The NIH Office of Technology Transfer (OTT) evaluates, protects, monitors, and manages the NIH and FDA intramural research invention portfolios. These portfolios cover the broad spectrum of public health concerns including heart disease, cancer, infectious diseases, neurological disorders, respiratory illnesses, mental well-being, musculoskeletal disorders, drug/alcohol addiction, aging, and many others. Technologies include those with potential application as diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines; research materials are also available. Partnering Goals: To help achieve the NIH research goal of protecting and improving human health, we seek licensees and/or Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) partners to further develop and commercialize the novel research discoveries that are made here.

Licensing Technology at NIH NIH has an extensive intellectual property portfolio of early- stage technologies and also invests substantially in their development. Roughly 10 percent of the annual NIH budget is dedicated to intramural research and development activities -- resulting in inventions that form the basis of a variety of new medical technologies and therapies in the areas of medical devices, software, vaccines, diagnostics, and reagents. Similar to university research, commercial partners are needed to ensure that long hours at the lab bench and the public's investment pay off in the end in marketed products. The NIH technology licensing program is the most successful technology transfer program in the federal government in terms of commercialized products. Over the last 15 years, there have been 23 FDA-approved products developed with technologies from the NIH Intramural Research Program. During the 5-year period of fiscal years 2001 to 2005, NIH executed 1,229 licenses and sales of commercialized products during the same period generated $305 million in royalties. Overall product sales from NIH licensees exceed $5 billion on an annual basis. In the most recent Department of Commerce survey (FY2003), NIH royalties accounted for 56 percent of all federal royalties. Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs) at NIH CRADAs provide an exciting opportunity for NIH investigators to join with their colleagues from industry and academia in the joint pursuit of common research goals. NIH scientists can leverage their own research resources, as well as serve the larger mission of NIH, to facilitate the development and commercialization of health-care pharmaceuticals and products. Companies also can leverage their own R&D efforts while collaborating in state-of-the-art NIH research. The purpose of a CRADA is to make government facilities, intellectual property, and expertise available for collaborative interactions to further the development of scientific and technological knowledge into useful, marketable products. Each NIH institute has a Technology Development Coordinator who will assist the company and the NIH investigator in developing the proper documents and obtaining required approvals. Important inventions, such as TAXUS® Express2™, the hepatitis A vaccine, and Laser Capture Microdissection were commercialized in part under CRADAs with industry. In FY2005, NIH executed 80 new CRADAs.