At the close of 2024, we had the privilege of speaking with Dr. Todd Pazdera, the director of engagement and opportunity development, business development, and licensing at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), about his team’s approach to developing new startups and licensing . Dr. Pazdera began his academic journey at Carnegie Mellon University, where he earned a PhD in Drosophila embryonic development—a field that has been instrumental in advancing our understanding of genetics, molecular biology, and developmental biology. Following his doctoral work, he ventured into the business side of science, helping to bridge the gap between academic research and commercial application through roles at Accenture Consulting and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Since 2012, Dr. Pazdera has been based in California at UCSF, where he now leads a team dedicated to transforming the University’s innovative technologies into impactful market solutions.
Sean Karlin: From the beginning a lot of your work was focused on creating businesses from the technologies, would you say?
Todd Pazdera: Yeah, yeah. I did a lot of startups out of Mount Sinai, and then after that, I came to UCSF. I was really attracted to UCSF because of the exceptional science, exceptional healthcare, exceptional faculty, and the overall emphasis on innovation. And so, I thought it'd be a great place to get back involved in further advancing what I had done at Mount Sinai.
SK: You've been here for quite a while. You've seen a lot of changes, I'm sure. As far as technology transfer and commercialization are concerned, what would you say are the main goals that your team has that are focused on – that Innovation Ventures is focused on – or even the university is focused on?
TP: The primary mission is to translate technologies or ideas that come out of the research at the institution into products and services to benefit patients. That's primary – number one. And how's that done? Well, it can be through partnerships with existing companies like large pharma or, biotech, or even smaller companies. It can also be done by partnering with faculty and investors to build new companies. All with the goal of those companies developing products and services based on the innovations that come out of the university to benefit patients or healthcare down the road; I say down the road because often it takes a long time to develop products in the pharmaceutical and biotech space.
SK: What does the typical timeline look like?
TP: It could take 10 or 12 years to translate an early discovery into a product to reach the market, so it could be pretty significant. We're nucleating and developing those very early steps because the innovations that come out of the institution, as one might imagine, are very early stages. So, it's going to take significant effort and time to translate those early innovations to the bedside,
SK: What's the goal of the University? How do you see the University's priorities in commercialization?
TP: There are several goals with many facets., The one that I mentioned already was getting products and services out to the benefit of patients. I don't know if these are in a particular order, but we also contribute to an innovative ecosystem at UCSF that helps attract and maintain exceptional faculty. A lot of them are interested in commercialization. The third is providing a means of financial consideration back to the university for licensing technologies out to existing companies or to new companies that are formed. I think that also leads to or helps promote the overall culture of UCSF as a leader and contributes in some ways, to getting funding from agencies or from other folks. So, the commercialization components – spinning out companies that are successful, partnering with companies that hopefully bring products to market to benefit patients – also provide recognition for the university as well. So multifaceted.
SK: In the past decade, or the 12 years that you've been here, how have you seen UCSF's tech transfer evolve? Where did it start and what have you seen change over those 12 years?
TP: A couple of things. One of our new areas of focus we've brought to the table more recently is becoming just more commercially oriented. That includes addressing the needs of our customers. The outside customers for us are investors, and biotech, and pharma companies, and dHealth, and medical device companies. There are many. Our internal customers are employees of the university, in particular, faculty and postdocs, who are coming up with new ideas from their research. And there's also the university at large, which is another customer, so to speak. Again, it's multifaceted. When I first started working here the focus was often on patenting and licensing, which is still a key component to what we do, but we've shifted our culture and added many more capabilities to be more commercially oriented and really facilitating startup development.
SK: We heard the Chancellor say that last year we had 12 startups launch out of the University. What would the average number of startups that launched, let's say, 12 years ago? How many could you expect to launch in one year then?
TP: 12 years ago, we did one startup deal vs the last 4 years, where we averaged over 10. We’ve also moved towards taking direct equity in our spinouts consistent with UCSF being a supporting partner whenever possible. , The start-up services we've built, the goal is to continue to do more to make those more attractive for investment, to help develop those startups in and of themselves. It’s an essential component, not just filing patent applications and licensing those applications but actually facilitating startup development or the relationship with pharma or biotech partners or larger existing companies.
SK: That leads to the next question. Who would you say your customers are?
