More than science: the management of Vonau Flash, USP's million-dollar patent

The patent created by Humberto Ferraz in partnership with Biolab is the most lucrative for USP. And it could set universities apart

Two years ago, Vonau Flash was approved and ready to go on the market. With resounding success, the patent for the anti-sickness drug became the most lucrative at the University of São Paulo (USP), earning 18 million reais for the university. For Humberto Gomes Ferraz, now director of USP's Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, the success of the medication is proof that public universities, in partnership with private companies (such as Biolab, in this case), can benefit both sides of the coin.

The difference between Vonau Flash and other motion sickness remedies is quite simple. Instead of needing to be swallowed, it dissolves in the mouth - which makes it easier to administer for children or people who have difficulty swallowing pills. Another major difference is the time it takes for the medicine to be absorbed by the body: 15 to 20 minutes, less than other medications. In 2018, the patent accounted for 58% of all USP's revenue from invention royalties.

When Ferraz realized that, in addition to the science done in the university laboratory he created and where the medication was designed, it was also necessary to practice business and people management, he trained in the subject. Without management, for him, it is difficult to meet deadlines and respect certain important measures when it comes to manufacturing a medication. "I discovered that without management, my laboratory wouldn't move forward. Training a researcher with knowledge of project management is very important," he explains in a telephone interview with EXAME.

Now that he has taken over as director, Ferraz intends to apply some (if not a lot) of his knowledge and success to the university - so that researchers learn that, in addition to knowledge, project management is also a very important factor.

Check out the full interview below: What is your recipe for success?

One very important thing I say is that for you to be successful in putting what you do and your knowledge on the market, especially in the health sector, it's all about partnerships. Setting up a pharmaceutical industry to put a medication on the market is not viable. Vonau Flash began with a partnership. We had the expertise and Biolab had the demand.

It's the combination of the two that allows us to get to where we are now. There's no point in doing something and the market not seeing a purpose in it. There's no point in creating something that isn't feasible for a company. There has to be a demand from a partner and you, with the knowledge you've acquired and leveraged over time, need to put the two together to achieve something successful. That was the recipe.
Biolab was with us from the start, they helped to create our project, and to tell us what they wanted. That's what works.

How was the process of creating the medication?

The process followed the usual methodology, so far there's not much of a secret, in our area we work on this. We have an active ingredient to formulate, and we test it in a compression machine. After the testing process, it goes through a stability institute, and then we also train the company to be able to reproduce the formulation in its production environment.

So the company prepares all the documentation to register the product with Anvisa and a little before that we start preparing the patent issue.

The Vonau Flash patent process took 13 years. Tell us more about it.

In our case, we have a university patent office at USP, which gave us all the support we needed to move forward with this issue, with the patent contract, which the university and the company own. It took thirteen and a half years to be granted.

Patents take a long time in Brazil. But there is a change underway.
It's been a long time waiting for the patent to be granted, but it all works out. The product went to market, was approved, and began to be marketed. It grew and grew and today we have a very interesting product with a very significant sales volume.

And what are the advantages of Vonau Flash over other motion sickness remedies?

Let's talk first about the pharmacological advantages, which are not due to the formulation, but to the molecules. Our drug doesn't cause the drowsiness characteristic of other drugs. It's a very important molecule. You don't need water to take it and that's an impressive advantage, since there are people who get seasick when they're traveling, and they don't need water, the tablet is in the bag, you take it out and that's it. This makes it much easier, especially in an emergency.

On the other hand, it's also easier to administer to a child, not a baby, and as the formulation has a pleasant taste, it's usually well accepted by children. This easier way of administering it makes life much easier for the patient. This was the idea that led to the creation of the formulation.

"When you want to teach a different class, do something, everything is a project, including our career, but few people have training in project management and that was a concern of mine back then. I felt I needed to get to know this management"

 And another point is that the product doesn't have an exorbitant price tag - other products on the market are even more expensive than Vonau Flash. The price of the medication is to Biolab's credit, because from the outset the company wanted to make a product that was interesting for the market, accessible and much more affordable than other formulations.

It's the importance of the partner. I insist on this because they are the ones who are going to put the product on the market, they are the ones who are going to promote it. If you don't have a partner with an open mind, who is going to do something different, sometimes the idea doesn't prosper.

How important is a drug of this size for Brazil and for public universities?

The product has even been marketed outside Brazil, in Ecuador too. For universities... this is very interesting, to date, and I have recent figures, the Vonau patent has already earned USP around 18 million reais.

If we do a very simple calculation and imagine that only 1% of researchers manage to achieve this, and we have around 5,600 professors today, if 1% of them achieve something like this, which is a very modest figure, we would then have 56 researchers, times 17 million. That's 952 million reais. That's a significant volume of resources, in a modest account.

