Two researchers whose work transformed how physicians detect and manage prostate cancer were honored this month as one of five winners of the Bayh-Dole Coalition's American Innovator Award in recognition of a scientific breakthrough that has improved cancer imaging for patients worldwide.
Robert Dannals, professor of radiology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and Martin Pomper, former Johns Hopkins radiologist and now professor and chair of radiology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, received the award during the Bayh-Dole Coalition American Innovator Award ceremony on June 3 in Washington, D.C.
The award recognizes the team's role in developing Pylarify, an FDA-approved positron emission tomography imaging agent that enables physicians to detect prostate cancer with greater precision. Prostate cancer affects 1 in 8 American men, with more than 288,000 cases diagnosed annually. Since receiving FDA approval in 2021, the imaging agent has helped clinicians identify the location and extent of prostate cancer while being used in more than 200,000 prostate scans each year, leading to more informed treatment decisions for hundreds of thousands of patients.
The Bayh-Dole Coalition's American Innovator Award honors inventors whose federally funded research has been translated into products and technologies that improve lives. The landmark Bayh-Dole Act, passed in 1980, allows universities, non-profits, and small businesses to retain ownership and patent rights of inventions developed via federally funded research.
"The Bayh-Dole Act enables the germ of an idea conceived behind the walls of a university to be translated into societal benefit," Pomper said during the award ceremony. "Inventions such as ours do not merely sit on shelves anymore. Because they have patent protection, they're attractive to and incentivize commercial concerns that can bring them to patients."
The path to Pylarify began with Pomper's research into a protein known as prostate-specific membrane antigen, or PSMA, which is highly expressed in prostate cancer cells. After identifying compounds capable of targeting PSMA, Pomper and his research team worked to develop an imaging agent that could reveal cancer cells throughout the body.
Turning that discovery into a clinically useful product required expertise in radiochemistry and molecular imaging. Dannals and colleagues at Johns Hopkins developed methods to efficiently produce and label the imaging compound, enabling broad distribution of the agent for clinical use.
What began as a laboratory discovery ultimately became a technology licensed from Johns Hopkins and developed through industry partnerships into a commercially available diagnostic tool. The pair's work was awarded more than $11 million in federal research funding over the years.
During his acceptance remarks, Dannals emphasized that the achievement was the result of decades of collaboration.
"Innovation is often celebrated as an achievement of an individual," he said. "But every idea that I've had and every idea that our group had has been shaped by colleagues, collaborators, mentors, family, and friends who challenged, supported, and inspired us along the way."
Pomper credited the university's innovation ecosystem for helping transform the research into a product that could reach patients.
"I thank Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures, particularly my tireless portfolio manager, Jeanine Pennington, for creating the environment in which our work could be brought to fruition," Pomper said.
For Steve Kousouris, executive director of technology transfer at Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures, who attended the ceremony in D.C., the recognition reflects the importance of technology transfer and federal innovation policy.
"Pylarify is the outcome the Bayh-Dole Act was designed to make possible," Kousouris said. "Federal investment in research creates discoveries with tremendous potential, and technology transfer provides a pathway to move those discoveries beyond the university so that they can be developed into products that benefit society."
The June 3 event brought together inventors, policymakers, university leaders, technology transfer professionals, and intellectual property advocates to celebrate the impact of the Bayh-Dole Act. Speakers throughout the day pointed to Bayh-Dole as one of the most influential innovation policies in U.S. history, citing its role in helping move discoveries from research institutions into the marketplace through patent protection, licensing, and industry partnerships.
The law has been credited with supporting thousands of startups, millions of jobs, and numerous technologies and therapies that originated in academic laboratories. Speakers noted that commercialization often requires years of development, regulatory review, and significant financial investment—resources that universities alone typically cannot provide.
Pylarify was highlighted as a powerful example of that process. While the original discovery emerged from federally funded academic research, commercialization required patent protection, licensing, industry investment, and extensive clinical testing before the imaging agent could reach patients. The journey from laboratory breakthrough to FDA-approved product often spans decades and requires contributions from inventors, industry partners, investors, regulators, and clinicians.
"Even our final compound had to endure rigorous and expensive testing to meet FDA standards," Pomper said. "No NIH grant or university investigator could afford to do that. Only a commercial partner could afford that. But they would never do it without patent protection, licensing apparatus, and promotion of academic-industry partnerships enabled by the Bayh-Dole Act."
