You are browsing the archives of Penn State.

BioPontis Alliance’s business model. Credit: BioPontis Alliance.

I don’t know how generic the situation is (but I suspect it’s similar in materials fields), but a story in Nature Biotechnology—”New models emerge for commercializing university assets,” by Nuala Moran (doi:10.1038/nbt0911-774)—describes some of the dilemmas and responses universities and private industries engaged in biotech development are coming up with to cope with some of the fallout of the limping economy, such as less venture capital funding, less early-stage research funding and all around greater fears about investment risk.

What caught my eye is that Moran profiles an interesting commercialization model being executed by an entity called BioPontis Alliance, based in the Raleigh-Durham (N.C.) Research Triangle Park, which acts as something of a tech transfer accelerant between academia and industry in the field of pharmaceutical research.

BioPontis’ website describes itself as a “hybrid business structure combining asset-based fund investment with industry-experienced asset development.” There are several key components to the model, split between its work with universities and its work with industry:

• On the academic side, BioPontis works simultaneously with several universities, prenegotiating master license agreements. BioPontis obtains nonexclusive rights to examine the school’s IP portfolio and interview relevant faculty and investigators. The schools retain the right to limit what BioPontis can examine. When BioPontis identifies a specific IP asset of interest, a 45-day exclusivity clock starts ticking, when it must make a go/no-go commitment to run with the asset. No immediate payments are made to the university, but at some point before or at the point when it decides to pick up an IP property (the timing is not exactly clear from the story) BioPontis has to stipulate how “mature” it thinks the school’s asset is. This agreed-to level of maturity will determine the university’s ultimate share of the value after BioPontis develops it further and licenses it to an end-user company. BioPontis officials say the cash flow back to it and the school will be determined by the business end of things: It says market demand will determine it’s value.

• On the industry side, BioPontis also prenegotiates agreements with end-use companies. The company has already done so with three big pharma companies. They have the option to acquire assets once they are developed by BioPontis to a “human proof of concept” stage (and here is where the model may not apply directly to nonbiotech materials).

So how do the assets get developed in between the university and end-user licensee? BioPontis uses the inventing scientists as the core for continuing to develop the product. It also uses a network of R&D contract research organizations to develop and validate the technology to the point where it can be marketed to a bigger fish.

Penn State, one of the universities BioPontis has signed up, says it likes the agreement because it can control what the firm initially sees and can limit BioPontis’ term of exclusivity. One school official is quoted by Moran as saying, “We give them early-stage IP, which they work on with access to our professors. They validate the technology under standard terms. It’s a fabulous model.”

Besides Penn State, BioPontis has partnership arrangements with Columbia University, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York University, University of Florida, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Pennsylvania and University of Virginia.

Moran also mentions that similar models are being used in by at least one enterprise in London.

Share

a) Schematic of the HPCVD process, where a high pressure precursor mixture is configured to flow into a capillary (left). When the capillary is heated, well-developed annular films are deposited. Unreacted precursors, carrier gas, and reaction byproducts are carried out of the fiber (right). b) Diascopically illuminated optical micrograph from the side showing the transparent, uniform ZnSe fiber core. The deposited structures can have a uniform cross section for as long as 4 cm when made in a 10-cm-long furnace. Note that cylindrical lensing effects magnify the interior tube diameter considerably in this view, making its 400 nm diameter appear much larger than it is. c) Cross-sectional SEM image showing an overview of the silica cladding and ZnSe core. d) A higher magnification SEM image of the nearly completely filled core. Scale bars: b) 50 μm, c) 50 μm, d) 5 μm. Credit: J. Badding, PSU; Advanced Materials.

Scientists at Penn State University report that they developed the first optical fiber made with a core of zinc selenide. The team is led by John Badding, professor of chemistry at PSU with help from fellow researchers at the school’s Materials Research Institute and Department of Materials Science and Engineering, as well as scientists at the Optoelectronics Research Centre at the University of Southampton (U.K.).

Badding says in a PSU news release:

“It has become almost a cliche to say that optical fibers are the cornerstone of the modern information age. These long, thin fibers, which are three times as thick as a human hair, can transmit over a terabyte — the equivalent of 250 DVDs of information per second. Still, there always are ways to improve on existing technology. Glass has a haphazard arrangement of atoms. In contrast, a crystalline substance like zinc selenide is highly ordered. That order allows light to be transported over longer wavelengths, specifically those in the mid-infrared.”

The group’s methods include a specially developed high-pressure chemical vapor deposition technique. ”The high-pressure deposition is unique in allowing formation of such long, thin, zinc selenide fiber cores in a very confined space,” Badding says in the release.

According to the PSU release, “this new class of optical fiber allows for a more effective and liberal manipulation of light and promises to open the door to more versatile laser-radar technology.” Other applications include the development of improved surgical and medical lasers, better countermeasure lasers used by the military, and superior environment-sensing lasers for measuring pollutants and to detect the dissemination of bioterrorist chemical agents. New lighting uses also may be possible.

ACerS member Venkatraman Gopalan, professor at Penn State’s Department of Materials Science and

Gopalan

Engineering and the associate director for the Center for Optical Technologies, is a member of the research team. In an email, Gopalan fills me in more about the context of their optical fiber discovery. He notes, ”Infrared wavelength range is extremely important, and yet even the basic infrared technologies such as optics, coatings, waveguides, lasers, and detectors are in their infancy, as compared with technologies in the visible or telecon wavelengths. This development breathes new life into glass fibers that are usually infrared opaque beyond ~2.5 microns wavelength.”

