The Intrapreneurial Spirit

Children's Intellectual Property Office draws on a wealth of knowledge, education and experience when they discuss which ideas from Children's researchers and clinicians have the potential to improve pediatric health care.

It seems like the hardest of hard sells: resurrect thalidomide - a drug used in the 1950s and '60s to combat morning sickness that caused birth defects and even death in newborns - for use in treating cancer. But it was exactly what Children's researcher Robert D'Amato, MD, PhD, suggested when he approached the hospital's Intellectual Property Office (IPO) for help getting thalidomide patented as an angiogenesis inhibitor, which is a drug designed to stop tumors from growing by cutting off their blood supply.

The IPO staff was not scared off by the drug's bad reputation. They understood that the birth defects were a result of vessel growth stopping during critical stages of fetal development, and that D'Amato's early tests showed thalidomide could stop the blood vessel growth of certain cancers without causing the catastrophic problems it did in growing fetuses.

So the IPO began working closely with D'Amato, and in 1997 thalidomide was patented for use as an angiogenesis inhibitor. Today, it is considered a promising treatment for diseases like multiple myeloma and brain cancer.

As a self-financing profit center - essentially an independent small business inside the walls of the hospital - it is the IPO's job to look at a researcher¡s preliminary data or listen to a surgeon¡s idea and recognize a diamond in the rough when one presents itself.

The task of unearthing those diamonds falls primarily to the department's ten case managers, whom Chief Intellectual Property Officer Don Lombardi refers to as his entrepreneurs-in-residence, or intrapreneurs. They sift through the mountain of ideas that come out of Children's looking for the ones that will ultimately benefit the hospital and its patients.

To do this, each draws on the experiences and expertise of their case manager colleagues, who are a study in diversity. Nine of the ten have PhDs; of those, two also have MBAs. One other staff member has an MBA and a law degree. They have education or work experience in industry, teaching, diagnostics, biotech, corporate law, academic medicine, business development and marketing. They come from seven different countries, and represent nine different ethnic groups. So when they sit down once a week to discuss cases they are each investigating, they get feedback that defines perspective.

"A lot of discussion takes place at those meetings,” says Leslie Grushkin-Lerner, PhD. "We talk about the market size for a product or the patents that may already be held for a certain idea. It really helps us get collective input and wisdom so we can view an idea in its full context and decide whether it has potential.”

Their experiences also help them build relationships with researchers. "Since most of us have a background in research, we speak the language the scientists speak,” says Tarangini Deshpande, PhD. "So we can have a dialogue with them about the possibilities and limitations of an idea.”

Despite the fact that much of their work falls into the categories "ideas” and "possibilities,” every member of the IPO knows that their work may ultimately save or improve a child¡s life. "Any of us could be working in industry or starting our own companies,” says Deshpande. "But then you think about the fact that you're serving an important mission, and that you can affect the lives of thousands of children.”