"Just-in-time" business model for TTOs

On my way back from Thunder Bay yesterday where I visited my friend Barb Eccles in the TTO at Lakehead University (and where, by the way, I encountered several very good people doing interesting things in nano-materials for example amongst other things), I pondered Robert S. Macwright's article in Les Nouvelles (vol XLII, #4, pps615-620). The unapologetic statement that, in his view, "academic technology transfer is a business" in the opening lines was - in a bizarre way - refreshing to me. It simply got better from there. There were some attempts to quantitate approaches that are used in one form or another by MANY of our Canadian institutions and which I had not seen so well compared face-to-face, before. I know that there are those who hold strong beliefs on BOTH sides of this table and I thought that this article formed a very good basis for the continuing debate.

There were also a number of statements that I wonder about and would like some feedback about from the readers of this blog. It is claimed that a reasonably trained TT officer can routinely get 25 disclosures in a year and translate them into 10 deals. This sounded a bit high from my experience (albeit in another system) and I wondered if there were any comments on this number (and other numbers quoted in this article) out there.

Dalhousie U. has a MILLION DOLLAR club member!

One of the themes I am constantly aware of in the "consumer" market for early technologies is the sentiment that if one covers the BIG universities (U of T, UBC, McGill and a few others) that one has the best chance to get all of the useful technologies available in Canada. I usually argue that this is ESPECIALLY not the case in Canada because of Government funding policies that have spread the funding and the talent across the country.

So it was particularly pleasing for me to read that Dalhousie University (Dal to most who know it) recently announced it's first member of the "Million Dollar Club" - an inventor whose inventions have provided in excess of a million dollars in revenue to the university. http://innovation.dal.ca/news.php?id=107&update=1 . Congrats to Ron Leydon (TTO) and to Dr. Jana Sawynok, Professor and Chair of Dalhousie’s Department of Pharmacology and her research associate, Allison Reid and former collaborator Dr. Mike Esser of Calgary for this great achievement and for showing us that great inventions (and its successful commercialization) can happen everywhere.

Research Institute Industry partnerships

This morning's FDA News bulletin bore yet another example of a big company extending its research capabilities by making a long term relationship with a chosen research institute. This is a growing trend as companies downsize their in-house efforts and look elsewhere to continue their needed research activities. The announcement (see below) gave me pause. The world is turning towards this mechanism and away from an ever increasing thirst for government sponsorship. To all intents and purposes it looks like it is working as judged by the size of the deals that are being made in this category (both in terms of timeframe and in terms of the dollars involved). These are not simple technology collaboration agreements. They are LONG TERM relationships between a company and a whole university of research establishment. They provide relatively unrestricted money over a longer time frame and they usually take an option to look at the technologies emerging first - not much more.

I wonder if there are any research institutions in Canada that have already entered into such broad and lucrative arrangements yet. Is this something to ponder? Should we put the ghosts of petty company interference to bed and exorcize the demons that prevent us from seriously considering this growing trend before the best partners have already made their bets with other - mabye even less qualified - institutions around the world. Food for thought. Anyway Here's the quote.

From the FDAnews DRUG DAILY BULLETIN V:5 #8 Monday Jan 14 2008:

Salk Finds a Partner in French Drug Firm In the latest example of a nonprofit research center teaming up with private industry for money, the Salk Institute will announce a partnership with a Paris-based drug company that hopes to benefit from Salk discoveries. SignOnSanDiego.com

C&EN's list of Best Chemistry Highlights

OK. I'm a closet Chemistry Geek! And of course as everyone knows I am also a Canadian. So when the latest issue of Chemistry and Engineering News arrived at my doorstep today it was not long in its pristine plastic cover. In this last issue of the year 2007 there was an article citing the "best" chemistry highlights of the year. Two things impressed me. The first was the sheer SCOPE of developments where chemists have made a huge difference to or understanding of things this past year. The second was that, of the roughly 20 or so things reported on from the world over, THREE (count them) were from CANADIAN contributors. These were as follows:

1. The first "structural snapshot" of a penicillin binding protein which might just make a huge impact on the design of the next generation of antibiotics. This was contributed by Natalie C.J. Strynadka and co-workers at UBC (improved later by a Harvard group)

2. Todd L. Lowary and co-workers at the University of Alberta Edmonton synthesized key oligosaccharides from the cell walls of TB bacteria providing new insights AGAIN into possibly novel approaches to combat drug resistent strains. This one continues in aLONG tradition of leadership in the chemistry of sugars that was pioneered by such Canadian legends as Ray Lemeiux at Alberta more than three decades ago.

3. Frank A.P.C.Gobas, Barry C.Kelly and co-workers at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby BC had a new take on the traditional methods of looking at toxin acumulations in food webs that may well cause us to rethink many of our former conclusions about some compounds. Apparently they have shown that the usual analyses of the absence of accumulation in fish may not ALWAYS be a good indicator for what happens in humans.

There is of course more on the C&EN website in the December 24 issue (yes THERE's a geek for you publishing on Xmas eve!) at http://pubs.acs.org/cen/ It is very interesting reading. Who knew about these science altering contributions from Canadian academics? My question is: "Did we appropriately commercialize them?"

Your feedback and commentary is always welcome.