Technology Transfer and Commercialization

Roswell Park Cancer Institute has long been a source of important new products and processes for use in the fight against cancer.

To protect the value of these assets for our commercial licensees, RPCI maintains over 100 active patents and submits an average of 20 patent applications annually. This places the Institute’s Technology Transfer Office among the top 25 offices of its kind in the nation.

Patent Directory

• Cancer Therapeutics

• Cancer Vaccines

• Cancer Therapy Enhancement & Toxicity Reduction

• Inflammation Control

• Infectious Disease Vaccines & Therapeutics

• Diagnostics / Analytical Methods / Drug Delivery / Mouse Models

Thomas J. Dougherty, Ph.D. and Ravindra K. Pandey, Ph.D.

John R. Subjeck, Ph.D. and Xiang Yang Wang, Ph.D.

Porphyrin-Based Compounds for PDT and Tumor Imaging - Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is an effective, economical treatment for skin, lung, and esophageal cancers, and many other conditions. PDT works like this: First, a specially formulated photosensitive compound is injected into the bloodstream. Cancer cells take up high concentrations of the drug and retain it long after normal body tissues have flushed it away. While the photosensitizer lingers in the targeted cells, a therapist exposes them to predetermined intense doses of red light, triggering a “cytotoxic event” in which the drug interacts with naturally occurring oxygen molecules to kill abnormal cells with little or no effect on surrounding tissues. Learn more...

Empire Genomics established a commercial laboratory in the Center of Excellence to provide microarray services in the area of human genetic aberrations. It is run by Dr. Norma Nowak in the Department of Cancer Prevention & Control.

AndroBioSys
commercializes a new cancer drug-screening in vivo model that can reduce substantially the cost of candidate drug screening for angiogenic, prostate and other cancer therapeutics, and is derived from the work of Dr. James Mohler and Dr. Gary Smith in the Department of Urologic Oncology.

Cancer and Infectious Disease Vaccines - Researchers at Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI) have been working on a novel, vaccine centered strategy for blowing the whistle on tumors and activating the body’s natural immune defenses against them. RPCI researchers have found a way to use certain naturally occurring molecules called heat shock proteins (HSPs) to alert the immune system that all may not be what it seems. Thus HSPs can bind to both cancer antigens and the specific immune cells that activate the immune system. When the HSP is binding a cancer antigen, the resulting immune response aggressively attacks that antigen on cancer cells, killing the cancer cells while leaving the rest of the body unharmed. Learn more...