Emory University, has come up with one way to jumpstart drug discovery and pre-clincical development – start a company.

Aiming to combine university lab resources with industry leadership, Emory announced it is launching Drug Innovation Ventures at Emory, or DRIVE, a not-for-profit company that is separate from Emory but still owned by the university.

DRIVE owes its financial backing in part to a discovery from Emory’s own labs. The university said DRIVE is launching with $10 million in funding that Emory is putting up from royalties it has received from the HIV drug emtricitabine, a drug now marketed by Gilead Sciences under the brand name Emtriva. Emtriva generated $29.5 million in 2012 sales for Gilead.

DRIVE also has additional funding from government agencies, partner institutions and contributions from philanthropic groups and investors. Any financial gains that Emory gets from technology transfer will be invested by DRIVE into research, education and patient care.

Emory said that DRIVE will help navigate drugs through the early, pre-clinical stages that is often referred to as the “valley of death.” The financial, business, project management and regulatory expertise offered by DRIVE will help drug candidates more from early stages into proof-of-concept clinical trials. Successful drug candidates can then be out-licensed to pharma and biotech companies, partnered with foundations or government bodies, or spun out into new companies.

DRIVE is the first initiative within Emory Innovations, Inc., a newly created 501(c)(3) corporation that will serve as the home for innovative new enterprises. DRIVE will be the “industrial partner” of the Emory Institute for Drug Development (EIDD). Established in 2009, EIDD offers an experienced drug development team along with equipment and laboratory facilities

“The traditional pharmaceutical research and development operating model is no longer sustainable,” Dennis Liotta, EIDD founder and co-inventor of multiple approved drugs, said in a statement. “The marked decrease in the development of new therapeutics is having a uniformly negative effect on global health and threatens life expectancy, quality of life, economic development and national security. Emory’s new public-private enterprise is a bold new approach that can help solve this problem.”