MUSC fine tunes commercialization efforts

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The Medical University of South Carolina Zucker Institute for Applied Neuroscience and MUSC Foundation for Research Development are joining forces and will begin collectively doing business as the Zucker Institute for Innovation Commercialization effective immediately.

The new combined institute solidifies MUSC’s commercialization efforts into what the university says is a more powerful engine to execute a mission of facilitating the creation of new products and services that improve lives.

“The reorganization of the teams into the unified Zucker Institute for Innovation Commercialization positions the organization for growth and scale,” Jesse Goodwin, chief innovation officer at MUSC, said in a news release. Goodwin will chair the board of directors for the institute. Goodwin served as deputy director of the MUSC Foundation for Research Development as well as chair of the board for the Zucker Institute for Applied Neuroscience.

“This new institute will continue to support the endeavors of MUSC’s inventive employees and students, such that their ideas become products and services generating meaningful impact,” Goodwin said in the release.

The reorganization creates a new tech-transfer group that will act as a component of the Office of Innovation at MUSC. The group will be tasked with translating MUSC’s intellectual property-backed scholarly research, clinical and education efforts into products used beyond MUSC, the release said.

“Innovation is our fuel here at MUSC,” university President David J. Cole, M.D., said in the release. “It’s part of our core in changing what’s possible. We want to continue to facilitate the development of processes, technologies and strategies that produce real-world, beneficial impact for those that we serve, and this component of the Office of Innovation will ensure that it continues.”