Center for Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence Focused on Therapy Response

Corporate Collaboration

This CCNE-TR has significant involvement from General Electric Global Research (GE). These relationships involve direct research collaborations with GE in Research Projects #1 (Dr. Kulkarni, and Dr. Bales), and Research Project #6 (Dr. Filkins). GE's collaborations are in magneto-nanoparticles (Research Project #1) and in Molecular Imaging Optical Instrumentation Development (Research Project #6). This collaborations are very important because they will help this CCNE-TR to leverage significant industrial resources in nanotechnology and molecular imaging. To insure that industry also has a voice on our Internal Advisory Board (IAB), we have Drs. Blohm and Ishaque from GE to represent the nanotechnology and molecular imaging areas respectively. Additionally on our IAB is Dr. Mark Sliwkowski from Genentech, who is one of the world leaders in studying the Her-kinase axis and drug development. He will also help provide significant guidance to Project 4 and the CCNE-TR as needed.

Collaborating Centers Our CCNE-TR is comprised of six main centers representing three sector types: University (Stanford/UCLA/Univ.Texas) Nonprofit Research Institutes (FHCRC/Cedars-Sinai) For-Profit Companies (GE Global Research) This is evidence of the breadth of interactions that will take place in the CCNE-TR.

In addition to the specific industrial research relationships above, there is a key industry-academic partnership between GE Medical Systems/GE Global Research and Stanford University (see support letter from Joe Hogan, CEO, GE Healthcare Technologies). This partnership is the single largest relationship that GE has with an academic partner in the area of molecular imaging that was signed in January 2005. This brings significant resources (over $10 million) from GE to Stanford in terms of state-of-the-art equipment (e.g., 18 MeV Cyclotron, radiopharmacy cGMP labs, eOptix small animal optical fluorescence imaging system) as well as significant intellectual capital across the GE molecular imaging enterprise. GE recently acquired Amersham for $9 Billion and is committed to expanding its ex vivo diagnostics area. GE therefore has the potential to be a significant partner for our CCNE-TR for both in vivo and ex vivo technologies. This alliance will be a tremendous asset as this CCNE-TR produces useful nano-products that GE can help to commercialize. This should help to accelerate the eventual delivery of nanotechnologies into the health-care sector.

We are confident that, with the specific research collaborations of several projects and input from the industrial representatives of our IAB, over the course of 5 years we will highly leverage our industrial relationships. This may lead to new efforts in nanotechnology that we have currently not envisioned, as well as eventual commercial translation of some of the products developed from this CCNE-TR.