Fifty-nine patent applications were filed on behalf of USC faculty in fiscal year 2005, compared with 30 in 2004. Sixteen licenses were issued in ’05; 10 were issued the year before. In addition, 64 invention disclosures were received in ’05, nine more than the previous year.

Another sign of USC’s success in transferring intellectual property to the real world is the number of new start-up companies initiated by faculty members. Four new companies launched in the past fiscal year and at least half a dozen more are in the pipeline, said Lisa Rooney, director of the Intellectual Property Office.

“The word is getting out that the University has an apparatus in place to facilitate these things,” Rooney said.

A recent presentation by InnoVenture, a non-profit organization that highlights discoveries made at the state’s three research universities, highlighted several USC research projects in various stages of commercialization. The presentations, held at the S.C. Department of Commerce, were made by USC faculty members, and the audience included venture capitalists and investors. The projects included:

• Michael Yost, director of research in the Department of Surgery at the School of Medicine, has developed a technique that combines a patient’s own tissue with novel collagen scaffolds infused with growth factors to yield a superior tissue repair compared to current technologies. The specific application discussed dealt with abdominal hernia repairs. Every year, some two million hernia repair surgeries are performed in the United States. However, failures develop in 11 to 20 percent of those repairs and most patients require subsequent surgeries to replace the aging mesh materials used in those repairs. This technology provides a permanent tissue repair that leaves the patient with muscle tissue in the place of the hernia instead of a mesh patch. Yost’s method has been tested in small animal studies and will progress to larger studies before beginning the FDA approval process.

• Lew Johnson, a retired School of Medicine faculty member, and USC cancer researcher Phil Buckhaults are developing a non-invasive screening technique for colorectal cancer, a disease that kills 150,000 Americans every year. Patents already have been issued for the procedure, which requires very few cells and has a projected cost of $50 to $75. Colonoscopies cost up to $1,000 to administer and require anesthesia. The screening technique has proven successful in early diagnostic trials and further work is underway to identify its effectiveness in identifying colon cancer markers in large patient pools.

• Vicki Vance, a biological sciences professor, wants to start a company that will focus on developing better ways to manipulate genetic engineering of plants and provide those techniques to agribusiness. Vance has a patent pending for techniques she has developed to turn off gene expression in commercially grown crop plants.

• Michael Stump, a research professor in the Department of Pathology and Microbiology in the School of Medicine, is working with department colleague Alvin Fox to develop a human anthrax vaccine. Anthrax spores are widely considered to be a prime agent for bioterrorists because the deadly spores can be widely dispersed in aerosol form. The vaccine Stump and Fox are developing prevents the spores from converting to the vegetative state and releasing deadly toxins. Current vaccines provide only limited protection because they don’t prevent the spores from converting to the vegetative state. The two scientists have a patent pending for the vaccine and have created a company, VaxTech. “Our vaccine is on track to get FDA approval,” Stump said.

• Greg Grice is CEO of Inhibix Antiviral, which is testing a drug to treat influenza developed by USC pharmacy professor Joseph Roberts and a former pharmacy researcher. The anti-viral agent is not a vaccine but would be used to treat those with an influenza infection. The drug is being tested now against common flu strains; it might also be tested for effectiveness against avian flu.

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