Bioactive paper researchers seek to boost commercialization with CECR application

The Sentinal Bioactive Paper Network is seeking to expand its clout as a world-leading source of applications for detecting water, air and food-borne pathogens using bioactive paper. The Network, which currently receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), has been short-listed for the next competition of the Centres of Excellence for Commercialization and Research (CECR) program, which will provide $57 million for four new Centres among the remaining 10 applicants.

Based at McMaster Univ with Dr Robert Pelton as its scientific director, Sentinal is hoping that CECR funding to establish a national bioactive paper centre will boost the technology platforms developed by its researchers and bring their work into greater contact with industrial and financial players, and most importantly, customers.

"Under NSERC, we produce science-based graduate students with crazy new ideas. With CECR funding we can identify the technology winners and the people who can move it into the private sector," says Pelton, a Canada Research Chair holder in Interfacial Technologies, professor of chemical engineering and director of the McMaster Centre for Pulp and Paper Research.

Under Sentinal, research that was formerly pulp and paper-based expanded to become truly multidisciplinary, taking on a strong materials science and engineering component. With its major push into life sciences, researchers are joining with expertise in biochemistry and genetics. Sentinal is comprised of 11 universities, five companies and three government agencies.

As an NSERC Strategic Network, Sentinal received a five-year commitment of support at $1.5 million annually which was set to expire this year. Relief came from Budget 2008, which provided NSERC with $34 million in targeted funding to be allocated to automotive, manufacturing, fishing and forestry sectors. The money earmarked for forestry was allocated in conjunction with FP Innovations, and Sentinal received a second five-year commitment extending to 2015, once again at $1.5 million a year.

The opportunity to enhance commercialization prospects of bioactive paper technology platforms is just the latest development in a long journey that dates back to 1989 and the successful application of the Mechanical Wood-Pulps Network (MWPN) to the then-new Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) program. The MWPN enjoyed a maximum 15-year run under the NCE until 2004 when it morphed into the Pulp and Paper Network for Innovation in Education and Research (PAPIER), which in turn spun off Sentinal. NSERC funding is less than half of what the MWPN received, however, resulting in a sharper research focus, largely on nanoscale particles.

"The reduced funding has required that we become more creative and innovative in acquiring additional money to make up that difference," says Sentinal managing director George Rosenberg. "We need to be quite focused because we can't be everything. Moving from Phase I to Phase II (of NSERC funding) is a challenge because one third of our 26 researchers are new."

research themes expanded

In recent years, Sentinal has increased its research themes from three to five, with the most recent being anti-viral research. But Pelton says the overarching goal remains bioactive paper.

"We've re-organized how we run ourselves. We were originally discipline-based. Now we're organized around technology platforms," he says. "Each group is multidisciplinary in a nice integrated set-up with expanding fields of view."

Pelton is under no illusions that new high-value, low-volume products emanating from Sentinal will have any great positive impact on the perennially distressed forestry sector. While its work may help diversify the sector, the real payoff is for the end user.

"They all relate to the detection of pathogens and will require different kinds of paper as the substrate for these bio-sensors. It begins to move the industry in the right direction," says Pelton. "There are golden opportunities in detecting pathogens. The next technological breakthrough will not be at the consumer level. It will be at the farm or greenhouse, in the military or agri-food."

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