The National Institutes of Health has launched an online resource for small companies looking to get their technologies in front of potential partners and investors.
Called Pipeline to Partnerships (P2P), the initiative was developed jointly by the NIH Office of Technology Transfer the NIH Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) offices, and is designed to assist emerging life sciences companies with ushering products from discovery through commercialization.
“These small companies simply can’t go it alone,” said Jo Anne Goodnight, coordinator of the SBIR/STTR programs, in a statement. “Given the expensive pre-clinical and clinical studies necessary to bring novel products to the market and the patient, many of these projects need additional financing, licensing deals, or strategic partnerships.”
The P2P site organizes technologies by disease category and their development status, and includes devices, diagnostics, vaccines and drugs. When an interested party clicks on a posting, they are directed to a more detailed description of the technology or of the company developing it. P2P also includes a user-friendly submission form for companies that want to post their technologies. The site is publicly available — hence, searchable by any potential partners or investors — but only NIH licensees and NIH SBIR/STTR awardees can post technologies to the database.
On its launch day, July 11, P2P included over 160 technology postings spread out over 26 categories.