Technology Transfer of Plant Biotechnology

Peter M. Gresshoff

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351411677
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Biology
• Index: Biological Sciences

Plant biotechnology has come of age. Products obtained by genetically engineered methods, once limited to science fiction, have become a reality. This book is an outstanding synthesis of the current status of technology transfer from the laboratory to the marketplace. It discusses the use of genetically engineered crops, with the focus on biotechnology becoming commercially marketable. Technology Transfer of Plant Biotechnology addresses these important new products.

Chapter 1

Technology Transfer: Biotechnology Information and the Federal Government

Raymond C. Dobert

Biotechnology Information Center, National Agricultural Library,

Agricultural Research Service - United States Department of Agriculture (USD A), Beltsville, MD 20705, USA

Overview

Technology transfer is a process that requires effective communication and large amounts of information. The federal government, as the largest supporter of scientific research in this country, has a vested interest in promoting the technology transfer process. To accomplish this goal, a number of information services and dissemination tools have been developed that can be used to facilitate the technology transfer process. These same resources can be tapped into by researchers in industry and academia to obtain valuable research information. Since information is the linchpin of successful technology transfer, the USDA's National Agricultural Library houses specialized information centers that focus on biotechnology, plant genomics and technology transfer.

Several databases are also maintained by USDA to provide access to current and pre-publication research findings from USDA-supported laboratories. Many government and institutional resources are now accessible through the Internet, a venue which is likely to serve as the foundation for future federal technology transfer activities. Understanding and participating in technology transfer activities will become increasingly important as these activities are likely to become a prerequisite for some federally-funded research grants in the future.

What is 'technology transfer'?

Technology transfer means different things to different people. To some scientists it may be little more than a buzzword, to others it may be the underlying goal of their research program. With publicly-supported research under increasing pressure to generate or support commercially relevant technologies, technology transfer will become a necessary part of any research program. Technology transfer can also have its financial rewards, as many institutions provide for researchers to share in revenue generated through licensing fees and royalties.

Simply stated technology transfer is the transfer of research results from research institutions, such as universities or federal laboratories, to the commercial sector or other technology users. For the agricultural sciences, the ultimate technology user may be the farmer or consumer. To be effective, technology transfer relies on effective communication and vast amounts of information. But at times the sheer volume of information available can hinder its effective use. Like society in general, researchers can often be overloaded with information. Some1 billion pages of "new" information is created per day in the U.S.;736,000 book titles are published per year! At this rate, published scholarly nformation doubles every 8 years. Unfortunately knowledge and information are not synonymous terms, since research results have value as knowledge only when they are put to effective use. Transferring research results into practical applications is what technology transfer is all about.

The federal government supports technology transfer by providing both information and communication channels and reducing the impediments that can limit technology adoption by the private sector. Ideally federal agencies should serve as brokers of scientific, technical and business information. Development of new technologies is also supported through in-house (intramural) research projects which are directly supported by the federal government. In addition to the federal efforts to move technology from the lab to the marketplace, many universities and other research institutions have their own technology transfer offices to assist researchers at a local level.

Much of technology transfer relies upon the creation, protection and subsequent dissemination and application of intellectual property. The primary means to protect intellectual property is the patent, a form of protection allowed for genetically modified plants only since 1985.¹Thus, a researcher first formulates an idea, which is developed into a practical finding or process. If this discovery can be demonstrated to be useful, novel, and non obvious it stands a chance of being patentable. Once a technology is patented, its practical use is usually achieved through licensing agreements. Unfortunately, prior to 1980 intellectual property resulting from federally-supported research projects (both intramural and extramural) was essentially owned by the federal government. Given this restriction, researchers at universities and federal labs had little incentive to pursue the development and commercialization of their work.

In the intervening 15 years a number of federal technology transfer laws, beginning with the landmark Bayh-Dole Technology Transfer Act of1980, have made it increasingly easier for private companies to access and benefit from federal research projects. First and foremost, federal research can now be patented and made available for licensing while protecting are searchers' rights to his or her invention. As an example, cooperative research and development agreements (CRADAs) between a private firm and a federal research agency now provide the first right to exclusive licenses on patented inventions to the cooperating company. In return, the cooperating enterprise can provide the know-how needed to proceed through the development and commercialization phases required to bring a new product or service to the market. In the agricultural research area, the USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) currently has over 500researcher-initiated CRADAs in place to help develop promising technologies. However, the ability to provide intellectual property protection for the wealth of federally-funded research does not ensure that these technologies are utilized. The award of a patent is not the end of the road for the technology transfer process. The technology must be linked to a user willing to proceed with the commercialize process. How do commercial firms learn about available government technology? Timely research information is the key.

¹Ex parte Hibberd, 227 U.S.P.Q. 443 (P.T.O. Bd.. App. & Inter. 1985)

The government as information provider

Several factors make the federal government a logical source of research information. The federal government is the largest funding source for basic research. In 1993 over US$4.2 billion was spent to support "biotechnology" research, although only a small portion of that money ($233 million) supported research in the agricultural field.² This fact coupled with increasing calls for spending accountability, requires that the "research portfolio" of the federal government be made as accessible as possible. Thus, many branches of the federal government work to facilitate information sharing and rapid communication of research results with the private sector.

Federal agencies also hold a significant portfolio of intellectual property in the area of biotechnology. A recent technology directory found over 2, 100 biotechnology-related patents which were held by the US government.³Many times the information or research results contained in these patents is unpublished and is not available from any other source. Unlike patents held by individuals or corporations, which are available to the public only after the patent has been awarded, pending patent applications from federal research agencies are often available for review.

