Left: A rendering of the first Veterinary Science Building – now the Hanson Biomedical Sciences Building – for which WARF provided $475,000 in 1959. Right: Dr. Harry Steenbock, one of WARF’s founders. Photos courtesy of WARF.
The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) and the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine (SVM) enjoy a century-long partnership that began when UW-Madison biochemistry professor Harry Steenbock patented his discovery that irradiating foods with ultraviolet light increased their Vitamin D content. Steenbock, seeking to commercialize his discovery and return the proceeds to the university, suggested the creation of a patent management foundation to support inventors.
Steenbock established WARF in 1925 with College of Agriculture Dean Harry L. Russell, Graduate School Dean Charles S. Slichter, and a board of successful alumni to “promote, encourage, and aid scientific investigation and research at the University of Wisconsin by faculty, staff, alumni and students.”
100 years later, as the organization celebrates its centennial, WARF continues to support SVM through grants toward research programs and facilities, patents and licensing, WARF Accelerator, and WARF Ventures.
“The history of WARF is a fascinating and wonderfully great story of entrepreneurship and innovation,” says SVM Dean Jonathan Levine. “Seeing how WARF has grown, from its founding until now, shows the power of engaging faculty in the process of commercializing their ideas and protecting their intellectual property. WARF resources have benefited the School tremendously.”
Supporting Research Facilities
The Department of Veterinary Science was established in the College of Agriculture, now the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, in 1911. WARF provided $475,000 for the first Veterinary Science Building – now the Hanson Biomedical Sciences Building – in 1959, and the School of Veterinary Medicine was established in 1979. In 2020, WARF provided $15 million for the School’s newest building expansion and renovation.
“A highlight of our relationship with WARF is their investment in our new, 150,000 square foot building, home to a hospital for specialized companion animal services and state-of-the-art research space,” says Levine. “WARF’s $15 million gift helped make both the expansion and renovations of our main building possible, allowing our team to fully actualize their vision of combining the hospital and research space to create a collaborative, innovative engine.”
The building’s light-filled research spaces are contemporary and open, to facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration.
“They’re spread across areas that link well together, such as oncology, infectious disease, and immunology,” says Levine. “Walking through and looking at the graduate student spaces there and seeing how individuals are able to collaborate, brainstorm, and generate ideas is really powerful.”
Situating the new hospital and research labs in the same building enables the hospital to provide top-quality patient care and use innovative research in veterinary medicine.
“Our partnerships with the School of Medicine have included developing therapies to benefit humans and animals and work on cancer biology and infectious diseases,” says Levine. “TomoTherapy®, which came from the School of Medicine and is now in one thousand human hospitals across the globe, was validated in our vet hospital, on dogs with nasal cancer.”
Patenting and Licensing
WARF collaborates with School of Veterinary Medicine inventors to patent and license their intellectual property, which benefits humans and animals worldwide. Yoshihiro Kawaoka and Gabriele Neumann’s (both of the Department of Pathobiological Sciences) groundbreaking reverse genetics technology is a key component in the FluMist nasal spray influenza vaccine, making it one of WARF’s Top 12 inventions.
In another example of how innovation in veterinary medicine impacts both animal and human health, emeritus professor of medical physics and serial entrepreneur Rock Mackie worked with the SVM to produce the Equina® technology. Equina was patented by WARF and was the basis for Asto CT, a startup company that provides stand-up CT imaging for horses. In 2019, Asto CT merged with Leo Cancer Care, an Australian company developing upright imaging systems for human cancer patients.
WARF Accelerator Speeds Technology Development
WARF Accelerator, founded by WARF trustees in 2009, speeds the development of technologies that have the potential to achieve commercial success, via targeted funding and expert advice from seasoned business mentors, known as Catalysts. WARF Accelerator helps UW inventors develop their technologies and bring them to the marketplace.