TP: There are three that I outlined earlier. That's the way I like to think about it. One is the University as a whole, our internal clients, which are faculty members, postdocs, and researchers, and then the outside commercial community, which includes investors, companies, and really any entity that can facilitate the translation of our inventions into products or services to benefit the public.
SK: Talk for a moment about the University and the people you would consider customers or clients at the University. What's your relationship with them?
TP: The process all gets started through what we call an ‘invention disclosure.’ Let's just say a faculty member reaches out to us with a new idea, they submit it as a disclosure. A disclosure is basically an outline of their idea, what data they have to date, what the idea is. The first thing we want to do in that relationship is to make it a very close partnership with the faculty member. Someone from my team and the faculty member met about their idea and their invention, and we want to just learn more and try to think a bit more commercially oriented. How does this potentially translate into products and services downstream? What might those products and services look like? What might that look like in terms of healthcare, in terms of whether it is therapeutic or diagnostic? How might that therapeutic be implemented? What's the current standard of care? So, identifying what the unmet need is, what's the market – both in terms of the customers or patients, but also market size? Who are the key players in that industry? What does the competitive landscape look like? Looking at all those things, we do a lot of that research on my teams with the help of our executives and residents – and also our interns. Then we go out back to the investigators and discuss that information with them and get their insights into questions that come up. So we're really partnering with them, to build these relationships with companies or to help them to build a new company. We're doing a lot of the legwork and then going out and sharing that with them and getting their feedback and input and iterating to make a package most attractive for investment.
SK: Would that be the ‘market first’ approach?
TP: Yeah. We call this a market-first approach. The idea behind the ‘market first’ approach is when these new ideas come in, rather than the group sitting around a table and making decisions on their own in a vacuum, we go out to the market, so to speak. The team does market research through databases. We talk to key opinion leaders in our network that we've generated. We get valued input from our XiR’s. People from pharma, from biotech, , medical device area, whatever area the technology is in and investors. We give them a little sense of what the idea looks like without disclosing any confidential information. And then get their feedback - is this idea commercially attractive, does it address an unmet need, is it something you would invest in, what else would you like to see to make this more attractive for investment, what are key concerns, and so on. We also access the vast network right here at UCSF. We speak to front-line physicians as to the current standard of care. What are some of their pain points? What do they think of a new potential product? Would they use it? What would they want to see before they would consider it and so on? And that's what we mean by the ‘market first’ approach. What does the market think of this idea? And then we use that, we get that information, we go back to the investigators, and we share it with them. It's not just me and my team sitting around the table and coming up with this; it's talking to folks who are actually on the street, so to speak, building products and services on a regular basis in these particular areas. We try to focus on KOLs that have expertise in the same area, whatever the idea is in the same space.
SK: And I imagine this helps you to triage your technology a little bit.
TP: Triage is a good word. This is something that is common outside of tech transfer, By using this ‘market-first’ approach, we're letting the market guide what’s has market potential and what does not or what might have potential but needs more scientific proof of concept. If the market is saying this product is market-ready – and by no means, are we doing an exhaustive search – it's like a pulse, we're taking the pulse of the market on this idea. If the pulse tells us something looks and feels like it's ready now for partnering or this might be a potential startup, then we use that information to guide the next steps. And then there are other ideas that are just not far along enough yet or there isn’t a market or the market window has passed. They're not far enough along. And so, the feedback here is that this might look interesting, but it's not suitable for us now. It might be if these experiments were done, or this proof of concept was done. In that way, it's like a triage system, and we've set up a system So, we have startup ready, or there's startup potential in the not-too-distant future, license ready in the not-too-distant future, and then a third bucket of those that need more work. We try to get that market feedback in a way that we can identify specifically what that work might look like and then we can share that with our investigators.
SK: What would you say is the difference between a technology that's license-ready versus a technology that is startup-ready?
TP: So again, it's the pulse of the market. If the investors that we're talking to are telling us that this technology is interesting to them from an investment and startup standpoint, and if the faculty member or the faculty members – or employees – are interested in doing a startup, then you're starting to bring together the right pieces to consider that being a startup. If the feedback from the company perspective and the investors is that we don't see this as a standalone company, it could be that the technology doesn't have a big enough market or maybe an asset that would be just way too challenging for a new company to get off the ground. It needs all the resources and assets that a larger entity has then it might be more suitable for licensing to an existing company. the key is that we listen closely to what folks on the industry side and investment side are saying to us and the needs and wants of our internal customers, which are the faculty members or the employees.
