The National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) was awarded an Excellence in Technology Transfer award from the 2021 Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) awards. The FLC gave out 33 awards across nine different technology transfer categories, in addition to a COVID-19 Response award. The FLC supports federal laboratories, agencies, and research centers by encouraging commercialization best practices and creating opportunities to move federal technologies from the labs and into the marketplace and each year rewards the technology transfer work that makes the largest impact.

A team of scientists at NIAID found that three different antibodies against the SARS-CoV spike protein didn’t bind to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, illuminating the need for a SARS-CoV-2 specific vaccine and antibody-based treatment. This meant that it was very important to rapidly share the SARS-CoV-2 prefusion stabilized spike protein and the plasmids encoding them. NIAID’s Technology Transfer and Intellectual Property Office (TTIPO) were able to execute or assist with the execution of agreements to share these findings at an extraordinary speed. As of October 8th, NIAID TTIPO signed 83 Material Transfer Agreements, 44 agreements for collaborations with the VRC, and 21 licenses with biotech and pharma companies for technologies related to SARS-CoV-2 prefusion stabilized spike proteins. For their work on “Rapid Sharing of SARS-CoV-2 Prefusion Stabilized Spike Proteins and Plasmids”, NIAID took home the Excellence in Technology Transfer award.

Technologies available to license from NIAID can be found here.