Dollars for Profs
Dig Into University Researchers' Outside Income and Conflicts of Interest
Published Dec. 6, 2019
This database was last updated in December 2019 and should only be used as a historical snapshot. There may be new or amended records not reflected here.
Conflict of Interest
Institutions must file significant disclosures to the National Institutes of Health if they determine financial relationships could affect the design, conduct or reporting of the NIH-funded research. The NIH provided us with their entire financial conflict of interest database, with filings from 2012 through 2019.
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Markus Frank
Boston Children's Hospital, Department: Na
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Ticeba GmbH
Other : Founder of company and consulting income
In 2003, Dr. Frank helped found a company, Ticeba GmbH (“Company”). Dr. Frank’s subject research involves the roles of ABCB5 in stem cell biology in the area of ABCB5-positive cancer stem cells. His research has previously been unrelated to the Company, since, until recently, the Company operated primarily as a stem cell bank for the storage of autologous stem cells for individual clients for future therapeutic applications, and the Company not pursue cancer therapeutics. In April of 2016, the Company began pursuing stem cell therapeutic approaches to ocular diseases such as limbal stem cell deficiency (LSCD), which is related to Dr. Frank’s work in this grant, whereby the outcome of Dr. Frank’s research may have the potential to indirectly benefit the company.
ABCB5-positive stem cells for LSCD therapy
Patients with corneal injuries or disease can develop limbal stem cell deficiency (LSCD) in which they lose the ability to maintain the corneal surface, ultimately resulting in blindness due to an irreversibly opaque cornea. We have discovered a new gene, ABCB5, which identifies stem cells in human and mammalian limbus. This discovery has allowed us, for the first time, to purify limbal stem cells for transplantation and to successfully restore the cornea in LSCD. The current proposal builds upon these results to address important challenges that currently remain in achieving more universal success of cell therapy for patients with unilateral or bilateral LSCD. Specifically, we hypothesize that ABCB5+ limbal stem cells isolated and expanded ex vivo can be used as a source of autologous or allogeneic stem cells to regenerate the corneal epithelium and restore vision in patients with either unilateral or bilateral LSCD.
Filed on April 15, 2016.
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Markus Frank filed other conflict of interest disclosures with the NIH:
| Name | Institution | Type | Company | Disclosed Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Markus Frank | Boston Children's Hospital | Conflict of Interest | Triceba Gmbh and Rheacell Gmbh & Co. KG | $150,000 - $199,999 |
| Markus Frank | Boston Children's Hospital | Conflict of Interest | Ticeba GmbH | $40,000 - $59,999 |
Notes: When a more specific filing date is not available for an individual financial disclosure or conflict of interest form, we use the year the form was filed. If the year was not disclosed, we report the range of years covered by our public records requests. In a few cases, a start date was provided instead of a filing date. In those cases, we use the start date instead.
Fewer than 10% of records from the University of Florida and fewer than 1% of records from the University of Texas system were removed because they did not contain enough information.
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