The Gateway to Success

Ontario is poised to become a major global player in the biotech sector

By Kristine Archer

The province of Ontario is blessed with an abundance of research hospitals, several highly regarded universities and millions of dollars flowing into biotechnology research.

In a landscape replete with opportunity and brimming with possibilities, Ontario’s biotech sector faces a unique commercialization dilemma. With so many parties involved, how can it ensure that everyone’s needs are being met?

In response to this problem, the government of Ontario introduced the Biotechnology Cluster Innovation Program, a $30-million initiative designed to accelerate the development of 11 regional biotechnology consortia known as Regional Innovation Networks (RINs). Under the program, the government committed to support commercialization initiatives in each region in an effort to facilitate entrepreneurship and innovation.

The MaRS (Medical and Related Sciences) Discovery District, a Toronto, Ont.-based centre was also established and is scheduled for a September 2005 grand opening. MaRS aims to act as a gateway to the RINs, providing a portal through which biotechnology innovation and commercialization will flourish.

Building a Gateway
“MaRS will be the storefront, or the gateway, to technology opportunity in Ontario,” says John Cook, president and COO of the MaRS Discovery District.

The facility in Toronto is designed to pool a variety of resources, creating a physical environment through which entrepreneurial talent, venture capital and industry can connect with ideas, discoveries and IP. According to Cook, approximately 90 to 95 per cent of the facility’s available space has already been pre-leased to tenants from across the biotech commercialization spectrum.

“We really try to drive convergence in all areas, not just the convergence of sciences,” Cook says. That emphasis on convergence not only focuses on helping science meet business, but also extends to include established companies at different development levels.

“We do have to provide a nurturing environment for startup companies, but you (also) have to drive industrial interest in those companies,” Cook says. He adds that bringing together small, medium and large biotech firms will help build what he calls a receptor community, wherein a natural give-and-take relationship exists between businesses.

“In our province, we have a tremendous number of small companies and we have a reasonable number of developed companies, but we don’t have great links between the two — that’s what we’re trying to drive,” Cook says.

“Let’s take pharma as an example — big pharma needs pipeline and some of the best pipeline is likely to come from early stage biotech,” he adds. “So (we need) to drive their interest in developing biotech in their area.

“The other reason you need to drive the convergence between large and small companies,” he continues, “is to make sure that the most entrepreneurial middle-management in large companies find their way into developing small companies.

“You have this nice ecosystem where the people who want to be in small companies end up there and the people in large companies end up there. There’s this nice sort of symbiotic relationship between the two,” Cook concludes.

Starting Early
A more hands-on approach to aiding commercialization is taken by the Ontario Genomics Institute (OGI) (Toronto, ON), which offers extensive services to genomics- and proteomics-based research projects across the province.

President and CEO Christian Burks, PhD says OGI differs from what he calls “weigh stations where people can get help for commercialization.”

“We are plugged in and know people on a face-to-face, personal level from a very early stage,” he says.

“We’ve set up something called a commercialization committee for each project,” Burks adds. “That usually involves the scientist and someone from our business development group and often someone from the transfer office of the university or the research hospital.”

Another example of this front-end oriented approach is OGI’s funding efforts, which focus on researchers who have an idea, but don’t have the necessary supporting info to approach investors confidently.

“We have a pre-commercial business development fund in which we do, on a very small scale, direct investments in what we would characterize as pre-commercial proof of principal projects,” Burks says.

Like MaRS, OGI also runs workshops and seminars designed to facilitate one of the major cogs in the commercialization wheel — networking.

“We run science industry workshops where we’ll pick a topic or theme . . . and put together a slate of scientists that we know are working on the research side of that (topic), generating intellectual property and, on the other hand, companies or financial investment people who are interested from the downstream, acquire-IP point of view,” Burks says.

To date, Burks says OGI’s efforts have met with success.

“The research we funded has been productive — people have published great papers; they’ve filed their invention disclosures; they’ve put in patent applications; they’ve exported their ideas, in some cases, to either biotechs or other commercial ventures,” he says.

A Global Race
Burks adds that, as a province, Ontario should set its sights on succeeding at an international level.

“The way we will understand if we had a positive impact or not is on the global platform,” he says. “Our focus, and what we think about day to day, really, is building a globally competitive life sciences industry in Ontario.”

Cook agrees that Ontario is part of a worldwide competition, and that co-operation is the best path to victory.

“The reason we’re doing all this is because we’re absolutely in a global race to compete with other major innovations in the world,” Cook says. “We’re now competing against a biotech initiative in all but one state in the United States — there are well over 200 MaRS-type initiatives around the world.

“I think we’ve got a great brand and great brand proposition that a lot of people around the world now know about, and we’ve built up a pretty good level of community spirit in the province,” he adds.

While Cook points out that MaRS’s real impact may not be felt for another five to 10 years, he says that, with the help of the RINs, Ontario is poised to make a lasting impression.

“I think we have a really good chance of ending up in the top 10 (worldwide), but we need everybody to work together,” Cook says. He adds that while one individual region in the province may not have the chance to climb that global ladder, “Kingston, London, Ottawa and so on, combined with MaRS — not Toronto — as a storefront, we absolutely have the chance to do that.”



For more information on Ontario’s Regional Innovation Networks (RINs), please visit the following Web sites:

BioDiscovery Toronto
www.biodiscoverytoronto.com

Eastern Lake Ontario Regional Innovation Network (ELORIN
www.kingstonbiotech.com

Golden Horseshoe Biosciences Network www.ghbn.org

Greater Peterborough Region DNA Cluster
www.investpeterborough.ca

Guelph-Waterloo Partnership in Biotechnology Consortium
www.gwpbiotech.com

London Cluster Consortium
www.ledc.com

Northern Ontario Biotechnology Initiative Consortium (NOBI)
http://www.thunderbay.ca”>www.thunderbay.ca

Ottawa Life Sciences Council (OLSC) (Ottawa and Eastern Ontario)
www.olsc.ca

Southwestern Ontario Bioproducts Innovation Network (SOBIN)
www.sobin.ca

Western Greater Toronto Area Convergence Centre
www.wgta.hal.ca

York Biotech
www.yorkbiotech.ca

For more information about Ontario, its biotechnology sector, and the many
commercialization services offered in the province, please visit the following Web sites:

Biotech Ontario
www.biotechontario.com

Government of Ontario
www.gov.on.ca

MaRS Discovery District
www.marsdd.com

Ontario Economic Development
www.2ontario.com

Ontario Genomics Institute
www.ontariogenomics.ca