Bringing Innovation to Light

---

By Amber Lepage-Monette

Industry Canada’s Strategis Web site currently lists over 50 technology transfer offices at Canada’s universities, colleges, technical institutes and affiliated hospitals. For every tech transfer office in Canada, a unique approach to how that office conducts its business, and something that differentiates it from the rest, must exist. Each office tends to tailor its approach to its research, its faculty and to its particular needs. Three examples that illustrate this diversity are the University of British Columbia (UBC) (Vancouver, BC), McGill University (Montreal, QC) and Queen’s University (Kingston, ON), which all have technology transfer offices featuring something unique that has helped them become successful commercialization agents.

The Leader of the Pack

UBC’s University-Industry Liaison Office (UILO) managing director Angus Livingstone says accolades touting the importance of the role played by technology transfer offices have only really started to grow in recent years.

“It’s not uncommon in other jurisdictions, and even B.C. six or seven years ago, that the UILO and tech transfer offices were looked down upon, and weren’t properly funded, were deemed to be an obstacle to commercialization rather than a facilitator of it,” Livingstone says.

A lack of funding, staffing and resources, says Livingstone, led to delays in tech transfer offices in the past, which, coupled with a “cultural challenge” between academia and industry, resulted in this negative perception.

Yet the lack of understanding between industry and academia seems to be fading. One clear example of the shift in perception is the Lifetime Achievement award the UILO received from BC Biotech (Vancouver, BC) in March. “What it means for us is an affirmation that what we’ve been doing is meaningful to the community and that it has recognized our, I think, professionalism and our success in the area,” Livingstone says.

And success is something UBC’s UILO has definitely achieved, helping UBC produce 113 spinoff companies to date, and seeing between 130 and 140 new inventions come to the UILO each year.

One facet that contributes to the UILO’s success, and set it apart in the early days among technology transfer offices, was its willingness to take equity from startup companies as a means of payment.

“We were one of the first universities in Canada, and one of the leading ones in North America, that was willing to take equity in terms of a consideration rather than licences or upfront fees,” Livingstone says. “And now we have equity in over 40 different companies. The companies like that; the investors like that.”

This flexibility and willingness to come up with solutions that meet researcher and investor needs is one major aspect that has helped the UILO become such a strong technology transfer office, Livingstone says.

Another pioneering approach that differentiated the UILO and helped shape its success in producing strong startup companies was its Prototype Development Program (PDP), established to help determine early on in the process which inventions would best benefit from focused development.

“It was, I think, actually unique in North America when we started it in the late ’80s,” Livingstone says. During an invention’s evaluation period, many questions arose, he says, regarding the existing market, competitors, ability to scale up the technology — the answers to which would greatly increase the technology’s chances of becoming licensed. This led to the PDP’s development, a program that helps fund the projects needed to answer such questions.

The UILO’s hold on the biotech industry in B.C. is another element that sets it apart from other tech transfer offices. “In the biotech industry . . . we represent both the university and many of the affiliated teaching hospitals,” Livingstone says. “So in terms of working in the Vancouver area, you’re working with us rather than working with multiple different institutions, and I think that’s been critical in helping us get synergy and critical mass together to make things happen.”

Keeping research and commercialization close together is an approach that has helped not only keep companies within the province — boosting the biotech industry — but it has also benefited UBC’s researchers and spinoff companies. This process is facilitated by UBC’s technology park, managed by Discovery Parks Inc., which provides companies with multi-tenant lab facilities right on the UBC campus.

Not only does UBC’s research park provide the convenience of close quarters, allowing faculty and graduate students involved in projects and companies to move between research and commercial labs with ease, Livingstone says, it also provides the necessary facilities, labs and services that startup companies often can’t afford themselves, such as animal care facilities or disposal of hazardous chemicals, through the university at cost. “So the university itself ends up as a bit of a virtual incubator for these companies,” Livingstone says.

New Kid on the Block

Though associate director Robin Brassinga characterizes McGill’s Office of Technology Transfer as a “Johnny-come-lately” on the tech transfer scene, only truly focusing on tech transfer in the last five years or so, the university’s technology transfer office has pushed through to become a dominant force behind much of the technology being commercialized in Quebec. With approximately 100 inventions reported to the office each year, and the creation of 32 spinoff companies since 1991 — including Adherex Technologies Inc. (Ottawa, ON), MethylGene Inc. (Montreal, QC) and Nexia Biotechnologies Inc. (Vaudreuil-Dorion, QC), just to name a few — McGill’s Technology Transfer office has demonstrated some obvious might in the field.

