REPORT FEATURES TWO AU COMMERCIALIZATION ACHIEVEMENTS

AUBURN - Two of Auburn University’s technology transfer commercialization achievements are featured in the first annual Better World Project field report, unveiled by the Association of University Technology Managers during its recent annual meeting in Orlando, Fla.

AUTM’s “Reports From the Field” profiles 100 of the year’s top university technology transfer accomplishments selected from throughout the United States and Canada. The report is part of AUTM’s Better World Project, launched in 2005 to promote public understanding of how academic research and technology transfer have made quality of life changes and improvements.

“Not only did AUTM profile two of our recent technology transfer commercialization achievements with feature articles, Auburn also is listed first among several academic institutions in a ‘mix-and-match’ tickler on the publication’s back cover,” said Jan Dowdle Thornton, director of AU’s Office of Technology Transfer. “This is excellent publicity for Auburn research, and it places us with some very high-profile academic peers.”

AU-developed technologies profiled in the report include Food Source Lure, an environmentally friendly fishing lure, and AU MEDS®, a medication error reduction technology.

The Food Source Lure resulted from a collaboration of researchers in AU’s College of Human Sciences, the College of Agriculture and the College of Business.

The product is made entirely of consumable fish food, and because it contains no plastic, the lure is safer for the environment than traditional plastic lures. Moreover, if a lost lure is not eaten by a fish or other aquatic wildlife, it is biodegradable within about three weeks. The technology is licensed to the FoodSource Lure Corp. of Birmingham.

AU MEDS, developed in AU’s Harrison School of Pharmacy, is being commercialized by the Lenexa, Kansas-based firm, MedAccuracy. Development of the technology involved more than 40 years of collaborative research led by Professor Kenneth Barker of AU's Department of Pharmacy Care Systems. Barker’s collaborators from the department include Associate Research Professor Elizabeth Flynn and Robert Pearson, who is now retired from the Harrison School of Pharmacy.

The AU MEDS technology provides hospitals with a proven tool to quickly and accurately identify and measure medication errors and to significantly reduce the occurrence of medication errors.

MedAccuracy holds an exclusive license to the technology and oversees its implementation in hospitals throughout the United States.

AUTM’s 2006 Better World Project profiles academic technology transfer achievements only in the U.S. and Canada. Future editions will include worldwide accomplishments.

More information about AUTM’s Better World Project can be found at its web site: www.betterworldproject.net.

For more information about the AU technologies featured in this year's report, visit the licensee web sites at: www.fslures.com or www.medaccuracy.com.

Auburn University is a preeminent land-grant and comprehensive research institution with more than 23,000 students and 6,500 faculty and staff. Ranked among the top 50 public universities nationally, Auburn is Alabama’s largest educational institution, offering more than 230 undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degree programs.

(Contributed by Mitch Emmons.)

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