WARF Accelerator supported SVM Professor Tony Goldberg’s (Department of Pathobiological Sciences) project using next-generation sequencing to diagnose microbial food contaminates in food and related products and Professor Adel Talaat’s (Department of Pathobiological Sciences) development of a diagnostic test that detects Mycobacterium avium paratuberculoisis (MAP) infection in dairy cattle before symptoms arise. Peter Muir (Department of Surgical Sciences) and Susannah Sample (MS’07 DVM’09 PhD’11; Department of Surgical Sciences) received WARF Accelerator backing for two projects: the development of a canine genetic test for acquired peripheral neuropathy (APN) syndrome, and a project that seeks to identify the genetic variant associated with late-onset laryngeal paralysis polyneuropathy and develop a diagnostic test for the disease.
WARF Ventures Supports Faculty Entrepreneurship
WARF Ventures funds and cultivates UW-Madison startup enterprises. WARF Ventures has backed startups including FluGen, which Kawaoka and Neumann co-founded in 2007 to prevent and treat influenza outbreaks around the world, and Transfur, a software platform that allows veterinarians to request, send, and review patients’ medical records from clinic to clinic, co-founded in 2021 by then student Annie Pankowski (DVM’23).
Imbed Biosciences, founded by SVM now-emeritus faculty members Jonathan McAnulty and Charles Czuprynski, is another WARF Ventures-backed startup that makes products designed to meet the complex needs of different types of wounds, burns, and ulcers and speed healing.
“WARF Ventures has a strong history of supporting technologies and companies from students and faculty in veterinary medicine,” says Katie Rice, WARF Venture Relations Manager. “We look for meaningful ways to connect our network of investors and partners to help move these innovations to market.”
Looking Forward to Another 100 Years of Collaboration
Dean Levine is optimistic about the SVM’s continued relationship with WARF.
“Going forward, we hope to see innovation in areas such as AI, immunology, cancer, and biomedical devices,” says Levine. “With Chancellor Mnookin’s interest in entrepreneurship bringing more awareness of commercialization to faculty and students, that’s where WARF can help us. People don’t always realize their ideas have commercial potential.”
With the most active patents of any veterinary medical school or college, the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine is poised to leverage its legacy of leadership, its new facilities, and WARF support to continue to create innovations that benefit animal and human health around the world.
Protecting People Around the Globe Against Influenza
Yoshihiro Kawaoka and Gabriele Neumann (both of the Department of Pathobiological Sciences) protect human health around the world, thanks to their research on the influenza virus and their contributions to influenza vaccine technology. In recognition of their innovative contributions to safe, effective, available vaccines that have improved humans’ quality of life worldwide, Kawaoka was named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) in 2023, and Neumann was named an NAI fellow in December 2024. Neumann has experience in both industry and academia, in Germany and the U.S., and Kawaoka is a global expert in infectious diseases and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Kawaoka’s research group at the SVM developed a new strategy to generate and manipulate the influenza virus, called “reverse genetics,” when Neumann was a postdoctoral researcher in the group. The research team created flu viruses from engineered DNA and developed vaccines to address specific virus strains, revolutionizing the production of influenza vaccines.
WARF helped Kawaoka and Neumann patent and license their reverse genetics techniques, which have streamlined global vaccine production and enabled a faster response to evolving influenza strains and other respiratory illnesses. The technology is a key component of MedImmune’s FluMist nasal spray influenza vaccine, making it one of WARF’s Top 12 inventions.
In 2007, Kawaoka and Neumann co-founded FluGen, a Madison-based company committed to preventing and treating influenza outbreaks worldwide, which is supported by WARF Accelerator. FluGen is collaborating with Bharat Biotech in India to develop a combination influenza-COVID-19 vaccine.
“Any time WARF compiles a list of the most impactful inventions in our 100-year history, the work of Yoshi Kawaoka and Gabi Neumann ranks high on the list,” says WARF CEO Erik Iverson. “We know the world will continue to benefit from their technologies well into our next century of collaboration.”
Bringing SVM Oncology Research to the Forefront
The SVM’s long partnership with WARF includes the area of oncology, where many faculty have contributed to cross-campus collaborations to develop and test novel cancer treatments, diagnostic technologies, and imaging tools that WARF has licensed and patented.