“Why has McGill been successful?” Brassinga asks. “We have been able, I suppose, to do things in a reasonable way and to make it interesting for people to talk to us. Because that’s the important aspect (of tech transfer) — communication.”

Brassinga credits McGill faculty with being strong technology producers and the McGill atmosphere with encouraging researchers to become entrepreneurs — both reasons why McGill has seen successful tech transfer.

“You need good researchers, a good structure there, and at the same time you need people like us that are willing to go out there and pick up these technologies and have the credibility,” Brassinga says.

But promising research and a helpful technology transfer staff are not the only elements that lie behind McGill’s success in commercialization. One unique facet to its operation is its venture capital fund, MSBI Inc. (Montreal, QC).

MSBI — which stands for McGill, Sherbrooke University (Sherbrooke, QC), Bishop’s University (Lennoxville, QC) and Innovation — is a $26-million venture capital fund that operates slightly differently than some others. MSBI provides seed and early stage funding to research emerging from a network of three universities and affiliated hospitals and research centres. Started thanks to a $15-million Valorisation-Recherche Quebec grant, MSBI has a right to first review to invest in these opportunities. Of the seven partners involved, McGill holds the highest percentage of shares in the fund relating to overall research funding and investments, 53 per cent, though MSBI independently makes decisions regarding which technologies to fund. The MSBI has garnered the school some serious money for early stage development, and has already invested in three or four companies since its inception last year, Brassinga says.

MSBI also differentiates itself from some of the other venture funds in Quebec because it is focused only on the funding aspect of commercialization. “MSBI is purely related to investment, nothing else, no tech transfer,” Brassinga says. “Tech transfer is remaining at the universities, and investment is being done by an outside organization, which is completely independent of the universities and which positions for a strong licence.”

Agents of Innovation

Like McGill, Queen’s technology transfer office, Parteq Innovations Inc. (Kingston, ON), distinguishes itself with novel funding resources. The tech transfer office manages its own venture fund, the $7-million Working Ventures CMDF Queen’s Scientific Breakthrough Fund, which, according to Parteq Innovations president and CEO John Molloy, has already invested in 11 companies in a variety of fields including, but not limited to, biotech.

“We had been trying to raise venture capital money since 1994,” Molloy says. “We’ve done a lot of venture creation and we’ve gone and raised a fair bit of money through the ventures we’ve created, but that’s very time-consuming to raise that kind of money for early stage opportunities. So when the Ontario government came up with a program to encourage the labour-sponsored funds to invest in early stage opportunities, we saw the chance to form a fund and bring in some of that money that we’d be able to manage on their behalf.”

But what is truly innovative about Parteq Innovations’ approach to technology transfer, and what Molloy says is a main secret to its success, is its staffing. Parteq Innovations is one of the few, if not the only, technology transfer offices in Canada to have patent agents on staff, providing hands-on expertise to truly enhance the element of “one-stop shopping.”

For Molloy, the importance of having such expertise on staff cannot be overstated. “The whole job is about the management of intellectual property and the more expertise in house that you have about intellectual property, and how it is protected, and prosecuted and managed, and having that expertise right there for you — I’m not sure how you do the job without it,” Molloy says. “I can’t imagine you can do the job as effectively without access first-hand to experts in intellectual property.”

One term that is often used when it comes to Parteq’s approach to tech transfer is “value added.” By supporting its technologies all the way through the various stages of development, by offering such expertise on staff, Parteq is able to enhance its services and help more inventions come to commercialization fruition.

For Molloy, value-added development is where technology transfer offices need to move in the future in order to stay relevant and to most effectively fulfil their role. “They need to be much more active in managing projects, in bringing projects from the point where the invention is disclosed to us, to the point where investors are going to be willing to put more money in or where companies are going to be willing to license,” Molloy says. “You cannot attract a licensee these days based upon a technology as it’s disclosed to a technology transfer office. Something has to be done to it. And the tech transfer offices are going to have to get much more involved in managing that value-added development process.”

But self-improvement is not the only way tech transfer offices will grow and continue to prove valuable to the commercialization process in the future. The role of government in establishing a commercialization infrastructure is also key to future success.

“I hope the government is going to realize that if you put money into research, you need money to deal with that research,” Brassinga says.

To date, Molloy says, the Canadian government has funded research in such a way that a successful infrastructure has been established. “But no one’s paid that much attention to what kind of mechanisms have to be in place in order to reap the benefits of all this research,” he explains.

Molloy says the government has done a good job of increasing research infrastructure, but the next step is to properly fund and develop commercialization. “Now they’re starting to turn attention to, OK, well how do we ensure this gets translated somehow into economic benefit? That’s not the only priority, but you don’t want to waste economic opportunity.”