Unique hybrid centre for drug development wins CFI funding for infrastructure

The Univ of British Columbia's Centre for Drug Research and Development (CDRD) is in negotiations with the province of British Columbia to secure its first tranche of operational support following a successful bid to secure infrastructure funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI). CDRD — a unique hybrid centre for drug development and commercialization for new medicines — was awarded $8 million from CFI in its latest competition (see page 3) as part of a $20-million project to establish its first facility on the UBC campus.

Billed as "Canada's first unified approach to commercializing innovative BC discoveries", CDRD plans to augment CFI funding with $8 million from the BC Knowledge Development Fund and $4 million through industry and vendor discounts. The longer-term goal is to raise $100 million and expand beyond the core UBC facility with centres at Simon Fraser Univ (SFU) and the BC Cancer Agency. A cost-recovery strategy will eventually place the entire operation on a self-sustaining footing.

"CDRD's objective is to increase the capacity for BC researchers to do drug development, improve the success rate of commercialization for early-stage companies and build a local talent pool," says Natalie Dakers, CDRD's CEO and a veteran of BC's biotech industry and tech transfer community. "There is concern that the commercialization gap won't be easily bridged with another seed fund or incubator. We have to do the drug development work so we've adopted a shared infrastructure model."

Conceived along the lines of translational research centres in the US and Europe, CDRD has established itself as a non-profit society with two distinct operating arms: The Drug Research Institute (DRI) and Drug Development Inc.

The latter is a for-profit corporation created to move drug discoveries closer to the marketplace by funding drug development projects. So far, $2.2 million in seed funding has been raised from a range of provincial, federal and university sources, including $750,000 from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research's Drug Development Initiative program.

To become operational, CDRD is soliciting $25 million in extraordinary one-time funding from the BC government. Similarly, $10-million in extraordinary funding will also be sought from Ottawa.

"The $25 million from the province is outside existing programming. We're going for year-end money and hope to hear at Budget time (early 2006)," says Angus Livingstone, a CDRD co-founder and managing director of UBC's University-Industry Liaison Office. "If we get the $25 million from the province, it will get us off the ground and running for three years. We hope to get going after April 1st."

BRIDGING THE FUNDING GAP

CDRD is tackling the commercialization space at a time of increasing investor reluctance to enter the early-stage market. By situating drug development and accompanying management expertise within an academic research centre, its principals plan to bridge the funding gap by utilizing industry standards for selecting projects, thereby adding value and reducing risk before being picked up for further commercialization by private sector interests. Deals could take the form of licensing agreements or spin-offs, with profits plowed back into the Centre.

"We have a good chance. There's a lot of experience around the table," says Dakers. "We have a very tough space –— the proof-of-principle gap … We need to advance technologies and provide a better product."

Although CDRD's initial facility is located at UBC, it is being conceived as a regional resource, representing three other universities and four teaching hospitals (see chart). It's hoped that, by offering a network of development and commercialization facilities spread across the region, the province will be able to position itself as an attractive place for investment.

"We have interesting infrastructure but it's not well integrated or easily accessible. Eventually there will be five divisions," says Dakers. "BC has not received a fair share of pharmaceutical investment in Canada, although this relates in part to BC's policy towards innovative drugs. CDRD is a good vehicle for bringing the three pillars (government, business, academia) together.

CDRD arrives when governments across Canada and internationally are struggling with the challenge of moving commercially promising, publicly funded intellectual property into the business environment.

The CDRD concept was hatched by Pieter Cullis, the Centre's chief scientific officer and senior VP research for Inex Pharmaceuticals Corp. Cullis was originally interested in establishing a centre for liposome drug delivery (Inex's business focus) but was convinced to expand the concept by David Dolphin (see chart).

"David said ‘Expand the concept think big'," says Livingstone. "The result was CDRD. We haven't seen any true hybrid models out there like this one. It includes physical infrastructure inside an academic institution run by scientists and graduate students and so on. Outside, there's a for-profit company with a board that views drug development within the academic centre. They control from the outside, providing management expertise through the for-profit board, the CEO and others."

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