Ray Kruse Iles

• BSc MSc PhD FRSB FRSC
• Chief Scientific Officer at Mireya DX & ReducingSAD

I have personally felt that trying to develop IP and a spin out Biotechnology company in the UK is "Challenging" - (English to American translation "very difficult"), and I thought it was just my experience as an inventor.

However, recently I have encountered a shocking attitude to a young inventor from a very high ranking UK academic institution I was advising. I was wondering if others had experienced the same. Basically, in the formation and development of the company the Institution in question was blatantly disenfranchising the inventor and promoting an employee, who was not an inventor, to hold most/majority of the shares and control the startup. If that did not happen they would not licence the (Provisionally filed) patented technology to the startup.

The problem I could see is that although the original patent had been filed, and rights assigned to the UK Institution, it is a "Provisional patent' and has no legal status. From experience patents only get finally awarded after being defended against challenges raised by patent inspectors by the Inventor (not from un-guided responses of a patent Attorney). The future of the company was to be based on a new advanced design by the aforementioned inventor, which would subsequently be patented and assigned to the company. The inventor no longer worked for the UK academic Institution but the UK academic Institution pushed its own candidate and employee to be CEO so much that the Inventor disengaged entirely.

I find it incrediable that UK Institutions alienate their inventors so much. This mean't not only the loss of the foreground IP but also the background IP. Did they not know that a provisional patent has NO legal standing!!!

Too my mind those in charge of UK academic institutions Tech Transfer are either:

a) Greedy,

b) Incompetent, or

c) Greedy and incompetent.

I would like to ask if other have experienced the same and whether the reason was a), b) or c).

As the UK REF2021 results are finally published, more and more of the UK research outputs have been rated World leading - 4 star. https://lnkd.in/ekZrP6Ca But hang on! Just last year three quarters of British universities – including top institutions such as Oxford and University College London (UCL) – had seen their rankings slump in an international league table. A total of 62 out of 84 UK institutions saw their world ranking downgraded for the fourth consecutive year, according to a widely internationally accepted QS evaluation. https://lnkd.in/eAmYBdYM All UK Government funded Universities are subjected to a 5-7 yearly evaluation of their research quality. Originally designed to raise the standard and competitiveness of UK University research, the research assessment exercise (RAE), became the REF, research evaluation framework. This encompasses (more so this round) the evaluation of “research impact”, alongside peer reviewed publications and research facilities. Because this evaluation determines the state’s annual payments to individual UK Universities for core research activities; this is a major issue in UK higher education.  Given the structure of the evaluation; expert opinion and “gaming the system” has turned the REF into a major administration, rather than academic research, industry - costing the UK Government and Universities substantial funds .  So is this all turning into a farce? The World QS ranking and the REF, together, just don’t add up. The discrepancy appears to stem from the “peer evaluation” which is time consuming and costly core of the REF.   There have been many critics of the REF, not least that the vast cost should be spent in enhancing University grant funding not on the evaluation process. And here is the rub; can this be made cheaper, quicker and more reliable by looking at non subjective citation indexes. Given the easy availability of such metrics this would provide a rapid comparison between UK Universities and the rest of World Universities, at the press of a button.  Perhaps the only true reflection of the REF is how each UK University’s research activities, in the various disciplines, compare in just UK relative terms. And in the opinion of assessors only. #highereducation #quality#timeshighereducation #ref2021

In a previous question in 2013 I asked "what is a good h-index for a Professor". This question has remained active and debated for 7 years. I believe the global community on ResearchGate has reached a general consensus. However, I now ask the more direct question about Professorial titles. We all know appointments where the title was given to individuals with little if no published research contribution, let alone a contribution judged as significant.

You can be a lecturer, senior lecturer even principal lecturer because you are an excellent teacher; you can be a fantastic administrator and be a Dean. But that does not make you a Professor. The title implies substantial expert knowledge which has been applied in primary research to advance that knowledge beyond what is known in the published literature. Indeed that you, as an expert have contributed to advancement of New knowledge which has been judged as such and measured by metrics which includes your h-index.

In many countries the title Professor was protected and only awarded with Governmental approval. The title has been deregulated in all countries I am familiar with. Should this title be protected once again and reserved for those contributing as research academics?

To start: Background and why this is an important area to discuss?

For a minority of human disorder one genetic mutation leading to a single syndrome has been found. Developments in whole genome sequencing has meant that multiple genetic markers in a person’s genome can be detected relatively quickly and cost effectively. However, for the vast majority of common diseases and behavioural traits , the one mutation one attribute hypothesis does not hold true. Although associations can be made for genetic markers and any given disease/disorder/behaviour within large populations, at an individual level most are extremely poor discriminators. Furthermore, deregulation of gene expression can be due to multiple epigenetic events simply undetected by DNA sequencing. Although transcriptomics has attempted to address this deficit - clinically this requires invasive disease tissue sampling, is time consuming, costly and far more complex than originally believed; with the genome/epi-genome to disease phenotype being lost when mechanisms prevent aberrant mRNAs from being translated.

Expressed phenotypic markers are much better clinical indicators of disease status than genetic susceptibility tests. Many disorders are multi-factorial and consequently multiple different markers are measured; but one at a time. This is time consuming and costly by conventional clinical chemistry technologies.

Emerging, spectroscopic technologies can measure multiple phenotypic marker, or changes in these phenotypic markers, simultaneously: be it lipids, metabolites, blood proteins, antibodies or viral particles. With small sample volume and astonishingly fast analysis times these techniques are set to make enormous advances in diagnostic medicine. Clinical mass spectrometry is one such technique which is rapidly being adopted as a new analytical tool in laboratory Medicine, followed by NMR and Raman spectroscopy. To be fully accepted as diagnostic sample test platforms the new approaches require new standards of operating and new understanding - getting it right will hold great rewards.