UPDATED 2:45 p.m. to add job title and comments from Partners HealthCare.
Cleveland Clinic Innovations’ executive director, Chris Coburn, who has led the prolific technology commercialization arm of the Clinic since its formation in 2000, is heading to the life science capital of the U.S.
The Clinic confirmed this morning that Coburn will be departing June 1 to take a position at Partners HealthCare, an academic hospital system in Boston. According to Partners HealthCare in Boston, he’ll join as the vice president of Research Ventures & Licensing, the division of the health system that coordinates industrial relationships and intellectual property management across Partners HealthCare, Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
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“Chris brings to Partners years of experience — on both the national and international stage — in the field of forging closer ties between industry and academic medicine,” said Partners Chief Academic Officer Dr. Anne Klibanski in a statement.
Under Coburn, Innovations has spun off about four dozen startups to commercialize medical innovations discovered and developed by Cleveland Clinic employees, including artificial heart company Cleveland Heart Inc. and Intelect Medical, which sold to Boston Scientific for $78 million in 2011 (and generated a nice return for the Clinic and its Innovations chief).
Through Innovations, the Clinic is now helping a network of other institutions like MedStar Health and the University of Notre Dame commercialize their own technologies.
A Cleveland Clinic representative declined to comment on plans to fill the position at Innovations.