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OHSU Names Vice President for Commercialization Strategies

A veteran OHSU clinician and researcher will lead a push to develop collaborative ventures linking OHSU technologies and potential users.

J. Timothy Stout, M.D., Ph.D., M.B.A., an associate professor of ophthalmology at the Oregon Health & Science University Casey Eye Institute, has been named, effective Sept. 1, to the newly created position of vice president for commercialization strategies at OHSU.

“Dr. Stout will be OHSU’s face to the world for commercialization of OHSU research,” said OHSU President Joseph Robertson, M.D., M.B.A. “We are a large complex institution and we need to better connect OHSU and the rest of the world to develop collaborative ventures. One new invention disclosure is being made at OHSU every 2.7 days on average. There were 132 such disclosures in the last fiscal year. It will be Dr. Stout’s responsibility to create linkages between the technologies we develop and the potential users.”

“It will be extremely valuable as well to have an active OHSU faculty member play a key leadership role in commercializing our research,” Robertson added. “Dr. Stout’s role will be to work with industry and venture capitalists to find the most effective ways of involving our faculty and leveraging OHSU’s discoveries.”

In his new position, Stout will report to OHSU Executive Vice President Steve Stadum but will work closely with Daniel Dorsa, Ph.D., OHSU vice president for research, and the Office of Technology & Research Collaborations (TRC) headed by Arundeep Pradhan. He will be assisted by a full-time administrator and support staff. He will collaborate with Dorsa and other OHSU leaders on strategic industry investments in targeted research fields and on expanding current efforts to promote a culture of commercialization at OHSU.

“Our objective,” Stout said, “is to move discoveries as rapidly and as safely as possible to the clinic where they can help people. We want to help those investigators at OHSU who say, ‘I’ve got this technique, or reagent or process that I think could help patients or research. What’s the next step? How can I move this toward the clinic?’ We want to do everything we can to provide those people with the opportunity to turn their research into something that’s broadly useful. This will, in turn, help increase our licensing revenues and contribute to the growth of Oregon’s biosciences industry.”

A specialist in retinal vascular diseases, Stout will sharply reduce his clinical practice to make time for his new responsibilities, but he will continue to devote time to research and other duties at Casey.

Stout’s key responsibilities will be to:

* Develop and maintain a database that maps OHSU’s research strengths and its patent portfolio and those of potential partners.
Market and promote OHSU research.

* Identify and eliminate barriers faced by private industry in working with OHSU researchers.

* Develop industry partnerships for joint research projects.
Establish strong relationships with bioscience venture capital funds.

* Work on developing a coordinated bioscience retention and recruitment strategy with the Portland Development Commission, Oregon Bioscience Association, Oregon Economic Development Department and other partners.

* Assist in managing the equity interest OHSU receives in licensing deals, and to secure and package patents to maximize licensing revenues and financial returns.

* Work with external partners to assemble funding to develop incubator/accelerator facilities.

* Work with the OHSU Foundation to create additional resources for the Bioscience Innovation Fund, a “pre-seed” fund used to fill the gap between federal research dollars and the seed fund invested by venture capitalists to develop products.

Stout received his undergraduate degree from Rice University in Houston, and his medical degree and a doctorate in molecular genetics from the Baylor College of Medicine, also in Houston. He did his internship in general pediatrics at Houston’s Texas Children’s Hospital and was a fellow in human genetics at Baylor. He completed his ophthalmology residency at Doheny Eye Hospital, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and a retina fellowship at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London. He earned his business degree in the Oregon Executive MBA program. Stout’s research interests include human gene therapy for proliferative and inherited ocular disease, retinal disease genotype-phenotype correlation and ocular disease gene mapping and discovery.

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