BIV Magazines: LifeSciences 2008

LifeSciences British Columbia has added another feather to its cap after being chosen to join a unique worldwide collaborative program. The industry association was selected last year as one of the top 10 life science clusters in the world by the Denmark-based Medicon Valley Alliance, and has been asked to participate in Medicon’s Ambassador Program.

Similar in aim to LifeSciences BC, Medicon Valley is a Swedish/Danish cluster that builds expertise in education, research, technology transfer, product commercialization and innovation in the biotechnology arena.

In 2006, the 11-year-old organization launched the Ambassador Program in order to enhance work in all these areas by linking up with life science clusters around the world.

“In the 1990s, people were unsure how to start companies, what’s venture capital, what’s intellectual property,… people were just starting biotech companies, spinouts and those sort of thing,” said Andrew Munk, director of international relations for the Medicon Valley Alliance, in an interview from Denmark.

“Eleven years down the road, people are more sophisticated, people know these concepts, they know how to make a business plan, they have more concepts about clinical trials.

“The Swedes and the Danes collaborate together well, so we thought, what was the most logical step? If we really wanted to create value for the community here, it’s best to start building bridges with other like-minded communities around the world. We can cut each other’s hair, but on a global perspective, there’s much more hair to cut.”

As far as Munk knows, it’s the first initiative of its kind in biotech or other industries.

Munk said delegations are often visiting each other around the world and suggest collaboration, but then they go back home and have to deal with their own day-to-day issues and nothing comes of it.

“We thought the best result would be long-term contacts, building relationships, getting to know what’s going on in each other’s clusters, and seeing what opportunities are there.”

The idea of the Ambassador Program, which rolls out over five years, is to have an exchange of personnel, with one representative from another cluster going to work in the Medicon Valley, and vice versa.

The program identified 10 clusters that had expertise that would be worthwhile to share with the rest of the world, and started discussions. The first three agreements have been signed with Kobe, Japan; Vancouver; and Seoul, South Korea. Negotiations are underway with Beijing, Boston, North Carolina, San Diego, Cambridge (England), Basel and India.

There has been a strong response, Munk said, with competition between clusters in the same country in order to enter the program.

One of the reasons Vancouver was selected was its strong development of companies out of the universities, the connections between the universities and local hospitals and the ability to get products to market.

“What’s striking is that in British Columbia, so many companies are university spinouts, yet you’re incredible good in commercializing technology,” said Munk, pointing to Genome BC and the Michael Smith Laboratories at UBC as inspiring success stories.

“The quality of academic research is top-notch; the teaching/clinical base at universities is very strong.”

Barry Gee, director of operations and communications for LifeSciences BC, sees this as great opportunity for the Vancouver cluster.

“It was a huge boon for us,” he said. “Just to be considered along the likes of the other clusters is a great recognition.

“It’s such a global industry, we have to partner in order to be successful, because it requires so many resources in time and expertise that you really do need those global partners out there…. Whether it be strategic partnerships for licensing, research, investment, university to university, business to business, that will be the role of [the exchange person]. And they’ll have access to the whole ambassador network.”

Gee acknowledges that though B.C. has expertise in a variety of areas, it’s still seen as a small player on a big stage and this will be a great opportunity to raise B.C.’s profile worldwide.

“B.C. still to some extent isn’t as widely known as we should be…. We really have broad expertise in therapeutic areas and research disciplines. Whenever we go out and meet with international clusters, people are always impressed with what they see. We have a very good story here to tell, and people are always interested.”

In terms of how B.C.’s “ambassador” will be selected, Gee says the person will be chosen based on specific expertise in biotech, as well as in business development. “It has to be someone who is very familiar with the B.C. industry as a whole, but someone who really knows how to put people together,” he said.

In January 2007, when representatives of the Medicon Valley were touring British Columbia, the UBC Industry Liaison Office was one of the places they visited. It’s associate director, J.P. Heale, acknowledged the win-win scenario of their initiative.

“Anything that extends your network is going to have a huge impact on the potential to commercialize technology,” he said.

“If you look at how our deals come about [now], a good half of them come from researchers who travel to conferences and talk about their research to industry reps who are walking the floors and picking up information that might impact the drug development within their company,” he said.

“Eighty to 90% of those deals happen in North America.”

Besides the advantage of collaborating with Europe, Heale sees China now as an emerging market, so access to a cluster there would be a large benefit.

“China is spending an extraordinary amount of money to move into a knowledge-based economy,” he said. “As that begins to take root, the transactions will increase with China.”

With regard to the potential he sees in B.C.’s participation in the Ambassador Program, Heale speaks to access to shared expenses. “Research is very costly so it’s often most effective to collaborate,” he said, but acknowledged that funding isn’t the most important part of the equation. “The money is the enabler, but the real value is the human capital, the mind of the researcher.” •

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