If you’ve never been in a licensing negotiation, you might think big pharma always has the upper hand over startups desperate to get a deal done to secure licensing fees and milestone payments. Actually, these are two parties that share the same goal, and sometimes, a startup has a product so good it holds all the cards.

But is it always straightforward?

Deal negotiations between pharma companies and biotechs are the bread and butter of Winsome Cheung, a partner in the life sciences transaction group at global law firm Covington where she’s represented clients on both sides of the table.

Winsome — who, during her PhD in medicine, explored commercialising her research with Cambridge Enterprise — ponders how that experience went on to shape her thinking as a lawyer on today’s episode of The Next Leap podcast.

We also talk about industry trends she’s observed in recent years, provisions in licensing contracts that could scupper M&A deals years down the line like exclusivity or reach-throughs, and why universities should have standardised templates in place for things like material transfer agreements.

Let’s nerd out over contract law!

Stuart Wilkinson, chief executive officer of Knowledge Exchange UK (the professional body for tech transfer practitioners in Britain), has personally experienced the myriad ways university research commercialisation can impact people’s lives. It’s given him a holistic view of the sector far beyond what his previous two decades focused on the University of Oxford might have you think.

But while spinouts are the easiest story to tell, they’re just a small piece of the commercialisation puzzle. The majority of university IP gets out into the world through licensing agreements and R&D collaborations with existing businesses, or through consulting. That means the economy needs to be thriving: businesses need both the cash and the workforce to forge these partnerships.

Having rebranded from PraxisAuril earlier this year, Knowledge Exchange UK is ready to play an increasingly big role in shaping how research commercialisation is done. One example is its plan to help its members better collaborate on a regional level to share resources and solve problems in ways that account for and benefit their locality.

The organisation is also looking to drive forward the professionalisation of the sector. Here, Stuart ponders a proposal from his former Oxford colleague Tom Hockaday, who recently called for a Master’s degree in technology transfer… and why that means tech transfer is not unlike the evolution of the paramedics profession.

2025 marks 100 years since the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) became the first-ever tech transfer office. It’s been a very successful first century for the non-profit organisation as we heard last week, but that does pose an interesting challenge: how can WARF keep innovating and make sure it not only survives but thrives for another 100 years?

The organisation is certainly not resting on its laurels. WARF today is split into six verticals and much like you’d expect, many of them are groundbreaking. There is, for example, WARF Therapeutics, a drug development accelerator run by just a handful of people that has already brought tens of millions of additional grant funding to the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.

Today’s guests are Erik Iverson, who became CEO of WARF in 2016 and brought with him a deep passion for life sciences, having earlier worked for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Access to Advanced Health Institute.

Also joining the show is Mike Partsch, WARF’s inaugural chief venture officer who brought with him not only venture capital experience but also a deep understanding of tech transfer and spinouts: he founded the first-ever biotech spinout out of Penn in 1990 (which successfully IPO’d a few years later).

The story of technology transfer begins with Harry Steenbock’s discovery of how to create vitamin D- fortified food. Steenbock, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, established the first-ever university tech transfer office not only to license his own invention to industry but also to support his colleagues present and future to do the same.

This year, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) celebrates its 100th anniversary. But while WARF has forever changed how universities go about creating real-world applications for their research, it wasn’t all smooth sailing: because WARF was created decades before the Bayh-Dole Act (which gives US universities the right to exploit their IP), there were several run-ins with the government, regulators and industry both at home and internationally.

Kevin Walters wrote his PhD on the history of WARF and now serves as the organisation’s public affairs associate. He explains why all of this could only have happened in a state known for its dairy industry and how Steenbock’s childhood days on a farm meant he managed to do something that paediatricians did not.

How does university research become a real-world product like vitamin D-fortified oatmeal, warfarin or Gatorade? The Next Leap is an interview show with the experts responsible for this process — from tech transfer practitioners to founders to lawyers, and others.

Subscribe now for the first episode, dropping Tuesday, 18 March.