UCLA Answers to Health Business Needs

I am currently at UCLA Health Business Administration 2nd Annual Conference and just finished listening to Dr William Ouchi's outstanding 30,000 feet overview of where UCLA is heading in terms of developing infrastructure to promote commercial efforts on campus. It was super enlightening and insightful to finally understand the strategy behind the major initiatives ongoing on campus and here is a must-read summary of my notes:

William Ouchi, PhD UCLA Associate Director of CTSI

• UCLA budget: $28 billion
• Sponsored research at UCLA: $1 billion (!)
• UCLA initiative goal: from the first disclosure of patent to market, we want that period to be 8 month
• We have the infrastructure at UCLA to scale our research to commercial market

• Dr Ouchi and colleagues interviewed the top 70 inventors on campus at UCLA and what the committee found was:
• we need an equivalent of Stanford Industry Park at UCLA
• this will permit corporate sponsors (ie. fund, pay rent) for research projects
• the problem: the task force found that UCLA cannot endeavor in commercial efforts on campus because the buildings on campus were funded by tax exempt bond financing. Therefore, buildings cannot be used to host efforts which will compete against commercial efforts
• This limitation was taken up to the UC Regents. Subsequently, UC Regents issued $800 million of taxable bonds to all UC campuses and UCLA took 50% of bonds
• 1994- Northridge earthquake created damage to my favorite building on campus, Center for Health Sciences (CHS)
• Al Osborne, Neil Denari, Chancellor Block, et al used the taxable financing to renovate CHS
• this will permit commercial-led projects at CHS: the return on investment will then be used to pay to renovate the remainder of the building.
• Few neat facts about CHS:
• CHS is the 3rd largest bldg (3rd only to homeland security and pentagon)
• 3.8 sq million feet. CHS will become our Stanford Industrial Park
• Analysis done by the School of Business demonstrated that when comparing biotech:pharma vs UC:pharma inventions, the investment return of biotech:company is 3x more than UC: pharma. Why?
1. It turns out UC: Pharma is less yield because UC licenses our inventions too early. UC need to optimize monetary value before pitching it.
2. UC has messy IP process.
3. UC inventors have only marketable inventions 1-2 x / yr (vs biotech companies which generate inventions daily 
• So, what can UCLA offer?
• Well, UCLA has vertical integration
• Few institutions have Business, Medicine, Public Heath, Computer Science, Engineering, etc all within a few buildings of each other
• It turns out this vertical integration can reduce the cost of product develop to a fraction of what the pharma spend to bring one product to the market ($11 billion)
• After extensive evaluation and strategic planning to harness our vertical integration advantage, UCLA started the UCLAATT, Inc
• UCLAATT, Inc Ecosystem Network at UCLA
• this provides the infrastructure for commercialization of medical development
• also because the scale is so vast, the infrastructure has be designed to permit autonomy of individuals
• As a result, Westwood Technology Transfer (WWT) hold the sole authority to permit filing of patent or copyright
• WWT will work in conjunction and must consult with the general office in Oakland
• but as this is going on, we are still learning