Research: Advancing Patient Care and Bringing New Ideas to the Marketplace

In 1996, URMC launched an ambitious $500 million, 10-year strategic plan to expand its biomedical research enterprise. This plan consisted of building the necessary infrastructure (including a new state-of-the-art 380,000 square foot research building) and attracting researchers with the goal of becoming a nationally recognized leader in biomedical research and health care innovation.

NIH Funding Continues to Grow at URMC

The result has been the recruitment of 500 new faculty and staff and a doubling of National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding (from $72 million in 1998 to $142 million in 2004). The plan also called for the creation of multidisciplinary research "Centers" to foster collaborative research projects across several fields and facilitate the development of new treatments for patients. Click here for more information on our basic and clinical research.

Capitalizing on Research

URMC also has developed ways to capture more revenue from its intellectual capital and to seek out other private sources of research funds. Two offices were created to accomplish this. The first, the Office of Technology Transfer, was created in 2001 to protect the intellectual property of URMC and transfer those licenses to private industry or assist in the creation of start-up companies. This has led to a tremendous growth in patented intellectual property that, in the future, will hopefully lead to substantial increases in license fees and royalty payments. Currently, royalty income at URMC — projected to be $27 million in 2005 — places us seventh among U.S. medical schools.

The second office is the Office of Corporate Alliances (OCA), which was created to market URMC intellectual property and research resources to industry and increase the level of venture capital funding for start-up companies created by URMC research. Since its launch earlier this year, OCA has landed an agreement with Johnson & Johnson to establish a "Discovery Fund" to provide grants to URMC researchers. OCA is also in advanced stages of discussion with several other corporations.

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