Until now, the only university in the country to have a similar program was MIT.

"For two days, we will let them see for the first time technologies that have been written up in our patents and are emerging from the medical school," said BioVentures director Michael Douglas.

A previous version of the roundtable coordinated by the Arkansas Science and Technology Authority (ASTA) was held in Little Rock in 2005, but Douglas said that this new initiative represents a larger coalition of entities led by the university, and that they have designed it to be an annual event that will increase interest and investment in Arkansas's technologies year after year.

"This is really an effort to see the success of the first one properly captured and continued," he said. "It requires an awful lot of organization and cooperation, and it requires an investment community that's anxious to seed things and is behind the university in its effort to promote these technologies."

Douglas said co-sponsors of the March 15-16 event are the UAMS School of Medicine, ASTA, the Arkansas Economic Development Authority and the Little Rock Chamber of Commerce. Key Central Arkansas leaders including the Little Rock mayor and the UAMS chancellor will speak at an evening mixer welcoming participants to the event.

Due to the highly proprietary and confidential nature of the research being presented, invitations were sent only to select regional investment firms from areas such as Memphis, St. Louis, Atlanta and Dallas with an interest in Arkansas-grown technologies. Among those participating in the roundtable are Richland Ventures, Allied Minds, Fund for Arkansas Future, Prolog Ventures, MB Ventures, Cameron Capital Partners and Delta Capital.

These members of the investment community will get an exclusive first peek at some nascent biotechnologies, as well as a few more mature projects they first saw in 2005.

"There were some projects that they saw at the earlier version of the roundtable, and they're interested in seeing them again," Douglas said, "so they get a chance to come back and see how much progress has been made in the past year or so."

Douglas said promising technologies to be presented include vaccine development, various therapeutic targets and applications, some "very, very clever and exciting surgical devices" and new early-stage clinical diagnostic markers. Additionally, BioVentures reached out to other Arkansas universities for research to present. Douglas said they will be including presentations on various microfluidic devices and coding materials for orthopedic implants from researchers at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.

Developing a strong working relationship with the technology investment community and giving them the opportunity to follow certain projects could ultimately result in the commercialization of many of these technologies.

"We're going to invite them every year so that when they feel there's enough risk taken out of the investment, that the technology has enough leg to it that it's going to do well, then they'll go ahead and invest money," Douglas said. "Then these venture capital groups will actually syndicate, go in together to support our technologies."

The program has value for a number of other reasons, chief among them being the fresh perspective investors bring. "Probably the most invaluable feedback we get is the enthusiasm of the community for the different technologies that they see," he said. "That tells us that we've got some competitive technologies in development."

He added that it's a wonderful opportunity for the investment community to get to know some of the more entrepreneurial professors at the university. The investment firms make recommendations on what could be done to enhance the commercialization of projects and to make them viable investment opportunities. Douglas said that because they typically are more focused on the science of their projects than their market appeal, the researchers also find the roundtable a "very enlightening" experience.

"They're presenting their technologies to a much different audience than they would for, say, scientific review," Douglas said, "so we work with them beforehand to enhance the marketability. I think they all learn a great deal from the process, and it helps them become more aware of these types of opportunities should they come up in the future."

While this is an Arkansas initiative and Arkansas research, Douglas said it is important to remember that the applications of BioVentures' work have a much greater scope.

"The whole end play for us here is the efficient evaluation and movement of our technologies to commercialization," Douglas said. "All of this is driving a program that delivers in the long run better healthcare for mankind."

March 2007

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