#30: 😷 Centenarians Have Amazing Immune Systems
Plus: Oxford University's Unfair Spin-Out Practices
💬 In this note:
😷 People Over 100 Have Highly Functional Immune Systems
🇬🇧 UK Universities are Spinning-Out Startups the Wrong Way
📚 The Spanish Love Deception
😷 People Over 100 Have Highly Functional Immune Systems
One of the defining characteristics of aging is a decline in the proper functioning of the immune system.
Centenarians, individuals who reach 100 years or more, experience delays in age-related diseases and mortality which suggest their immune systems remain functional into extreme old age.
Researchers from Boston University’s Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine and Tufts Medical Center conducted a study of seven centenarians enrolled in the New England Centenarian Study.
The group believes they assembled and analyzed the largest single-cell dataset of centenarians, seven subjects. Seven subjects over 100 years old is considered a large dataset! 😳
The researchers studied age and how it affects the different immune cell types and changes in cell activity. By constructing immune profiles of the centenarians, they confirmed this group of individuals had a long history of exposure to infections and the capacity to recover from them.
These exposures result in centenarians being enriched by protective factors that increase their ability to recover from infections.
🇬🇧 UK Universities are Spinning-Out Startups the Wrong Way
University spin-outs are companies that take technologies invented at a university and turn it into a company with real-world impact.
In the United States, the Bayh–Dole Act permits universities to pursue ownership of inventions made by researchers at their institutions using funding from the federal government.
What traditionally happens is that the technology transfer office (TTO) of the university will negotiate with the inventors of the technology (the students, professors or university employees) for a percentage of ownership of the spin-out company. Taking away a portion of the company's equity from the founders.
Several American universities, such as Stanford and MIT, generally offer favorable terms to the startup company, where the university will ask for 5-10% of the company when the spinout is founded. MIT has even spun-out companies and asked for 0% equity in return, meaning the founders own the whole company (way to go MIT!).
However, in the UK the terms tend to be more unfavorable for the startup founders and company. It is not unheard of for a UK university to ask for 50% or more of the spin-out company when the intellectual property was generated at the university using university resources and funding. In a recent report, the median amount of equity that a UK university pursued is 33%. That’s a big chunk of the company to take away from the inventors.
One of the worst offenders is Oxford University. Although Oxford created more spinouts between 2011-2022 than any other UK university, it ranked lowest in founder satisfaction as shown in a 2022 survey. As recently reported by Sifted, Oxford on average takes 24.3% equity, while rival university Cambridge, only takes an average of 12.6% equity in the spin-out. This equity rate of ~24% is new for Oxford and is a result of a university policy reform in 2021.
University Technology Transfer Offices will spend a lot of time and resources to negotiate deal terms in favor of the university and typically once the deal is done, the university support stops. This can be problematic for startups as they have a university owning ~20% of dead equity. Dead equity is when a university passively holds its shares, meaning they are no longer active in the company or contributing financial involvement or support, yet still holding a significant amount of the company’s equity.
📚 Book of the Week
The Spanish Love Deception: A Novel by Elena Armas
3 / 5 Stars
Catalina Martín, lies to her family that she is bringing her boyfriend to her sister’s wedding in Spain. The truth is, Catalina is single, very single. In need of a last minute date, she brings her coworker and hilarity ensues.
⚡️ Check This Out
California received a near record-breaking amount of rain this winter, and the rain has begun to ease the state’s long-term drought.
Check out some jaw-dropping photos of how the storms filled the reservoirs.
Hi Nina, I was curious as to whether some university equity is valuable alignment, and if so what levels? Kevin, a new subscriber, fellow Shack15 member!