MRC Technology, the commercialization arm of the UK’s Medical Research Council, has become one of the first organisations to host the Entente Professional Exchange Program, a three-year initiative started in September to bolster technology transfer officers (TTOs) in universities, hospitals and other research institutions throughout Europe.
MRC Technology joins Ascenion (Germany), Bergen Teknologioverføring (Norway), Inserm Transfert (France) and Interface Entreprises-Université de Liège (Belgium) are the first hosting organizations to receive TTO candidates.
Mike Johnson, director of corporate partnerships at MRC Technology, said: “MRC Technology has a wealth of in-house expertise and has achieved considerable project success – we look forward to passing on our experience in translational research and technology transfer. The program opens up and adds strength to the TTO network which ultimately will help bring new medicines to patients faster.”
Entente is a coordinated action funded by the European Commission under the Health Work Programme of the 7th Framework Programme with seven partners: Inserm Transfert, the private subsidiary of the French National Institute of the Health and Medical Research (Inserm) with a proof of concept fund; non-profit Association of European Science & Technology Transfer Professionals (ASTP), which has just agreed to merge with another of the seven partners, Proton Europe; healthcare tech transfer community organiser TTS; University of Liege’s technology transfer unit, Interface Entreprises-University; KU Leuven Research & Development (LRD), which was established in 1972 as one of the first technology transfer offices in Europe; VIB, a life sciences research institute in Flanders, Belgium; and Youris.com, an independent media agency promoting European innovation.
At the time of its launch, Karine Baudin, coordinator of Entente, said: “The main result of our project will be the creation of a steady pan-European knowledge transfer community gathering all the actors in health, including universities, SMEs [small and medium-sized enterprises], PROs [professional research officers] and Industry as well as investors and tech transfer professionals.
“These exchanges will be mostly cross-border, which will create new business development. The end result is to go towards an improvement of the global European knowledge transfer in health.”
