PHILADELPHIA – The University of Pennsylvania now ranks among the nation's most successful institutions when it comes to turning faculty research into patents, licenses and start-up companies. That's among the highlights of the Penn Center for Technology Transfer's annual report for fiscal year 2002.

Such technology transfer benefits not only University programs – which reaped $4.1 million in profits from CTT's activities last year – but the entire Philadelphia region. Penn launched 12 start-up companies in the fiscal year that ended June 30, many of which have established operations and hired employees in southeastern Pennsylvania.

"Fiscal year 2002 was our sixth consecutive year of increased productivity," said CTT Managing Director Louis P. Berneman. "Penn has now overcome its late entry into the technology transfer arena and is performing with top-tier institutions."

"CTT is proud of its role in fostering the innovative application of Penn's cutting-edge research and the resulting contributions to the University, to the community and to the lives of people far beyond our region."

The 12 companies spun off this year place Penn among the nation's strongest performers, Berneman said. In 2000, the most recent year for which figures are available, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California system and the California Institute of Technology led the nation with 31, 26 and 14 start-ups respectively.

CTT filed 349 patent applications on Penn technologies in 2002, more than triple the number of patent filings logged just three years ago. Roughly half of CTT's patent applications eventually result in successful commercialization, Berneman said, but the process is often a lengthy one: Penn technologies licensed in 2002 included some first patented in the 1980s.

CTT also executed 81 option and license agreements in 2002, along with 614 material transfer agreements, 20 percent more than in 2001.

Technologies commercialized by CTT in fiscal year 2002 include:

• A newly discovered protein, licensed to an established local company, that may lay the groundwork for treatments that prevent or cure osteoarthritis;
• A diesel-powered fuel cell, developed by chemical engineers at Penn, that's now the basis for a local start-up dubbed Franklin Fuel Cells;
• A new method of synthesizing ceramics used in the production of carbon nanotubes, licensed to a chemical-supply company;
• Various approaches to new cancer therapies, including a chemical compound that may prevent the growth and proliferation of cancer cells, an agent that is a potent promoter of immune cells and a class of viral proteins that can selectively induce cell death in rapidly dividing cancer cells. The first two technologies were licensed to established firms in Seattle and San Francisco, respectively, and the third is the foundation for a start-up called Viral Genomix.

CTT's staff of fewer than two dozen works with Penn researchers to bring their ideas and innovations to the marketplace. Established in 1986, CTT builds upon earlier Penn efforts to take advantage of a 1980 federal law aimed at bringing more federally funded research discoveries into the market.