He also predicts that these fibers could revolutionize many important areas of optics research, such as fiber-based guiding, imaging, spectroscopy and tunable lasers. “The deposition technique is versatile enough to imagine a whole family of important compound semiconductors making their way into fiber cores in the near future. Optical fibers may soon come with many flavors and functions well beyond what glass can do,” writes Gopalan.

Researcher team member Anna Peacock remarks on her website that, “ultra-fast all-fibre optical switches will reduce costs and improve efficiency of communications systems, whilst laser sources, which operate in the mid-infrared, can be used for environmental sensing and medical applications. The incorporation of the active semiconductor component into the fiber geometry provides an important step towards seamlessly linking semiconductor photonics with existing fiber infrastructures.”

The team’s research was published online March 1, 2011 in the Early View version of Advanced Materials.

This recent work seems to follow a logical progression of research efforts by many of the team members. Baddin, P.J.A. Sazio and Gopalan demonstrated that they could build semiconductor devices (germanium) in optical fibers in 2006 and predicted then that this would lead to fibers with flexible waveguides. That year, they also demonstrated similar techniques using optical fibers with special microstructure features.

In 2007, the group also published a paper on filling microstructured optical fibers with amorphous silicon and built on this in 2008 by showing how they could use a high-pressure microfluidic process to adapt traditional chemical vapor deposition techniques to deposit silicon carbide in MOFs. Their thinking then was that “the introduction of SiC into the capillaries presents tremendous potential for the development of in-fiber optoelectronic devices with potential applications, including light generation, modulation and amplification.”

By 2010, they were able to produce silica nanofibers with circular cross sections that can simultaneously waveguide transverse electric and transverse magnetic polarizations without cutoffs.

Share

Congratulations go out to ACerS member Elizabeth Dickey for being tapped as the next dean of the Edward E. Whitacre Jr. College of Engineering at Texas Tech University. Dickey has been active in and is past chair of ACerS’ Basic Science Division.

In a news release from Texas Tech, Provost Bob Smith said Dickey was selected from a field of over 50 applicants. “We appreciate Beth’s record as a scientist, faculty member and academic leader at one of the nation’s foremost materials science programs,” Smith said.

“Texas Tech has a long history of success in its engineering programs,” said Guy Bailey, president of Texas Tech. “We look forward to Beth leading the Whitacre College of Engineering in the next phases of cutting-edge research and educational programs and as we explore new areas of energy production, storage, integration and infrastructure.”

“It is an exciting and potentially transformative time in the history of Texas Tech University,” said Dickey, “The institution is poised to increase its stature and impact as one of Texas’ great public research universities, and the Whitacre College of Engineering will play a critical role in successfully realizing the university’s goals and aspirations.”

Dickey, who will assume her new position at the university Jan. 1, 2011, is now a professor of materials science and engineering and the associate director of the Materials Research Institute at Pennsylvania State University. Dickey’s full bio is available here.

Her academic and research interests include nanomaterials for electrical and sensing applications, interface materials science, high-temperature ceramic composites, transmission electron microscopy and residual stress analysis in textured composites.

Currently, Whitacre College has eight engineering focuses: civil and environmental, chemical, construction and engineering technology, computer science, electrical and computer, industrial, mechanical and petroleum.

Share

In a recent interview with Nanowerk, Ayusman Sen, a professor at the Department of Chemistry at Penn State, explained how he uses titanium dioxide to convert optical energy to mechanical energy via photocatalysis. The team’s findings were published recently in Advanced Functional Materials.

“The whole system consists only of titania, water, sometimes organics, and light input. The system is very forgiving, requiring no careful control of substrate concentration or catalyst conditioning, and is easily controllable by external light,” says Sen.

Via Nanowerk:

“There are two categories of autonomous movement associated with titanium dioxide: the photo-induced motility of titanium dioxide particles (ranging from 0.2 to 2.5 µm) and the photo-induced reversible ‘microfireworks’ where silicon dioxide particles, which tend to gather around titanium dioxide particles, were shown to immediately move away from the titanium dioxide particles upon exposure to UV light, thereby creating an exclusion zone cleared of particles around each individual titanium dioxide particle. When the UV source is removed, the tracer particles pull back toward the titanium dioxide particle and form the aggregates again.”

Sen explains that the photoactivity of titanium dioxide comes from its hole–electron separation triggered by photons of energy equal to or higher than its bandgap.

“The reactions produce more product molecules than the reactants consumed, making it possible to propel a titanium dioxide particle by the mechanism of osmotic propulsion,” he says.

Sen claims that the titanium dioxide-based motor system is highly active, inexpensive, clean and simple.

Self-propelled motion of synthetic materials can be useful in applications such as bottom-up assembly of structures, pattern formation and drug delivery at specific locations.

The video above shows the photoactivity of a large titania particle in 1M methanol. The surrounding tracer particles are silica.

Share

(Either JavaScript is not active or you are using an old version of Adobe Flash Player. Please install the newest Flash Player.)

In this video, Dinesh Agrawal, professor of materials and director the Penn State’s Microwave Processing and Engineering Center, provides an overview of the growing use of microwaves to make a variety of products and materials at faster rates, cheaper processing costs and, often, with improved properties. As Agrawal notes in a paper written for the Bulletin of the American Ceramic Society, the speed and efficiency of microwave technology makes the process “ecologically friendly.”

Microwaves can cut processing times by 90 percent, enhance sintering and reaction kinetics (providing much finer and uniform microstructures) and often create new materials not possible with conventional methods.

Share