Novel model for life sciences commercialization boosting impact of BC drug centre

Renewed CECR funding essential

Faced with a burgeoning pipeline of life sciences discoveries and an increasingly risk-averse pharmaceutical sector, the Vancouver-based Centre for Drug Research and Development (CDRD) has implemented a novel commercialization model to boost value creation and engage industry. Since its launch in 2007, the organization's multifaceted activities have resulted in significant industry investment and a funding success rate among participating researchers that's more than double the current average.

With both a not-for-profit drug development research engine (CDRD) and , a for-profit arm geared towards revenue generation and partnerships (CDRD Ventures Inc - CVI), CDRD is increasing the demand pull for university-generated intellectual property. Researchers utilize its laboratory infrastructure to add value to discovery research and boost its potential for venture capital investment and licensing opportunities. The resulting revenue is ploughed back into its not-for-profit drug discovery activities, helping to enhance new pipeline opportunities.

"Think about it as a teeter-totter between public and private. As we move into our fifth year, we've been able to bring in a large amount of private sector funding to a point where we're relying more on that self-generating revenue to keep the centre going without having to go back to government all the time," says CDRD CEO Natalie Dakers. "We hope to reach a place where we're sustainable in a model where we still have government participating at some level but much smaller … Our competitive advantage is that we provide access to innovation throughout Canada. That's a very unusual opportunity presented to the pharmaceutical industry."

On the public side, CDRD has been successful at attracting both federal and provincial financing. Federal funding organizations include the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Centres of Excellence for Commercialization and Research (CECR), Canadian Institutes of Health Research and Western Economic Diversification. Provincially, the Government of British Columbia has been a major backer, augmented by Genome BC, the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research and the Government of Alberta.

Private sector funding has been nearly as impressive with $20 million secured through partnership agreements struck with Roche Switzerland, Pfizer Canada and Johnson & Johnson (US). Angiotech, QLT and Merck Canada have also contributed. CDRD will likely add two more major drug firms to its stable of partners, with an announcement of a new industry partner expected within two months.

Work is also underway to expand CDRD beyond its largely provincial confines by forging relationships with drug research institutions across Canada and internationally, augmenting its BC-based infrastructure and accessing new sources of talent, infrastructure and ideas.

"We're getting pretty close to capacity with more than 20 projects underway at any one time. If we have relationships elsewhere in the country where they are able to take on some of those projects, that's what we're looking for — finding people, funding champions, finding ambassadors, finding investigators who really want to get involved and extend our structure to other parts of the country," says Dakers.

CDRD now has affiliations with 22 universities and teaching hospitals across the country. In Europe where similar organizations exist it has formed international partnerships with the Karolinska Institute, the Lead Discovery Centre which supports the Max Planck Institutes, the technology transfer arm of the University of Tokyo and Griffiths University in Australia.

Dakers credits the initial success of CDRD to the flexibility of the CECR model, which allows each centre to develop a structure and activities best suited to acting as an innovation intermediary between academia and industry in specific sectors. For drug discovery and commercialization, CDRD's future viability lies with CVI, which has been slow to develop as the 2008 economic downturn impacted CDRD's ability to attract corporate partnerships. With the economic upturn, it is now set to receive several technologies being prepared for commercialization. But the longer timespan required to bring life sciences discoveries to market means that continued success will depend on whether CECRs are permitted to reapply for funding for another five years.

"I've been in this industry for a long time and I think it's been a program that's been nicely designed and nicely timed. There is a requirement for a one-year notice of the end of the program so we hope there's some reference in the next Budget," says Dakers. "In our next five-year plan, one of the major initiatives is to give greater definition to the commercial arm with its own management team and resources, to bring greater focus to that … It's going to be a virtual organization and have a very commercial focus with an interest in selecting specific technologies that we think can generate revenue."

The scarcity of venture capital remains an obstacle that continues to concern Dakers. Despite the potential CDRD is creating for company creation, the lack of larger sums of capital has compelled the organization to come up with variations on the financing model such as the innovation funds it has created with industry partners. But when the requirement of commercialization escalates into the millions, Dakers says many initiatives "hit a wall".

"There are some interesting initiatives going on here now to think about a new way to address the capital problem that we have in Canada, building off the CECR program and the infrastructure we've created," she says, adding that more information will be forthcoming "as that becomes more defined".

The development of skilled talent who can participate in drug development, value creation and commercialization is another critical component of CDRD's overall value creation strategy. Its training program consists of post-doctoral fellows, graduate students, co-op students and business interns.

"They get the full-meal deal. What does it mean to enable a technology and what are the elements that are going to be important to take an idea or invention and make it valuable to somebody else," says Dakers. "What we want to see in the next five years is to expand our training out so that we can have trainees across Canada."

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