WARF West Coast office opens

The patent and licensing organization of the university has become the first university technology-transfer institution in the United States to launch a satellite office.

The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) has opened a West Coast branch in San Diego, Calif. The office – located on La Jolla Village Drive – is minutes from the University of California-San Diego, the Scripps Research Institute and, most importantly, a strip along North Torrey Pines Road that boasts one of the largest concentrations of biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies in southern California.

“We’ve situated ourselves in one of the main hubs of the California biotech industry precisely so our West Coast licensing associate will spend as little time in the office as possible,” says licensing manager Paul Radspinner, who oversees the endeavor from WARF’s Madison headquarters.

“First and foremost,” he says, “we’ll measure our initial success by the number of face-to-face contacts we make with WARF’s industry customers all along the West Coast.”

Licensing associate Matt Bohlman, who holds a degree in biochemistry and is pursuing an MBA, staffs the San Diego location. Previously, Bohlman worked at WARF negotiating license agreements with universities and companies on stem cells and other medically important cell lines.

Since the office opened in mid-September, Bohlman has started on-site license negotiations with several California-based companies. When the time comes to decide the specifics of a license agreement, WARF’s Madison team will conduct the final negotiations and legal review needed to close the deal.

“That’s the model for how this office will operate to generate greater licensing revenues for WARF and the university,” says Radspinner. “We want to take full advantage of the location by having Matt constantly meeting with customers and trying to match their needs with UW–Madison technologies. When it’s time for final negotiations, he’ll hand the deals off to our Madison staff, which frees him to get out and visit more companies.”

A private, non-profit institution, WARF patents technology developed by UW–Madison researchers and licenses it to industry for commercialization. WARF then returns much of the royalty revenues to the university to fund further scientific discovery.