Emeritus professor of medical physics and serial entrepreneur Rock Mackie, Peter Muir (Department of Surgical Sciences), and Mark Markel (Department of Medical Sciences) worked with SVM to produce the Equina® technology, patented by WARF and the basis for Asto CT, a startup company founded in 2015 that provides stand-up CT imaging for horses. In 2019, Asto CT merged with Leo Cancer Care, an Australian company developing upright imaging systems for human cancer patients.
Mackie created TomoTherapy® in the late 1980s as a new way to treat cancer, spinning out a company, TomoTherapy Inc., in 1997, to develop the technology. In the early 2000s, Lisa Forrest (Department of Surgical Sciences) led successful TomoTherapy clinical trials in pet dogs with nasal tumors at UW Veterinary Care, which led to TomoTherapy’s widespread use in human medicine.
Like the TomoTherapy clinical trials, SVM has run other clinical studies in partnership with faculty inventors from around the university, and those collaborations have advanced cancer care for animals and humans.
“The history of UW and its cancer-focused faculty in the School of Veterinary Medicine doing high-impact trials is a long one,” says Dean Jonathan Levine.
Levine is optimistic about the research taking place at SVM and sees many potential patenting and licensing opportunities with WARF.
Xuan Pan (Department of Medical Sciences) is partnering with the School of Medicine and Public Health, looking at cost-effective, at-home diagnostic tests for the presence of cancer in pets, which could lead to earlier cancer detection and follow-up screening with a veterinarian.
“Early detection is one way to have better outcomes with cancer treatment in people, and dogs and cats too,” Levine says.
David Vail (Department of Medical Sciences) has more than 30 years of experience designing and implementing comparative oncology clinical trials in companion dogs with cancer.
“He is the world leader in taking a therapy with high potential, vetting that therapy in his lab, and giving it a go/no-go signal,” says Levine. “If you think about bringing new therapies to market, that’s really powerful.”
Tony Goldberg’s Research & Inventions
The SVM’s Tony Goldberg (Department of Pathobiological Sciences) has collaborated with WARF since the early 2010s, when he patented two inventions. In 2018, Goldberg and Kathy Toohey-Kurth, now a professor at UC Davis, worked with WARF Accelerator to test a novel metagenomics method on bovine clinical samples and attract commercial interest.
“Tony is a rare breed of elite biomedical scientist and veterinarian who brings his veterinary expertise into his work on everything,” says Dean Jonathan Levine. “He’s very broad, and he’s excited by difficult problems.”
Most recently, Goldberg and Doctor of Veterinary Medicine/PhD student Leah Owens (DVMx’25) filed a patent application in June 2023 for a novel method to accurately characterize parasites in samples. The research, which was published in Nature Communications in January 2024, addresses the challenge of diagnosing parasitic infections in animals or humans.
“We were able to crack this thorny problem because Leah spent so much dedicated time carefully designing and testing methods,” Goldberg says.
Owens, who has an MS in molecular biology, designed the method, dubbed VESPA (Vertebrate Eukaryotic endoSymbiont and Parasite Analysis), which generates a comprehensive list of all the parasites in a biological sample and their relative abundance.
Owens created a mock community test reagent for standardization named EukMix after scouring the School for unusual parasites.
“If someone came across a weird parasite, she’d go over and collect a piece of it,” says Goldberg. “She got an unbelievable collection of diverse parasites, extracted their DNA, and cloned their genes into a bacterial vector, so we had equal and unequal mixtures of these parasites’ DNA in a tube. That was our standard, and we compared results from the new method to what we knew we had put into our mock parasite community.”
Goldberg says he appreciates WARF’s support in commercializing ideas.
“When I make discoveries, I definitely think about whether it should be an invention disclosure to WARF,” he says. “All of us benefit from WARF being here—it’s a pretty amazing organization.”
Tony Goldberg
By Katie Ginder-Vogel