SK: Can you tell me what the goal of this triage system is?
TP: We've developed a process that's efficient and allows us to focus on getting the innovations into the hands of the right partners in an effective, efficient way. And those that aren't ready, providing good solid feedback for what might be needed to move those up to make them more commercially attractive.
SK: Now, would some of that feedback include tools like Catalyst or other methods of funding or mentoring that could exist at the university?
TP: Yeah, absolutely. The catalyst fund, for example, is a proof-of-concept fund. So, from my team's perspective, if the feedback from the market is, “If you just had this one experiment or if you just had this kind of data, it'd be much more inclined to invest, or we'd be much more inclined to take a license of an existing company.” Then the question becomes, how does the university fund that, or how does the lab fund that? And traditional government grants don't often fill that need. Our teams have also built relationships with companies that can prototype products like health apps, medical devices, and consumer products or companies that can do drug discovery, med chem, tox, and the like on the therapeutic side. However, we still need to find ways to fund these projects.
SK: Could you walk us through your typical commercialization process?
TP: A new idea comes through that could be disclosed to our office through the regular course of investigators doing the research. We also go and reach out to investigators through an engagement process. We'll be notified in some way. Often, it can be a bit serendipitous. We'll see something on the front of the UCSF website, we'll see something downstairs in the cafe. It's like, oh, this sounds like some interesting work that could be commercially relevant and we'll reach out to those folks. Then, through that engagement process, they'll submit a disclosure. We will take that nascent idea and do an evaluation. We do a market assessment, as I mentioned, using our key opinion leader network (KOL) and our executives in residents (XiR)., We also have access to subscription databases and other tools to look at the market in terms of the number of companies working in the space, similar products already on the market, and key faculty members in the space based on publication citations. And so on. We'll use open-source, things as simple as Google, to see what's going on currently in the marketplace and really help us to define what the products might look like and then what the unmet need is. Then we do an assessment of how this technology, or these products and services, might fit in with the existing market and the competitive landscape. Is this a me-too product, or does it really have some novel aspect? And then try to build up a business case around that output that can be used to market the idea. So, pitch the idea to investors or to pitch the idea to existing companies. We are coming at it more as a “triage,” to use an earlier word. So our first question is not, “Can we file a patent application on this or not?” but instead what is the product opportunity and the market potential? If the market signals are positive and we have a defined product opportunity, then we bring in an intellectual property attorney to strategize with us how to protect the potential products and the corresponding market opportunity. We work with top-tier IP law firms to guide us on all intellectual property matters.
So, we're building a robust package around the products and intellectual property. The package includes defining the products and the unmet need, and how this technology can fill that need and what a competitive landscape looks like, We look at some of the key players in the space, whether they can be thought of as potential partners, or as competitors, and how we differentiate ourselves from what exists. And then, we lay out a plan for how we envision getting that to market, including building out pitch decks for start-up companies. And that's done through folks on my teams together with our clients which are the UCSF faculty.
We consult our support folks like our executives and residents (XiR’s). So our executives and residents are folks who have already built companies and have had exits at least achieve an investment milestone in a company previously. And they work for us as part-time consultants. They provide feedback themselves on the opportunities. And then, over time, they match up with specific opportunities and start to help build out the pitch decks for investment. The XiRs work on multiple start-up opportunities at once and sometimes eventually move to a role at one of the startups.
SK: You've just touched on the next point I wanted to make. Could you talk about the XIR program and how it works? I mean, maybe even more specifically, how does it work inside of UCSF?
TP: So, the XIR program is our executive-in-residence program. We initiated it about five years ago, starting out with just one or two XiR’s dedicated to specific projects. The program has evolved over the last couple of years to our XiR program, where these folks support multiple start-up projects. Currently, we have eight XiRs, which is about capacity at this time. And these are part-time consultants that work with us. And they all have experience in the healthcare technology industry. Some of them also worked on the venture side, but they all have experience in starting a company. In almost all cases, I have been the CEO of a company that was successful in raising at least a Series A funding.
