Soaring innovation in Texas has spawned a biotech boom that has made Dallas a hotbed for medical research, with numerous inventions emerging from its research universities.
Texas universities play a crucial role in the state’s economy and medical research, with the University of Texas system taking the lead. Their innovations, in turn, lead to growth in the state’s life sciences sector.
The effect is quantified in recent data that shows University of Texas institutions rank third among the nation’s most innovative universities, according to a study by the National Academy of Inventors. UT schools received 235 U.S. utility patents in the 2023 calendar year, surpassing the 225 patents from the previous year. The University of California system had the most patents, with 546, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology secured the second-most patents, with 365.
The NAI determines rankings by compiling calendar year utility patent data from the United States Patent and Trademark Office, excluding foreign patents in its final tally. Utility patents are granted for the invention of new or improved products and processes and are a major cornerstone of scientific and technological advancement. For research universities, utility patents serve as indicators of the commercial potential of original products and research.
Although the NAI uses data from the calendar year while calculating the number of patents earned by each university or university system, the UT system itself measures patent data in accordance with its fiscal year, which runs from Sept. 1 to Aug. 31. In FY23, the UT Southwestern Medical Center was granted 47 U.S. utility patents, the University of Texas at Dallas was granted 32 and the University of Texas at Arlington was granted 20. The UT system includes nine universities, including the flagship in Austin, and five health institutions.
The economic landscape of Texas both fuels innovation and sustains it, said Shalini Prasad, a researcher and head of the department of bioengineering at UTD. Prasad’s research is focused on cancer, and she was granted two U.S. patents and four foreign patents in 2023.
“The environment in Texas allows us to do truly innovative work, and the output of innovative work is intellectual property,” she said. “And it’s important to take that intellectual property and to convert that into something that’s a product. … It’s not just creating it and putting it on the shelf, it’s about then converting that.”
“Texas allows us to do that, especially through partnering with companies of various sizes, small, medium, large, to transport it,” Prasad added.
Dallas holds countless opportunities for scientific entrepreneurship with its bustling biotechnology industry and energizing market, Prasad said.
“If you leave the coast and look at the center of the country, Dallas is where things are emerging,” she said. “Within Texas, we’ve created an environment that attracts companies across multiple disciplines to come work in Texas.”
Jinming Gao, a researcher at the UTSW and recently named NAI fellow, said that, though Dallas doesn’t have the tech ecosystem of Boston or San Francisco, the past five to 10 years have seen “fundamental, transformational changes here in the DFW metroplex.”
Gao’s research is at the interface of cancer and nanotechnology, and he currently holds 16 U.S. patents, one of which was granted last year.
“We are actually attracting investors around the East Coast and West Coast to start … offices here,” he said. “They’re looking for the new signs and new discoveries and new technology that’s happening here, so I think we have a huge potential.”
Gao referenced both Pegasus Park, a 23-acre biotech hub northwest of downtown Dallas, and billionaire Elon Musk’s recent Texas business ventures as further evidence of the state’s promising tech market.
According to Gao, it’s not just the state of Texas or city of Dallas that fuels the UT system’s innovation — it’s the culture within the schools themselves.
“Now, I think a lot of the professors are thinking about the clinical translation,” Gao said. “You have a chance to work with a physician to say, how do we actually develop a therapy … that can treat cancer or neurological disease?”
“That makes it, I think, more transforming in a way,” he said.
UTSW is “conducive for health care related innovation and research” because of its clinical environment and new biomedical engineering department that “bridges the gaps” between basic science and clinical practice, Gao said.
Venu Varanasi, a researcher and professor at UTA, said that, as faculty produce more inventions, they are able to secure more funding to allow both undergraduate and graduate students to contribute to inventions.
“I pride myself on having all of my trainees be part of my inventions,” he said. “And that’s the component that bleeds into the teaching and mentoring side.”
Varanasi’s research focuses on medical devices for regenerating skull and jaw bone and on dental implants geared toward faster healing and reducing the need for additional procedures for patients. In 2023, he was granted a U.S. patent for his work in live 3D printing, which he described as a process of printing bone to repair a defect in an animal while the animal is sedated.
Varanasi said he prioritizes nurturing the inventive streak in the clinical practitioners who work in his lab, encouraging them to pitch their own ideas under his guidance to train the next generation of scientific innovators.
“I say, ‘Hey, you’re an adult … you’re a professional. I’m not going to micromanage this. I want you to come up with good ideas, and I’ll give you my input to help us streamline,’ ” he said. “Because, although they have ideas, they don’t have mechanisms to know how to get those ideas to fruition.”
Varanasi said the school is engaging in dialogue about how inventorship and innovation can be integrated into the research component of tenure decisions.
“If you’re more proficient in that area, it gives you the leeway to invent without publishing so quickly,” he said. “Once you’re at the provisional stage, you can publish as much as you’d like. … But, between that time period of filing the invention and filing the provisional side of it, we want to give faculty that buffer time to get their ideas out without threat of somebody taking it.”
Both publishing and inventing help establish a strong academic reputation for universities and have an effect on funding for projects and bringing products to the market.
