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The International Biomedical Research Alliance Appoints Life Sciences Patent Lawyer to its Board

Dr. Jeffrey I. Auerbach will help postgraduate medical research students in the US and UK better understand intellectual property dimensions of their research

BETHESDA, MD - Oct 5, 2016 - The International Biomedical Research Alliance, a non-profit organization which provides programming and funding support for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program, today announced that Jeffrey I. Auerbach, PhD, is joining the Alliance’s board of directors. Dr. Auerbach is the founder and managing member of AuerbachSchrot LLC, an intellectual property (IP) law firm based in Rockville, Md.

“The International Biomedical Research Alliance is always looking for new ways to support the NIH Oxford-Cambridge scholars and broaden their postgraduate medical research training. By partnering with Dr. Auerbach, who has 30 years’ experience in patent licensing, and has provided  counsel for some of the most complex biotechnology cases, we will help increase their knowledge of  this important arena,” said Stephen M. McLean, chairman of the Alliance Board of Directors. “We are delighted that Dr. Auerbach has agreed to join our Board.”

“This is a wonderful opportunity to help mentor the next generation of medical researchers who are going to shape the future of healthcare,” said Dr. Auerbach. “As a medical researcher and a patent lawyer, I understand many of the questions and challenges that these scholars face and have the experience to be able to provide practical, tangible guidance.”

Dr. Auerbach prepares and litigates bioinformatics, diagnostics, genetics, microbiology, molecular biology and therapeutic patent applications. He is also an expert in protecting global patent rights. Furthermore, he has patents of his own for vaccine production and isothermal “rolling circle” nucleic acid amplification.

He is also an entrepreneur. Dr. Auerbach founded Replicon, Inc., a biotechnology company that used rolling circle amplification in diagnostics, genomics and therapeutics, in 1994 and served as its president for almost eight years until it was acquired by Biokit SA. He then founded DC Associates, LLC, a company that licensed nucleic acid amplification technologies, and was its president for more than a decade.

Dr. Auerbach has an MPhil and a PhD in molecular biophysics and biochemistry from Yale University. He also has a JD from the National Law Center of George Washington University.

About the NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program
The NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program was created in 2001, through collaboration between the NIH and Oxford and Cambridge Universities, to revolutionize the way in which the most talented biomedical PhD and MD/PhD students in the United States and the European Union are taught. Participants in the program receive accelerated training, work on collaborative projects that address critical biomedical research problems, and graduate approximately two years early with a PhD degree from either Oxford or Cambridge University. They spend an equal amount of time with a mentor in a laboratory at either Oxford or Cambridge University and an NIH Intramural Laboratory.  For more information, please visit http://oxcam.gpp.nih.gov .

About the International Biomedical Research Alliance
The Alliance’s mission is to support the NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program and associated global PhD and MD/PhD training programs based in the Intramural Research Program of the NIH, America’s largest biomedical research organization. Its goal is to assure the financial viability and scientific excellence of the scholars’ program by supplementing government funding. The Alliance supports program events and scholarships designed to enrich the program and broaden the perspectives of its students as they train to become the next leaders in biomedical research. For more information, please visit www.biomedalliance.org .