physician or a scientist or physician-scientist. How are people able to work the startup entrepreneur role into their daily lives?

[00:22:30] Lisa Dhar, PhD: It really varies depending on the person, but what's typical is that most of our faculty, you know, most of our physicians, are not going to leave their much loved position. Typically, the startup is staffed by people who are a hundred percent with the startup. Our faculty can serve sometimes as a board member, sometimes as an advisor, sometimes they'll be chief technology officer for a short period of time. We have had, it's rare, but a couple of occasions where faculty members will take a leave from the university to join and work on the startup full time. But typically, the faculty are usually, after the startup is launched, involved in mostly an advisory role and aren't taking sort of an active day-to-day role in the startup.

[00:23:14] Erin Spain, MS: As we're wrapping up here, tell me why people should consider this. Why should they take the plunge? They have a great idea, they're doing some research and they think commercialization could be the next step. Why should they reach out?

[00:23:25] Lisa Dhar, PhD: Our number one reason for being is to sort of be a service organization. And so I think that's really why I'd encourage people to come and work with us because we have so many things in place that can really move you forward. Why consider commercialization? Why consider entrepreneurship? I think it's just a wonderful mechanism of making an impact with your research. It's one of the ways that we get it out to the public. And so I think that's, you know, just an incredibly gratifying, important path.

[00:23:51] Erin Spain, MS: Subscribe to Science in Translation wherever you listen to your podcasts. To find out more about NUCATS, check out our website, NUCATS.Northwestern.edu.