It's a very good complement, it's worth noting that I've already received public money from Fapesp, CNPQ, but that doesn't even correspond to 5%.

The money comes practically entirely from the private sector, today we have 27 in our laboratory, with difficulties during the pandemic, obviously, because everything has become very complicated, but we have managed to maintain a reasonable structure. It's an alternative for us to supplement, which I think is quite valid, quite important.

When a patent is being negotiated, a contract is drawn up between the owners, and it stipulates how much royalties the company will pay the university, this is established in advance. Once the money has been paid, it's divided up: one part goes to the researcher, one to the university, one to the lecturer. The current resolution that regulates this issue distributes the funds.

Two years into the patent, what has changed for the medication since 2018?

Not much has changed in terms of the market, of increasing sales. What makes a product increase its sales is the fact that doctors prescribe it, it's very well accepted by patients and this ends up becoming something very well accepted in the community.

What do you intend to change about USP's Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences now that you're its director?

We have several ideas, some of them a little different. We bring a bit of this experience and I'd really like to, and part of the votes I got came precisely from this expectation on the part of our colleagues that we could apply this knowledge in college.

It has enormous potential to connect in a more advanced way with the market, the private sector, and we would very much like to dedicate ourselves to being able to move the faculty forward in this direction. This is an expectation of the students, who will have a better experience, because we are very close to the market and the students in the laboratory are much better prepared to deal with the pharmaceutical industry. The postgraduates and lecturers also want to go into the market and put their knowledge to use, and so do our employees.

We want to work on the management system in such a way that we can increase the number of staff to deal with it. We all have a proposal to work on this in such a way that we can optimize the work of the employees, such as the 142 employees of the pharmaceutical university, the administrative technicians.

This year, there was an election for director and I ran and our campaign was victorious. The interesting thing about this is that the campaign brought a vision that we clearly had different ideas, including about the university.

Right from the start, I worked on projects with companies, so basically everything I built in my laboratory came from the private sector, including the Vonau Flash, which is the university's biggest patent. In this involvement, I've always been very attached to the pharmaceutical profession and we have little knowledge of management and I discovered that without management, my laboratory wouldn't move forward, so I turned to studying this, taking courses, chasing after things, training myself, and it got even more interesting.

Now I have a laboratory that has a strong management component, including 5S, our quality program and recruiting people. Our process is like that of a company. And there we've been developing these issues and the idea is to apply some of this at least to the pharmaceutical sciences faculty.

And how does the laboratory work?

I'm the creator and coordinator of the laboratory, he's from the university and has experience working with companies. It's the result of my learning and experience, including visits to universities abroad, where you check out existing models and work out a way of doing things. This laboratory was created in this environment.

And why is management so important in this area?

Everyone at the university works on projects, our research is a project, but that's not all. When you want to teach a different class, do something, everything is a project, including our career, but few people have training in project management and that was a concern of mine back then. I felt that I needed to learn about management.
You learn a lot, such as deadlines, how to control costs, and this is very important at university because you end up getting involved with other things, and it's important to meet deadlines. You have a methodology for this, there's software that makes the schedule, and I've been able to learn all this.

The students also benefit from this, because they learn the skills, they are able to have the tools for them to learn this, so that we can also try to make progress on these issues.

Training a researcher with knowledge of project management is very important and I take this to the staff. That's the idea. What we bring back to the faculty is this concern for more professional management and we want to bring this type of knowledge to FCF-USP.

What are your expectations? Will we have a new Vonau Flash soon?

We are fully capable of doing this. On the one hand, we have university staff who are very dedicated and have very interesting knowledge, and on the other hand, we have pharmaceutical companies who invest in research to bring more advanced things to the market, so that people can have a better quality of life.

For this to happen, the university has to work, do its homework, so that when you sit down to talk, the company and the university understand that the process isn't so bureaucratic and the company needs to understand that it needs to invest. It's very common to sit down with companies that expect us to develop without investment. You have to put money into research for us to be able to do it.

"Both sides take risks. And they both need to get closer, do their homework, so that we can take everything we're doing to society. The connection is missing" 

Both sides take risks. And they both need to get closer, to do their homework, so that we can take everything we're doing out into society. The connection is missing. That's why the university needs to make room for everyone.

We currently have several projects underway with companies, the whole development process that we're working on, and we should have new products on the market for this in the next few years. They are good companies and good partners too. Without a good partner, there's no point. Our idea is to create other products like Vonau Flash. And we'll have them soon.

https://exame.com/ciencia/mais-que-ciencia-a-gestao-do-vonau-flash-patente-milionaria-da-usp