Most schools set up a technologytransferoffice to help bring new discoveries to market, which mainly involves searching patent databases and chasing lots of paperwork.
Jonathan Soderstrom, who runs Yale University's technology-transfer office and is the president of the Association of University Technology Managers, says that the problem of raising money has never been as acute as now.
"Every university that does genetic research potentially infringes their patents, " says Brent Brown of the University of Utah's technology-transfer office, which took its license in May.