About

Mass General Brigham Innovation

Mass General Brigham Innovation coordinates industrial relationships and IP management across Mass General Brigham, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, Mass Eye and Ear, McLean Hospital, and Spaulding Hospital.

Mass General Brigham Innovation is a cohesive, coordinated group servicing medical inventors, thought-leaders, entrepreneurs, and industry. Our goal is to take medical inventions and innovations discovered by Mass General Brigham researchers and provide the appropriate support and infrastructure to allow technology development, commercialization, and, ultimately, the development of products to benefit patients.

The team has backgrounds in technology licensing, patenting, bench research, finance, funding, business, law, and start-ups.

Our Mission

Innovation is the 140-person business development unit of Mass General Brigham responsible for the worldwide commercial application of the unique capabilities and discoveries of Mass General Brigham's 82,000 employees. Innovation supports the research requirements of its 4,200 Harvard Medical School faculty and research hospitals. It has responsibility for industry collaborations, venture investing, international consulting, licensing, innovation management, company creation, technology marketing, open innovation alliances, and workforce development.

Primary Functions

Primary functions in converting invention to innovation:

  • Business development
  • Company creation
  • Industry collaborations
  • Innovation management
  • Licensing
  • Research translations strategy and funding
  • Technology marketing
  • Venture
  • Workforce capacity building for commercial collaborations

Licensing Partnerships

Mass General Brigham Innovation is a division of Mass General Brigham that coordinates commercialization for Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital.

We work with investors and companies to license medical technologies in diagnostics, medical devices, research tools, medical software, therapeutics and vaccines.

Below is a representative list of companies that have licensed our technologies.

Bench to bedside

Tens of millions of patients globally benefit from the discoveries of our Harvard faculty. The following treatments are built on technologies developed at Mass General Brigham hospitals and are now widely used to treat patients.

Alprolix ® is an injectable medicine that is used to help control and prevent bleeding in people with hemophilia B. Hemophilia B is also called congenital Factor IX deficiency. In multiple clinical trials, ALPROLIX® prophylaxis offered bleed and joint bleed protection for pediatric patients and adults/adolescents.

Cobas ® EGFR Mutation Test is a diagnostic for non-small cell lung cancer. This PCR test is designed to enable the testing of both tissue and plasma specimens on the same plate via a single kit. Tissue specimens refer to cancer cells obtained through biopsy or surgical removal of cancerous tissue, whereas plasma specimens come from blood samples.

Coolsculpting ®, a treatment of visible fat bulges via cryolipolysis, uses selective fat freezing for aesthetic fat reduction and body contouring.

Durasul ®, Longevity, EI ®, Vivacit-E ® are highly cross-linked and anti-oxidant infused polyethylene used in total joint replacements to overcome implant wear and degradation that can lead to periprosthetic osteolysis — an iatrogenic disease that can cause implant failures as well as major bone fractures, and often requires additional surgeries to install a new artificial joint. Remarkably, this widely used material has virtually eliminated the threat of periprosthetic osteolysis and extended the longevity of joint implants.

Eloctate ®, an intravenous treatment for Hemophilia A, is used to help control and prevent bleeding. It is the first to use Antihemophilic Factor, Fc Fusion Protein. In 80% of bleeding episodes, patients saw pain relief and/or improvement in signs of bleeding with infusion. About 87% of bleeds were controlled with 1 infusion.

Enbrel ® has been a game changer for more than a decade for the 1.5 million Americans suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, increasing by roughly 110,000 new diagnoses each year. RA historically confined patients to their homes or worse. Enbrel has allowed millions to return to family life and work. While there are now other competing therapies on the market, it preceded them and brought long sought relief to when nothing else was available.

Entyvio ® reached the market in the last decade as an effective treatment for the 800,000 patients suffering from Crohn’s Disease and another 900,000 from ulcerative colitis in the United States.

INOmax ®, provides a hypoxic respiratory failure treatment to neonates. These low doses of inhaled nitric oxide (NO) — a toxic gas found in car exhaust and cigarette smoke —help relax the blood vessels leading to the lungs, effectively reversing a life-threatening condition known as acute pulmonary hypertension. This therapy has been used in hypoxic newborns, children with congenital heart disease, and adults whose pulmonary hypertension complicated their surgical and clinical care.

StarLuxTM, a non-scarring pulsed light therapy treatment, is now widely used in medicine. Techniques include the removal of birthmarks and other skin lesions as well as methods for tattoo and permanent hair removal.

Victoza ® (Liraglutide) is a noninsulin medication used in combination with diet and exercise to treat Type 2 diabetes. Victoza belongs to a class of drugs called glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) agonists. These drugs mimic the action of a hormone called glucagon-like peptide 1. When blood sugar levels start to rise after someone eats, these drugs stimulate the body to secrete more insulin. The extra insulin helps lower blood sugar levels.

Visudyne ®, is a drug for treating abnormal blood vessels in the eye, for example, neovascular age-related macular degeneration (“Wet AMD”). Wet AMD is responsible for 90% of legal blindness, with estimates placing the global cost of vision loss at $3 trillion dollars.