Harvard set to license 50-plus nanotech patents

Harvard University, in one of its largest technology transfer deals ever, is set to disclose today that it has licensed a portfolio of more than 50 nanotechnology patents to a Cambridge start-up that is working with manufacturers and the Pentagon to commercialize the technology.

As part of the deal, which has been in the works for more than a year but was finalized only last month, Harvard will take "a significant equity position" in the licensee, Nano-Terra LLC, said Isaac T. Kohlberg , Harvard's chief technology development officer.

Harvard will also receive royalties from industrial applications of the intellectual property, developed over a decade in the university's Whitesides Laboratory, said Kohlberg , who is also senior associate provost, managing Harvard's Office of Technology Development. The parties did not disclose other financial details of the agreement.

Nano-Terra, incorporated in 2005, was cofounded by Harvard University professor George Whitesides , who runs Whitesides Lab in the chemistry department of the university's Faculty of Arts and Sciences and has helped to start about 10 companies, mostly in the biomedical field, using technology licensed from the lab. Such licensing arrangements are common at research universities like Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, both in Cambridge.

While the technology development office has previously licensed nanotech patents for biomedical uses, the broad portfolio covered in the deal with Nano-Terra focuses on nonbiomedical applications. Most of the patents deal not with end products, such as pharmaceuticals, but with production processes, such as molecular self-assembly and soft lithography involving miniaturization.

Such processes could help Nano-Terra's partners fashion products like solar cell wiring or decorative windshield patterns, using new types of molding and printing, said Whitesides, the company's chairman.

"What's happening is an explosion of interest in small technology across a range of fields," he said. "Small technology has mostly been associated with electronics in the past, things like chips. Now it's also being used in things like displays, sensors, controls, solar cells, and environmental maintenance, as well as biomedicine."

Nano-Terra, which has 15 employees and is expected to grow over the coming year, already has struck codevelopment agreements with the St. Paul manufacturing company 3M, the German materials company Merck KGaA, a major Asian electronics company it would not identify, and the US Department of Defense.

Carmichael Roberts , a longtime commercial and scientific collaborator of Whitesides who is vice chairman and cofounder of Nano-Terra, said the company hopes to sign as many as 10 to 15 other collaboration deals with a diverse group of partners.

"This is the first time we're going after things outside of life sciences," Roberts said. "The timing is perfect now for nanotechnology applications."

Kohlberg, who has been working to accelerate Harvard's technology transfer program, said the marriage of Nano-Terra, which understands nanotechnology processes, with partners like 3M and Merck, which understand potential applications, has the best chance of producing commercial successes.

"This is a significant portfolio," he said. "Because the technologies are so early-stage, we concluded it was probably too early to license them to established companies."

Nano-Terra has not raised venture capital, Roberts said. The privately held company is owned by its founders and employees, along with some investor-advisors and Harvard. Under its business model, commercialization efforts will be funded by its partners.

While each of its codevelopment deals is structured differently, Nano-Terra will work on nanotechnology-based products for 3M, on developing specialty chemicals through nanotech processes for Merck, and on developing a nose-cone grid to protect missile systems from electromagnetic interference for the Pentagon.

Robert Weisman can be reached at weisman@globe.com.