MediCure Down for the count?

How many times have we Canadians in the Biotech area heard about a biotech company that was full of promise one day that suddenly took a dive the next. Most of our financings, especiallly on the "early startups" are based on providing JUST enough cash to get the critical experiments done. When they fail the whole company goes down the tubes.

For some years now I have been advocating another approach and that is to have SOME funding set aside to expand the "line" of possible things or "products" that the company could be seen to be developing. That way at LEAST some chance remains to survive the inevitable downs in this business.

While visiting Winnipeg yesterday I was confronted with yet another example of the wisdon of this approach. There is scarcel a better respected person than Bert Friesen but his company MediCure had a cliical trial fail and the company that stood at more than $2 a share the day before now traded at about EIGHT CENTS. Almost a year ago.

Now I fully understand the value of keeping a tight hold on the "purse strings" of an early company and may also see where the old stereotype of mistrust of "academic types"from the VC community comes from but I think that this view needs to be "matured" somewhat by the reality that the curret model of financing by Canadian VCs simply is not producing enough successes. Maybe it is time for another model?

Yale grants Chinese License

The Sunday Feb 17 issue of Biospectrum Asia http://www.biospectrumasia.com/content/150208CHN5535.asp
had the following announcement.

"SurExam commercializes ovarian cancer detection technology in China
Singapore, Feb 15, 2008: The Yale University Office of Cooperative Research has granted an exclusive license to Chinese biopharmaceutical company SurExam Life Science & Technology for the commercialization of the university's blood testing technology for epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC). "

For those who are interested in expanding their reach from University TTOs and those interested in simultaneously doing some good in the world this is a very strong wake up call. Congratulations to the Yale TTO team! (Lita are you still there?) It shows us again that there may be great value to what is done in early research in the right markets. The traditional thinking is simply out the window! It is all the more ironic to me to see this article since the CECR grants were announced only DAYS ago and I came to hear that Peter Singer et al from the University of Toronto, who had proposed to do VERY similar things along these lines for all of Canada, were turned down. No doubt more informed minds than mine have made that decision but to me this was very confusing. Your comments are always welcome.

McMaster develops Viral Diagnostic

Today's newswire announcement that McMaster's star researcher James Mahoney's diagnostic panel had received FDA approval

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080128165659.htm

was, for me, a bit of a bittersweet piece of news. On the one hand it showed AGAIN how Canadian researchers take their rightful place at the top of the pyramid of creativity and innovation. Viral diagnosis is such a common problem that I would venture to guess that there is not a single reader of this column who has not, at some point or another, had a persistent cold, gone to the doctor, and been told that they cannot easily pinpoint what the cause is (even whether it is viral or bacterial sometimes) and therefore prefer not to precsribe some medication or course of action that can take care of the problem. Diagnosis traditionally took so much time and cost so much that the infection would likely be over before it was diagnosed.

Along comes a researcher from Canada (eh?) and finds a way to do this quickly and inexpensively. How wonderful!! Here's the pinacle of the glory now ... wait for the drumroll! The work is commissioned by a (then) CANADIAN company TM Biosciences.What a great story of how we can make a difference and make money at the same time. Now the "bitter..." part. JUST before this could happen the company - strapped for cash and unable to get its CANADIAN VCs to support it - was sold for pennies on the dollar to a larger US conglomerate Luminex. Today this is Luminex's success story. Don't get me wrong; I'm happy that it got out there and I CERTAINLY congratulate Luminex for its vision in seeing the potential and having the GUTS to back it. I am just sad that such guts don't exist in our country. Canadians can be happy about our inventivness and our innovation bt we should be embarrassed by our VC community.

Your thought s would be most welcome.

"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.