So these folks are, in many cases, serial entrepreneurs; that’s not just the title they give themselves, but it means they've done this several times. They've put together a plan, put together a deck, and gone out with that pitch deck and raised funding and started the initial operations of the company. And rather than us initially matching them up with a very specific start-up opportunity – Instead of placing them specifically with a single, what we do is go through a bit of a matching process. They start off by helping my engagement in the opportunity development team triage the new disclosures as they come through. We're looking at all the opportunities that look like a startup or like a license-ready product for an existing company, and those that look like they need more work. The ones that look startup-ready or close to startup-ready; the executive in residence has provided some of that initial feedback to make that assessment. Then, they start to work with my teams and the PIs on several of these start-up projects at a time. For each of these, they work with the PIs on understanding the technology and product opportunity, coming up with a basic business plan, identifying business gaps in that plan, filling those gaps, and then developing a pitch deck to go out to investors.
The XiRs often start to sync and match up with the PI’s and the investors on a particular start-up and they may jump from the XiR program to a direct role at the company. If that is the case, we start to wind down the executive in residence role with the University, assuming they're all synced up, then they will take a lead role at the company. This could be as the CEO, this could be something else if they want. But everyone's on board with that, meaning the investors, the PIs, and the executive in residents. Only then can they jump ship, so to speak, and become whatever their lead role is to be.
SK: They potentially launch out of the program and into the actual company.
TP: Yeah, potentially. Right. It's not an absolute; I think that's kind of important for us because it provides a path for the XiR who really want to do that. We have some executive residents who are excited to just be in the ecosystem, which is awesome. A big part of their attraction to the program in the first place is because of the UCSF ecosystem and being part of the process. And so we have folks who continue to do that, which is great because it's a benefit to all involved and they can take even more time to sync up with the right project.
I want to emphasize the culture we’ve created over the last several years is commercially oriented and the folks on my teams come in with industry, start-up, licensing, or consulting experience and this mix supports a very collaborative effort to bridge our internal customers – the faculty – with the outside customers which are industry and investors. Once we build these commercial relationships, we don’t just let them go but instead look to support them in ways that we can and are consistent with other internal stakeholders.
SK: What would be the big-picture motivation of a university or an academic institution to commercialize the technology that is being discovered on their campus?
TP: The key again is to translate inventions coming out of UCSF research into products or services for the benefit of patient health. Absent commercialization or public-private partnerships these research endeavors would probably just die on the vine.
Rather than just transferring the technology which is often too early, we're creating value around the technology at the University. Whether that's doing additional proof of concept work through things like the Catalyst Fund, whether it's adding Executives in Residents, or doing market research and market analysis. By using a market-first approach, we’re going out and talking about the markets so that everything we do is guided by market feedback. We bring in consultants, I didn't talk too much about that, but we also have relationships with consultants who can provide specific expertise like regulatory expertise and insurance reimbursement expertise. We have relationships with prototyping companies to build MVP’s for dHealth products or prototypes for medical devices.
Thinking about the whole process a little bit more from an entrepreneurial or maybe from a venture capital point of view, what do we need to add to make this commercially attractive, make this investible as opposed to just saying, hey, here's a patent application here, who wants it? We ask, do you want to start a company around it? We offer a business plan – here's a model. We've had these experts look at it. We already have the input for how this might go to market. We already understand how the FDA might look at this if it's a therapeutic product or device.
We've already thought about a lot of these questions, and we've come up with some input and incorporated that overall into a basket for commercialization. We’ve been developing all these services over the last five years or so and continue to expand. And it's not to say that that wasn't done by anyone before or something like that, but certainly, it's something that we've continued to evolve. We didn't have an executive-in-residence program. We did not have a ‘key opinion leader network.’ We did not have regulatory consultants. We were not using a market-first approach because we didn't have those things in place, and we weren't building these little pre-teams to nucleate new companies or nucleate the potential partnership with existing companies.
This is how a lot of this works in the commercial world, but not so much, at least in my experience, in the tech transfer world. We are borrowing, if you will, those same concepts from the commercial world and implementing them in our office. The real emphasis for us has been to facilitate the commercialization of technologies to the benefit of patients and the public. We bring those parties together to accomplish the goal of benefiting patient care, ultimately through new products and services, but also bringing a fair and reasonable market-based return to the university through commercialization. Supporting the institution allows for more and better future technologies to be developed. The cycle continues.
Sean Karlin: Thank you, Todd.
Todd Pazdera: You’re welcome.