New Ontario Genomics Institute division seeks industry input to guide research

The Ontario Genomics Institute (OGI) is adding some pull to its commercialization activities with the formation of Scintelligence, a new division that matches the needs of industry with life sciences research expertise. Launched earlier this year but only officially announced this week, Scintelligence sends business development officers out to companies in the health, agriculture and natural resources sectors to learn how life sciences solutions can assist in the growth and prosperity of their businesses.

The group is led by OGI president and CEO Dr Mark Poznansky, who has a long track record of life sciences commercialization in the province. The model is inspired in part by the strategic approach used by Japan following World War II to develop their industrial complex which vaulted the nation into the upper ranks of the world's largest and most prosperous economies.

It also supports the institute's mandates for business development and outreach at a time when policy makers and organizations are striving to help boost the mediocre R&D performance of Canadian business.

"There has not been a lot of pull and industry needs to go to the academics to see if it can help with solutions," says Poznansky. "There are many valleys of death in the innovation system including lack of having industry sit down with the academic community, explain their problems and ask for assistance. We need to go out in the field and understand the needs of industry. Only then can we look at solutions which may be in academia or in small companies."

"Life science technologies represent a significant opportunity for various sectors to find solutions to the challenges they face. Scintelligence's mandate is to help industry tap into the potential of life science solutions to improve business processes and promote the innovative use of life science research. Scintelligence works directly with industry to identify their needs and use our life science and business."

— Ontario Genomics Institute

scale-up potential

Scintelligence is starting as a relatively small endeavour funded from internal OGI resources. Poznansky says it may be scaled up after two to three years if it can be demonstrated that the model can applied more widely. He says other organizations claim they are taking a similarly proactive approach with industry, but virtually every case involves "walking in with technology from academia and trying to sell it to industry".

And while industry may engage by supporting an industrial chair at an academic institution, the overall objective of matching industry requirements to life science solutions is not being explicitly met.

"We formed Scintelligence as a sort of experiment with a question. Is publicly funded research infrastructure sufficiently concerned addressing the needs of industry? There's lots of push but right now it's primarily taking academic research and trying to sell it to industry in some shape or form," says Poznansky. "With Scintelligence … many companies have told us they've never seen this before. There's nothing in our back pocket."

site visits key

In the six months that Scintelligence has been operational, its staff has made upwards of 70 site visits, landing two or three serious potential deals in the areas of clean water, agriculture and bio-monitoring in the mining sector.

The goal, says Poznansky, is the funding of life science solutions that industry draws from academia and the clean water deal has already attracted some initial private sector funding with the company also applying for public support.

But to reach all the companies that could potentially benefit from life sciences research, Poznansky says a much larger effort is required.

"It's a huge job to reach out to all natural resource companies. It would need 100 people," he says. "Scintelligence could eventually become a private company."

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