Purdue Welcomes Mann Institute

doi:10.1126/science.315.5819.1651b

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Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, has clinched a deal to join what the Alfred Mann Foundation hopes will be a billion-dollar-plus network to shepherd university biomedical inventions to the market.

Alfred Mann institutes are designed to be governed by a board equally split between the university and the California-based Mann Foundation. Some universities have balked at the proposed arrangement, fearing a loss of control over their intellectual property. Last year, two North Carolina universities turned thumbs down on a Mann endowment (Science, 26 May 2006, p. 1127), although Mark Crowell, technology transfer official at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, says the door is still open to negotiations.

One provision gives priority to Indiana companies in licensing or purchasing technologies developed at the institute. Purdue President Martin Jischke won't discuss other details of the agreement, announced 16 March, but says everyone's very happy with it. Mann intends to finance at least 10 more institutes. A prototype was set up in 1998 at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and a second was created last October at Technion University in Israel.