Feature
Opening a Path to Commercialization
To smooth the academic-to-industry transition, one institution is experimenting with offering biomedical researchers pre-commercial open access to new optical imaging systems still under development. The approach, the authors of this case study suggest, can be a win on both sides.
Magdalini Panagiotakopoulou, from ETH Zurich, Switzerland, works with the lattice light sheet microscope at Janelia’s Advanced Imaging Center.
Commercializing a novel technology incubated in academia—always an arduous process—faces particular challenges when the technology has an interdisciplinary audience. For technologies such as a new advanced microscope, for example, collaboration between optical physicists, engineers and biomedical end users is essential for success. But arranging that collaboration can pose significant challenges, owing not just to logistics but also to the inherent compartmentalization of these separate disciplines. And the effort carries big risks for the commercializing company as well, which must grapple with establishing meaningful proof-of-principle cases and protocols, with avoiding hype, and with determining the market potential of a technology not yet widely proven or known.
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