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Stanford Report, August 8, 2007

Drug production, disease management and digital world revolutionized by Stanford inventions

BY JESSE BOYETT ANDERSON

The Office of Technology Licensing helps transfer Stanford inventions from the laboratory to the public. Since its inception as a pilot program in 1968, the office has generated more than $1 billion in royalties and has grown from a staff of two to 29 in order to accommodate the growing number of inventions produced by Stanford scientists. During 2006, the office handled nearly 520 new inventions while the 470 existing, royalty-producing inventions generated more than $61 million in revenue in fiscal year 2005-06, the most recent year for which numbers are available.

"Our primary objective is to transfer as many inventions as we can to companies that are interested in commercializing them," said Katharine Ku, director of the Office of Technology Licensing. "Although many people focus on the royalty income, our role is not to maximize income but rather to find dedicated companies who will bring our inventions to the marketplace as quickly and effectively as possible. That is how the public benefits."

Following are a sampling of 10, listed alphabetically, that have benefited the public.

Digital sound synthesis

FM sound synthesis was the first blockbuster hit to come through the technology licensing office. John Chowning, professor emeritus of music, developed this technique for digitally generating sounds in the late 1960s. Yamaha acquired the license to this technology in 1973, and after 10 years of development, the Yamaha-DX synthesizer was released with great commercial success. The Yamaha FM chip later became the de facto standard for music synthesizers, personal computers and cell phones.

Disease management

The Stanford Patient Education Research Center has developed, tested and evaluated self-management programs for people with chronic health problems, ranging from arthritis to HIV/AIDS, and has found that these programs improve physical and emotional health while reducing healthcare costs. The flagship program has been licensed to more than 500 organizations in 17 different countries and 40 U.S. states.

DSL

During the late 1980s, Professor John Cioffi and four of his graduate electrical engineering students realized that traditional phone lines could be used for high-speed data transmission. Their innovations resulted in four patents currently used in asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL), which allows users to download information 30 to 50 times faster than 56K analog modems. Texas Instruments, the original exclusive licensee, broadly sublicensed the Stanford patents.

E-mail security

Identity theft and digital espionage concern corporations as well as individuals. Identity-based encryption (IBE) offers an efficient way to encrypt and protect e-mail. Developed by Dan Boneh, associate professor of computer science and of electrical engineering, and Matt Franklin, a professor at the University of California-Davis, this technology is used for secure communication at financial, healthcare, government and pharmaceutical companies.

Functional antibodies to treat disease

In the late 1980s, Leonard Herzenberg, professor of genetics, and Vernon Oi, a former postdoctoral fellow of Herzenberg's, figured out how to mass produce antibodies—molecules that detect foreign substances and target them for destruction by the body's immune system. Using this technology, Johnson & Johnson has developed treatments for diseases such as Crohn's disease and rheumatoid arthritis (Remicade), as well as an anti-clotting agent (ReoPro).

Genome sequencing

In 2001, two groups announced that they had mapped the human genome. Scientists who determined the sequence of the DNA found in every cell of the human body relied on two Stanford inventions. CHEF electrophoresis, invented in 1987 by Ron Davis, professor of biochemistry and genetics; Gilbert Chu, professor of biochemistry and medicine (oncology); and Douglas Vollrath, associate professor of genetics, allowed scientists to precisely separate individual molecules of DNA.

Genscan software, developed by Christopher Burge while he was a graduate student in the lab of Samuel Karlin, professor emeritus of mathematics, helped locate genes within the vast stretches of DNA.

Google

The world's most popular search engine got its start in a Stanford dorm room. Sergey Brin and Larry Page developed the page-rank algorithm while they were graduate students in the Department of Computer Science. In 1998, Stanford licensed the technology back to the inventors as the basis of a start-up company. Google went public in 2004.

Personalized medicine

Knowing the genetic profiles of patients and their diseases helps doctors prescribe more targeted treatments. The gene chip, based on spotted microarray technology developed in the early 1990s by Professor Pat Brown and his graduate student Dari Shalon in the Department of Biochemistry, allows doctors to create such profiles. This technique has been used to identify subtypes of many cancers, including breast cancer, liver cancer and lung cancer.

Recombinant drug production

The development of recombinant DNA technology in 1973 by Stanley Cohen, professor of medicine, and Herbert Boyer, professor emeritus at UC-San Francisco, laid the groundwork for the modern era of genetic engineering. This technology allows scientists to combine pieces of DNA from different organisms and has led to many lifesaving discoveries, including the insulin diabetics use to control blood sugar levels, tissue plasminogen activator (TPA), which prevents long-term damage from heart-attack and stroke, and interferon for cancer patients.

Jesse Boyett Anderson is a science-writing intern at the Stanford News Service.