Midwest HighTech

Rapidly advancing technologies have given rise to an enormous amount of intellectual property. The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has become inundated with the amount of patents filed. They are currently backlogged with the amount of patents filed and it is only getting worse. The government has just allocated funds to increase the number of patent examiners by 1200 in the next fiscal year. With this said, the USPTO estimated that they cannot hire themselves out of this deficit:

The USPTO has also estimated that if it were able to hire 2,000 patent examiners per year in fiscal year 2007 and each of the next 5 years, the backlog would continue to increase by about 260,000 applications, to 953,643 at the end of fiscal year 2011, the GAO said.

There is a bill circulating congress aimed at patent reform. Many larger tech vendors are in favor of the bill, which aims to increase the difficulty of filing a patent without the intention of creating products. With the current system it has become common practice to file for a patent in order to block your opposition from developing a product, or sue them when they do. The bill shows promise to decrease this practice and help alleviate the strain on the USPTO, however Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat from Nevada, had the following to say on the time frame:

Patent reform was a priority, but it was in a line behind several other bills, including an economic stimulus package and a government surveillance authorization bill. The Senate would turn to patent reform, “time permitting”.

Scientists at the University of Minnesota have created a beating heart in their laboratory. In order to produce the heart, they remove the heart from an animal cadaver. Deceased cells are removed from the heart, leaving only the extracellular matrix which acts as a scaffold. New progenitor cells extracted from a living animal are injected into the scaffold, which grow and develop into a functional beating heart.

This technique addresses the problem of tissue rejection, a limitation of current transplants. Our bodies are programmed to reject any foreign cells that become internalized. With this in mind, transplant patients must take immunosuppressant drugs in order to prevent their bodies from rejecting the new organ. These drugs are not failsafe and are very costly since they must be taken indefinitely. This new technique uses live cells harvested from the patient and as a result the newly grown organs should be a perfect match upon implant.

Cardiovascular disease is the #1 killer in America, even larger than cancer. Biotech-Geek cites some numbers that drive the magnitude of the potential benefits of this treatment:

“Nearly 5 million people live with heart failure, and about 550,000 new cases are diagnosed each year in the United States. Approximately 50,000 United States patients die annually waiting for a donor heart.”

Congratulations to Dr Taylor and her team for an amazing discovery.

Researchers at Northwestern University are launching clinical trials using purified stem cells from the patients’ own body in an attempt to cure a debilitating circulatory disease. The stem cells are transplanted into the patient’s legs leading to blood vessel growth and restored circulation. Northwestern’s site states:

“Severely blocked arteries in the leg and sharply diminished blood flow can result in wounds that don’t heal, the breakdown of tissue and gangrene. This painful condition is called critical limb ischemia (CLI) and results in the amputation of more than 100,000 limbs every year in the United States. It’s a serious, emerging health problem that affects 1.4 million people. An estimated 15 percent of the population will have this disease by the time they reach age 70.”

Considering the projected impact of this condition, treatments such as this could drastically improve the quality of life for people suffering from this extremely painful condition.

With the moral and political battles raging around the use of stem cells, it is refreshing to see actual treatment options arising from stem cell based research efforts.

In a somewhat relevant follow up to yesterday’s post about FutureGen, here is Argonne Lab’s Dr. Adam Cohen discussing nuclear, solar and electric power.

Notable Comments:

“Whatever your motivation is, there is a push away from fossil fuels.”

“You’re going to see more and more applications that kind of look like the materials you use… you’re going to see the shingles on your roof that can actually generate electricity.”

“You’re going to see more nuclear deployment around the world.”

“The United States is the Saudi Arabia of coal.”

Interesting comments, but as far as the predictions go - they sound familiar. It is hard to deny that a move away from fossil fuels is desirable, but as long as the US is the “Saudi Arabia of coal” there will continue to be a difficult incentives problem to overcome, especially if ideas along the lines of FutureGen continue to become more viable. Dr. Cohen does mention “clean coal” as well as FutureGen (the talk was 3 weeks ago). It would be interesting to hear his thoughts after the recent news.

Bush Administration Pulls Support
Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman announced last Wednesday that the DOE will be scrapping the FutureGen project at Mattoon (St. Louis Today). There appears to be 2 main driving forces behind the DOE’s change of direction:

1. Projected cost of the plant has doubled to $1.8 billion.
2. Advancements in technology since FutureGen’s inception in 2003 might make pursuing other approaches more reasonable.

The DOE is considering replacing the FutureGen plan with a more decentralized approach which includes the construction of commercial-scale Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC, wikipedia) clean coal power plants by providing funding for the addition of carbon capture and storage (CCS, wikipedia) to multiple plants that will be operational by 2015 (St. Louis Business Journal). The idea is that this may be a more efficient approach to solving the problem created by the industry’s need for more power production and increasing concerns/regulation of emissions. The DOE claims that this is a more commercially viable approach that would take some of the burden off of the government while continuing to maximize the incentive for innovation in the private sector.

Officials’ Response
Dick Durbin along with FutureGen Alliance CEO Michael Mudd appear to be making some last ditch efforts to keep the project on track. Durbin wrote to Bush saying:

“We feel that the secretary misled us and the people of Illinois, creating false hope in a FutureGen project which he had no intention of funding or supporting. We are writing today to urge you to keep FutureGen on track, so that this project can begin construction and become a reality.”

And Mudd said in a statement:

“The Alliance remains committed to keeping FutureGen on track. We owe it to the people of Illinois, to the Alliance members who have contributed significant funds and resources to bring the project to this stage and to society which depends on technology to provide clean, affordable and secure energy… The Alliance has proposed new solutions to address cost concerns, is committed to its cooperative agreement with DOE, and will continue to work with Congress, the State of Illinois, foreign governments, and other stakeholders to keep FutureGen moving ahead at Mattoon.”

FutureGen board members have offered to restructure the deal to take responsibility for the overrun costs (Wall Street Journal). At this point, however, it is not clear that many are too optimistic about FutureGen as it was originally conceived.

Moving Forward
The alternative CSS technology will have to be commercially demonstrated and it is possible that Mattoon could be a new site. Industry players will compete for the new plants, with ICGS plants potentially being commissioned by 2015. The DOE would fund the CSS component of the power plant.

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