listserv. University of Southampton chemical biologist Tom Brown had found a way, called DNA click ligation, to glue together strands of DNA without using an enzyme. It was a neat trick but had no straightforward use, says Perez. IP Group, a British venture capital firm that invests in university innovation, sponsored a prize as part of a Marblar competition. The winning entry was from a Cambridge University PhD student studying nucleotide drug delivery who believed the invention could advance his field. The idea is now being turned into a proof-of-concept prototype (Brown's lab is advertising a job opening to help), and IP Group is evaluating the possibility of creating a spin-out company. The venture firm also has made a roughly $600,000 investment in Marblar itself. The startup's efforts fall in line with broader long-term efforts to speed the commercialization of innovation from universities, which is effectively the return on investments of taxpayer dollars. In the U.S., in fiscal year 2011, universities and research institutes received $40 billion in federal R&D funds, according to the Association of University Technology Managers . The organization's survey results show that 670 startups and 591 new commercial products came out of U.S. universities and research institutes during this time. Lita Nelsen, director of MIT's Technology Licensing Office , says that Marblar looks like it would be a useful tool in a few cases she sees each year, but that it would be unlikely to dramatically increase the number of ideas that get commercialized. Most research