² Federal Coordinating Council for Science, Engineering, and Technology. Biotechnology for the 21st Century: Realizing the Promise - A Report by the Committee on Life Sciences and Health of the Federal Coordinating Council for Science, Engineering, and Technology, Executive Office of the President, Washington, DC, June 1993.

³ Rader, R.A. & S.A. Young. Federal Bio-Technology Transfer Directory, Biotechnology Information Institute, Rockville, MD, 1994.

As previously alluded, only a small percentage of the federal dollars spent in the field of biotechnology are directed towards agriculture or the plant sciences. As a result of this relatively small funding base, plant biotechnology information is generally obtained from sources that cover the much broader field of agriculture or focus on biotechnology, which, in general, emphasize medical/pharmaceutical applications. Examples of federally supported bio technology information resources which cover plant molecular biology only incidentally would include GENBANK and the products and services of the NIH's National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). These services serve as a primary research tool and have not been widely used in technology transfer activities. Nonetheless, a number of information products and services available on plant biotechnology from the federal government and other institutions are available.

USDA maintains several databases that profile current research including the CRIS (Current Research Information System), and TEKTRAN databases. In addition, USDA has several offices dedicated to technology transfer activities and funding private sector research through its SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) grants program. The Biotechnology Information Center and the Technology Transfer information Center at the National Agricultural Library provide assistance in accessing these and other information sources. An additional source of information, the FEDRIP (Federal Research in Progress) database contains over 120,000 research projects supported by federal agencies. Many other government programs, both federal and state, are focused on facilitating the transfer of information out of laboratories. For the committed researcher or technology developer, assistance and opportunities for technology transfer are plentiful.

The Biotechnology Information Center (BIC)

The Biotechnology Information Center (BIC) in Belts ville, Maryland was founded in 1985 to help complement and support the biotechnology research and outreach programs at the USDA.⁴ Housed at the National Agricultural Library, site of the world's largest collection of agricultural literature, the BIC has access to an extensive collection of biotechnology information. The Center is designed to help answer the who, what, when and where questions regarding agricultural biotechnology research and federal policy. To accomplish this task, the BIC provides the following services to the biotechnology research community:

I. Provision of Informational Products - Aids such as directories of experts, institutions, associations, upcoming meetings and bibliographic material are produced to assist consumers, educators, public and private-sector researchers, and policy-makers find current information on the field of biotechnology.

⁴ The Biotechnology Information Center can be reached at 1-301-504-5947 OR via e-mail to [email protected].

Many of the informational products are also available electronically via the Internet (see below).

II. Specialized References Services - To handle specialized information requests, the BIC staff are familiar with concepts and techniques used in biotechnology. They can provide assistance in locating biotechnology information for business, research and study. BIC will perform brief complimentary literature searches of USDA's Agricola database on specific biotechnology topics or conduct exhaustive searches of major databases on a cost recovery basis. From the novice to the expert, the staff of the BIC can provide the appropriate level of information.

III. Biotechnology Information Center Gopher/WWW

To support the transition of the National Agricultural Library from a resource based on paper to one which is available electronically from remote sites, the Biotechnology Information Center has focused its energy on developing Internet-available resources.⁵ In cooperation with the University of Maryland Computer Science Center, the BIC has constructed WWW/gopher sites which increase the accessibility to BIC information products such as bibliographies and resource guides. As Internet tools, gopher and the world-wide-web are simply applications that help organize and retrieve hierarchical or hyperlinked files from various "servers" connected to the Internet. It provides a uniform interface that allows for universal access to text files, software programs, databases and for the WWW graphical and audio electronic files. In addition to BIC publications, several biotechnology newsletters are archived at the site and connections to other biotechnology-related web and gopher sites around the world have been made. Federal documents related to agricultural biotechnology (reports, press releases, regulatory documents) and a gateway to full-text biotechnology patents are also included.

The Technology Transfer Information Center (TTIC)

The National Agricultural Library also houses the Technology Transfer Information Center⁶ which serves to promote the rapid conversion of federally-developed inventions into commercial products by getting the results of research into the hands of individuals and organizations who can put it into practical use. To accomplish these goals the Center provides a variety of services to professionals involved in the innovation process. These include:

⁵ The Biotechnology nformation Center WWW is available at: http://WWW.nal.usda.gov/bic OR use the commands: gopher gopher.nalusda.gov; select NAL Information Centers/BIC OR gopherinform.umd.edu OR telnetinform.umd.edu;select Educational Resources/ Academic Resources By Topic/Agricult...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1 Technology Transfer: Biotechnology Information and the Federal Government
• Chapter 2 From Lab Bench to Marketplace: The Calgene FLAVR SAVR™ Tomato
• Chapter 3 Biotechnological Applications of Inheritable and Inducible Resistance to Diseases in Plants
• Chapter 4 The Role of Antifungal Metabolites in Biological Control of Plant Disease
• Chapter 5 Genetically Engineered Protection of Plants against Potyviruses
• Chapter 6 Negative Selection Markers for Plants
• Chapter 7 Considerations for Development and Commercialization of Plant Cell Processes and Products
• Chapter 8 DNA Diagnostics in Horticulture
• Chapter 9 Commercial Applications of DNA Profiling by Amplification with Arbitrary Oligonucleotide Primers
• Chapter 10 Phylogenetic Relationships in the Tribe Triticeoe
• Chapter 11 Isolation of Plant Peptide Transporter Genes from Arabidopsis by Yeast Complementation
• Chapter 12 Confocal Laser Scanning Light Microscopy with Optical Sectioning: Applications in Plant Science Research
• Chapter 13 Field Testing of Genetically Engineered Crops: Public-private Institution Comparisons
• Glossary
• Index