Academic researchers and physician innovators are great at making research discoveries and developing inventions at an early stage. But if you were to fund them to turn their research findings into a product, would they have the expertise and experience needed to be successful? Most would not.

The investment community talks about the innovation funding gap, a.k.a. the “valley of death.” But there is also a knowledge gap on the part of academic researchers when it comes to transforming their technologies into therapeutics. Most want their findings to lead to new treatments for patients, but they lack the experience and expertise that companies have to advance early-stage research to a clinical stage. That includes expertise in designing pre-clinical experiments and navigating regulatory pathways for commercial development.

Academics often enter agreements with pharmaceutical companies, many of which are early-stage research grants. Often, these industry-sponsored research projects end with a scientific publication and are unsuccessful in generating new therapeutics—a subpar outcome for the company investor. …