More misconceptions about TIGM

Rick Finnell's email (pdf) also discusses the origins of TIGM

Your second major concern was about how the decision was made to go after this Texas Enterprise Fund award. I certainly do not know when the conversations began, as I was a faculty member brought in to give my input sometime long after the process had already started. I had my own opinions as to whether or not TAMUS should get involved and what other options might have been explored.

This might seem to be surprising, given Guy Diedrich's account during the Giroir open forum

Vice Chancellor for Federal Relations and Commercialization Guy Diedrich on Monday called claims that TIGM started in the system offices "revisionist history." He told those at the forum that proposals first came from faculty members and people in the office of former Vice President for Research Richard Ewing.

If Finnell only came in later, who was driving the formation of TIGM? Let's look at the minutes(pdf) from the BoR meeting in July 2005

Mr. White said that the Texas Institute for Genomic Medicine (TIGM) is a great example of collaboration within the System. He commented on the involvement of Dr. Bob McTeer, Chancellor; Dr. Bob Gates, President of TAMU; Dr. Dick Ewing, Vice President of for Research at TAMU; Dr. Nancy Dickey, President of the System Health Science Center (HSC); Dr. Rick Finnell, Director of the Institute of Biosciences and Technology (IBT); and Mr. Guy Diedrich, Managing Director of the Technology Commercialization Center...

Mr. Nye said that on behalf of the Board and others, he wanted to recognize that Mr. White was very instrumental in receiving the idea, getting it germinated at the state level, attracting the funds and bringing it to the university when it could have gone many other places. He commended Mr. White and said that this was a wonderful undertaking and it was appreciated.

CHANCELLOR’S REMARKS

Dr. McTeer commented that the morning before the press conference, TIGM held its organizing board meeting and Mr. White was elected as chairman. He said that this was probably the most important thing that would happen during his administration.
Dr. McTeer said that there were many people who should be commended, such as Mr. Diedrich and Mr. Doug Centilli, Congressman Kevin Brady’s Chief of Staff.

In 2006, Dr. McTeer spoke to the Texas Lyceum

Not long after TIGM was formed, I had breakfast with Alan Greenspan in Washington. He asked me what was going on in my new world. When I started explaining all this to him, he interrupted me to ask why it was that most research mice are white rather than brown. After a long moment that seemed like an hour—a place I’d been before with him—I finally said, “Mr. Chairman, It’s a conundrum.”

Pretty soon, Guy Diedrich, who had brokered the TIGM deal (and who will be on your program tomorrow) brought me another deal to sign.

The record supports Diedrich's account. The idea for TIGM didn't start with the System; it started with Regent White, who probably heard about Lexicon from his time working with the Houston Technology Center. Diedrich, working in the VPR's office at TAMU was tasked with making it happen, so the proposals originated with TAMU, not TAMUS.

Open forum with Bret Giroir

Vision 1920 is still trying to digest nearly 3 hours of open forum where Vice Chancellor Giroir, occasionally assisted by Vice Chancellor Diedrich dazzled the faculty with the real stories behind TIGM, TIPS, NCTM, and tIIT. Dr. Giroir took us all the way back to his days at Harvard (subtly reminding those uppity faculty that he had taken courses from a better class of profs than one finds in the faculty senate or CPI) when he and his roommate snuck into a restricted area to get research jobs. He described his rise through the ranks at UTSW and his time at DARPA, and explained how everything he's doing for us here at A&M is driven by his love of science and the memories of dead children he couldn't save. He pointed out how the tIIT project is about supporting our brave men and women overseas. And about saving the world from pandemic H1N1 influenza.

It's a sign of how depraved those faculty whiners are that some still seemed skeptical at the end of this marathon.

