NIH announces licensing opportunities for rare disease technologies

NIH announces licensing opportunities for rare disease technologies

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) began a new website offering technologies available for commercial licensing that are related to rare diseases or conditions. The listing can be found at http://www.ott.nih.gov/rarediseases and consists of more than 500 such technologies, including drugs, biologics, and devices, available to be transferred from the NIH and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to the private sector for further research and development and potential commercialization.

The Office of Rare Diseases (ORD) and the Office of Technology Transfer (OTT) at the NIH developed the new resource. The website module was developed in an attempt to provide a more collaborative, consolidated, and systematic approach to the development of products for rare diseases and conditions. Parties interested in licensing will be directed to the institution owning the technology. Not-for-profit institutions can submit additional technologies at http://www.ott.nih.gov/rarediseases/submit.

The NIH Office of Rare Diseases stimulates and coordinates research on rare diseases and supports research to respond to the needs of patients, healthcare providers and the research communities involved in the care, treatment, and evaluation of products for the preventions, diagnosis, or treatment of theses conditions. For more information, visit http://rarediseases.info.nih.gov/.

The NIH Office of Technology Transfer evaluates, protects, licenses, monitors, and manages the NIH and FDA intramural invention. For more information about OTT, visit http://www.ott.nih.gov/.

Source: NIH News Release, December 11, 2006 http://ott.od.nih.gov/licensing_royalties/raredisease_ovrvw.asp