The mission of the Clayton Foundation for Research is two-fold:
- To conduct medical research for the purpose of discovering the cause, prevention and cure of diseases for the benefit of mankind
- To transfer the resulting medical research discoveries from the laboratory to the use of the general public by patenting and licensing such technology for development into drugs or other products.
The Clayton Foundation and its supporting entities have multiple medical research projects at leading research institutions in the United States and Switzerland. By agreement with each hosting institution, the Foundation has the rights to the intellectual property arising from these projects. Patent filings are made by Research Development Foundation (“RDF”), a separate nonprofit supporting organization of the Clayton Foundation. Clayton Biotechnologies works with RDF in the licensing and commercialization of Clayton Foundation discoveries.
Several cutting edge biomedical technologies discovered by the Clayton Foundation have been successfully commercialized through the creation of start-up companies and out-licensing. These technologies have been developed into significant medical products, including cell and gene therapeutics for cancer, cell and gene therapies for blood disorders and other rare disorders, drugs for time-released pain control, a digital ophthalmic medical device, a PET imaging system, a lymphocyte blood assay, a neurogenetic diagnostic assay, and veterinary diagnostic assays.
The Clayton Foundation does not accept unsolicited proposals for research projects. Instead, it identifies critical medical needs, then initiates major, long-term research projects in conjunction with appropriate medical institutions to implement them.