In addition to the revelation of the meaning of Giroir's chicken, much of the discussion was about TIGM. The highlights:

• Giroir and Diedrich setting the record straight on TIGM. Shorter version: Things are great and it's not the System's fault. TIGM was a university initiative from the start, driven by the late Dick Ewing, who was VPR at the time.
• Two free mice for A&M researchers (whether A&M researchers not working on mice can sell the rights to their pair on eBay was not addressed).
• TIGM has submitted lots of grants and is now likely to get one to do screening of ES cell lines for drug discovery (?). Unlike working with mice, this can be done on a large scale.

Vision 1920 overheard some faculty potbanger saying something like "the ES knockouts are heterozygous, so they'll only see effects if haploinsufficiency has a phenotype." He also said something about RNAi.

Giroir pointed out that TIGM is a core facility and that it is currently important for research at about 200 other universities. Someone else asked for examples - what do they expect TIGM to do, collect references to papers that acknowledge them?

This is just a little bit of what happened on Monday afternoon. Vision 1920 is having a harder time reconstructing the discussion about TIPS and NCTM, and welcomes comments to help reconstruct those parts.

Transformers pt 4

Part 1.
Part 2.
Part 3.

In 2007, Vice Chancellor Diedrich told Tech Transfer Tactics

Before Texas A&M amended its tenure criteria, there were virtually no tenure-track professors who beat a path to the technology transfer office to file patents, says Diedrich. In the last year since the new policy was instituted, there has been a noticeable stream, mainly among engineering, science and medical researchers, he says.

Let's look at the Tech transfer stats (pdf)

The policy change took effect in 2006.

Transformers pt 3

Part 1.
Part 2.

In December of 2005, the Regents promoted Guy Diedrich to the position of Vice Chancellor for Technology Commercialization, a position that had not existed before. Hitting the ground running, Diedrich prepared a revision of the System policy on intellectual property, to be considered at the January 2006 meeting of the Board of Regents. This does not appear on the minutes of that meeting (pdf)... what happened can be reconstructed from materials posted by the CPI, especially for their March 2006 meeting.

Consistent with the long-standing TAMUS practices on Shared Governance*, Diedrich prepared the new policy without input from the faculty. It would have sailed through, if not for another troublesome TAMU President working "FOR the faculty not WITH the faculty". Dean of Science Joe Newton wrote in March 2006:

..While the REC [Research Environment Council - ed.] recognizes and appreciates the timely intervention of President Gates to remove this item from the January Board of Regents meeting, there must now be significant input from the faculty during the reworking of the document...

Diedrich's changes were based on the ideas he explained to the Higher Education Subcommittee of the Texas Senate, as described in the previous post in this series. He just wanted the faculty to let the Office of Technology licensing sign off before they squandered commercialization opportunities by publishing their work. The faculty reaction is captured in a memo from Tom Vogel (Chair of Academic Affairs Committee of the Faculty Senate):

Summary of discussion on the proposed system policy on intellectual property management and commercialization: The consensus of the AAC was that we cannot support the proposal. Here are some points which we found troubling:

1. The proposal would introduce a potential for prior restraint of publication of research which describes a patentable innovation. This seems unworkable: there is an enormous amount of research being done at our university, much of which could be construed as possibly describing a patentable innovation. It seems unlikely that the OTC could evaluate all of this research in a timely manner.
2. The possibility of prior restraint of publication is abhorrent to the academic culture. The fact that this power would be concentrated in the hands of a single person is extremely troubling.
3. It provides for roles of TAMUS in equity ownership, management, and operation of for-profit enterprises which we believe to be dangerous to the University's interests.
4. The decision-making authority concerning commercialization of research would be distanced from the individual researcher. This should remain at the university level, rather than adding another layer.
5. It places unrealistic expectations upon the terms and conditions
   for license agreements concerning early-phase technology development.
6. The significant bureaucratic hurdles imposed on commercializing research will hurt efforts to recruit top-flight researchers.

By that summer, much of the reporting requirement was stricken from the document that was eventually approved (pdf). During the kerfuffle over the intellectual property rules, the guidelines on tenure and promotion were changed to increase the emphasis on patents and commercialization. By the following year, Diedrich was bragging about how TAMU was able to grant tenure to a junior faculty member who hadn't published for a year.

