PITTSBURGH—The University of Pittsburgh and UPMC haveentered into a partnership with Johnson & Johnson Corporate Office ofScience and Technology (COSAT) to support translational research, whichtransforms lab findings into usable products and services, by jointlyallocating research monies to university faculty from a mutually establishedfund.
COSAT has a long history of supporting the development oftechnologies through collaboration with academic institutions, and Pitt holds astrong record of moving basic scientific research from the lab to the patient'sbedside. The new agreement is designed to improve the speed of development ofearly stage Pitt technologies that hold the greatest potential to benefitpatients and improve services delivered by the healthcare system.
Pitt will lead a committee including representatives fromCOSAT and UPMC to identify projects of promise that could benefit from fundingsupport. As with other research efforts, intellectual property or technologiesdeveloped at Pitt through this program will be owned by the university and madeavailable through licensing agreements to industry collaborators throughwell-established procedures.
Dr. Arthur S. Levine, Pitt's senior vice chancellor for thehealth sciences and dean, School of Medicine, notes that "the university hastremendous capabilities in all aspects of biomedical research. This newpartnership with COSAT will foster the continued development of high-caliberwork with great scientific and therapeutic potential."
The university and UPMC recently formed a pharmaceuticalcollaboration committee to address how best to work with the pharmaceutical andbiotech industries, including the co-mingled COSAT fund. The committee is ledby Dr. D. Lansing Taylor, director of Pitt's Drug Discovery Institute andAllegheny Foundation Professor of Computational and Systems Biology, andcomposed of faculty from the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences and theSchools of Medicine and Pharmacy, as well as staff from the university's Officeof Technology Management and UPMC.
