Taking McGill to market

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Home > McGill News > 2000 > Winter 2000-2001 > Taking McGill to market
Taking McGill to Market

Don Smith is outstanding in his field. "We hear that joke a lot in Plant Sciences," he says, but he still chuckles politely. His field is soybeans, which aren't just for tofu -- they are also one of the most important crops around for feeding livestock. His research into soybean physiology has led to a means of getting the soybeans to absorb more nitrogen than they would normally in colder climates by tricking them to respond as if the soil wasn't as cold as it really is, thus prompting them to germinate faster.

But Smith is outstanding in another field as well -- the technology transfer field. After he developed the compound that prompts soybeans to gobble up that nitrogen, he was approached by a former grad student representing Innocentre, a venture capital group that specializes in transferring the fruits of academic research into the private sector. "He said we could build a company based on this idea," Smith recalls, and in 1995, Bios Agriculture was brought into the world to develop Smith's soybean compound for the market.

Since then, a steady stream of companies have taken McGill research to the market: Lumenon; Nexia; SignalGene; Chronogen; Haptech and Tyrogene, among others. In 1999-2000, McGill spun six companies past the Roddick Gates and into the private sector, for a total of 15 since 1998.

The University received over $700,000 in royalties and had over $16 million in tradeable equity from spin-offs at the end of May 2000. In addition, last year McGill professors were involved with 131 research contracts worth over $15 million, 22 patents were filed, and 16 licence agreements were completed.

For Smith and many like him, the impetus for technology transfer came not from the lure of fabulous wealth and hefty corporate expense accounts but from a circumstance more familiar to academics: reduced budgets. While the money made from spin-off companies and patents is minimal, contracts with the private sector -- including spin-off companies -- have helped replace funds lost through government cutbacks.

"I was lukewarm about forming a company," recalls Smith, "but I had a technician who had been running my lab for a lot of years and who was paid out of a research grant. Because of declining funds, I was worried that in the very near future I was going to have to fire him."

Then, a brainwave: he realized that if he formed a company, he could assure employment to his technician. Smith and the technician in question, Stewart Leibovitch, BA'81, BSc'85, MSc'88, ran the company together until things became complicated enough that they decided to enlist someone with more business experience. Leibovitch remains VP in charge of product development, and Smith is a part owner and occasional consultant.

Companies are often outgrowths of research contracts. For example, Tyrogene, a research group fusing the complementary cell research of Michel Tremblay and Morag Park, was initially supported by two venture capital companies, T2C2 and Medtech. Increased funding was the first benefit, but Tyrogene's work, which focuses on phosphate-controlling enzymes and their relation to conditions such as cancer and diabetes, caught the attention of biopharmaceutical companies. Tyrogene was incorporated so that it could be bought by Kinetek, a University of British Columbia spin-off company from Vancouver. Tyrogene now has a three-year contract from Kinetek, a campus lab, and six research positions.

Without encouragement from the University, especially through the Office of Technology Transfer (OTT), most marketable technologies developed at McGill would remain here on campus. "When you're working in a lab and make a discovery, you usually don't have a clue if it is economically viable," says Smith. Often, the researcher is approached first by a venture capitalist. Then they head to the OTT.

As director Alex Navarre explains, "The OTT performs a range of activities, but essentially we service researchers when they have dealings with industry. We make sure the industry is getting what it expects to get, but at the same time that the expectations are realistic and communications are well established."

Alex Navarre

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