The new policy is already paying dividends, according to Diedrich. While the university has not yet attempted to quantify the impact the effects of the new policy, Diedrich said that it has seen “quite a number of additional disclosures” that were a direct result of younger, tenure-track faculty disclosing their research for the first time.

In addition, the university is set to award tenure to a professor for the very first time based partially on using technology commercialization as a criterion for the decision.

Thus, Diedrich was able to overcome faculty resistance by distracting them on one front while moving forward on another. He enhanced researcher communication by getting the faculty to unite against his proposed changes to the intellectual property rules. Tech transfer offices elsewhere could learn from our master strategist.

*The Chancellor at the time was Bob McTeer. McKinney became Chancellor in Nov. 2006.

Transformers pt 2

Part 1.

Vice Chancellor Diedrich explained his philosophy on intellectual property to the Higher Education Subcommittee of the Texas Senate in July 2008 (pdf)

Herein lies the critical cultural distinction between research “purists” and those that believe commercialization is part of the research process. The research purist believes in research for the sake of research – that is, all research has some value and the only necessary output is a paper that contributes to the literature. In other words, the researcher’s obligation ends with an attempt to publish. The commercialization-oriented researcher believes that there is an obligation, where appropriate, to provide a return-on-investment to the taxpayer in the form of protected intellectual property. that could one day become the building block for a new product or service that benefits society. In theory, the difference in perception between these two cultures can be vast. In simple practice, it is the difference between disclosing the invention to the commercialization office prior to publishing, thus optimizing its chance for commercial value, and not disclosing prior to publishing, thereby hindering its chance for commercialization. It is this fundamental research culture shift that must be catalyzed in order for the citizens of the State of Texas to realize the full value of research conducted among its academic centers.

Back in 2006, Diedrich tried to catalyze the culture shift.

To be continued...

Murano's accusations are patently false

More from the Chancellor's extended notes (pdf)

Last time committee on IP met - she pulled out papers on XOMA & berated Guy for making deal w/co. hurting the "A&M Brand" that she was dedicated to protecting - She misread info - & did not really know how to read the data - I don't know who gave her the info [concern is valid but approach & behavior totally inappropriate]

What deal? This one from Sept. 2008:

“We are very pleased to be working with XOMA, a biotechnology company with more than 25 years of experience as a successful innovator in antibody development and manufacturing,” said Brett Giroir, M.D., vice chancellor for research for the Texas A&M System. “We expect that the project will generate new opportunities for rapid translation of biomedical discoveries into life-saving products. The collaboration also holds the promise to develop manufacturing technologies that position the state of Texas as the partner of choice for biotechnology companies in the future.”

Dr. Brett P. "eHarmony" Giroir, in case you didn't know, is the System's Vice Chancellor for Research, and a leading biodefense researcher (Try a PubMed search on 'giroir bp AND biodefense'). Dr. Giroir knows Xoma well - they hold the rights on five of his patents.

Xoma was the subject of a 2007 profile in the New York Times:

Xoma, which Dr. Scannon started in 1981, has never earned an operating profit or marketed a drug of its own. And in the quarter-century since its birth, Xoma has managed to burn through more than $700 million raised from investors and other pharmaceutical companies.
...
XOMA, which went public 20 years ago, is a case study of unfulfilled promise in the biotech business. It may also be a story that ends happily, if very belatedly, with success. The company’s management and some investors, including OrbiMed, say they are convinced that what they describe as Xoma’s dogged determination is finally making headway, or at least that its stock has room to grow.

The company’s stock has nearly doubled over the last year, hitting a 52-week high on Friday of $3.30, before closing at $3.04. Still, that is well below the stock’s record high of $32 a share, reached in both 1987 and 1991.

There's even more room to grow now; Xoma closed at $0.78/share today (down from $2.27 on the day the deal was announced).