Office of Technology Commercialization

Accelerating the translation of important ideas into meaningful products and services for the benefit of North Carolina, the world, and the University

Innovate Carolina’s Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC) helps translate the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s inventions and findings into the commercial marketplace. It offers vital expertise to Carolina faculty and students who are engaged in a large and growing portfolio of sponsored and federally funded research, which often involves innovations with commercial potential. OTC works with Carolina’s researchers and inventors, as well as external research sponsors, collaborators, companies and investors.

As part of Innovate Carolina, OTC can help you: translate ideas into products and services that strengthen the economy and return revenue to the University, assess your technology’s commercial potential with patent landscaping and market research, launch a startup company through consulting, coaching, funding, mentorship and space, secure proof-of-concept grants for technology development, navigate technology patent applications and licensing agreements and structure partnerships that bring University research to market.

• Report an Invention
• Available Technologies
• Request an MTA
• Contact Our Team

UNC Commercialization Stories

Single-cell solution

Cell Microsystems, a company with UNC-Chapel Hill origins, is leapfrogging traditional technologies for single-cell cloning, culturing, analysis and isolation. How does the firm help scientists in pharma-biotech organizations speed therapeutic breakthroughs by culturing 10 times more cells in one-tenth of the time?

A birth control pill for men? How a UNC scientist-turned-entrepreneur plans to curb unintended pregnancies.

Eppin Pharma Inc, a startup founded by a former UNC-Chapel Hill faculty member, is developing a non-hormonal oral male contraceptive pill that has the potential to ease the economic, social and personal toll of unplanned pregnancies—and bring greater equity and flexibility to family planning.

The prognosis for pancreatic cancer remains dim. Can energy-based drug delivery brighten the odds?

Focal Medical, a startup with roots at UNC-Chapel Hill, is finalizing plans with the FDA to enroll pancreatic cancer patients in its first clinical trial. The company’s implantable technology uses an electrical field to deliver drugs in higher concentrations to hard-to-reach tumor cells.