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NIH Unveils Web Site to Expedite Lab Technology Transfer

Example of lab-on-a-chip (NASA)

(NASA)

National Institutes of Health has launched its electronic Research Materials (eRMa) Web site that aims to make it easier for prospects to locate and license findings from NIH’s labs for commercialization. The eRMA site was developed in response to President Obama’s order to agencies last month to speed the process of transferring federal scientific discoveries with commercial potential into the hands of businesses.

The eRMA site consists of a searchable database of unpatented discoveries from NIH’s in-house labs, not from research funded by NIH and conducted elsewhere. The new NIH process also includes payments handled by the government-wide payments service, Pay.gov.

Unpatented technologies from NIH labs are made available to companies through internal use licenses granted by NIH’s Office of Technology Transfer that also created eRMa. An NIH internal use license is a contract that governs the transfer of tangible research materials from NIH to a company for commercial research use. NIH expects to launch a service called the Transfer Agreement Dashboard in December 2011, for non-profit research organizations interested in obtaining NIH materials through a material transfer agreement.

NIH says its technology transfer operation administers some $97 million annually in royalty payments from about 500 companies with total product sales reported at $6 billion per year. That technology transfer office also handles licensing transactions for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Read more: U.S. Agencies Directed to Speed Science to Marketplace

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