Innovation is at the Heart of Human Health
This year is the 57th anniversary of the polio vaccine which was introduced in 1955. Why does this matter to people alive in 2012?
Innovation is at the heart of human health and the eradication of preventable disease. In 1916, the United States was in the midst of one of the worst polio epidemics in history. The disease came without warning and because of its mild flu-like symptoms many children died and/or were paralyzed overnight. Doctors and parents were horrified; feeling helpless in preventing such tragic outcomes. In that same year, Jonas Salk was two years old and living in New York City with his parents. Salk was born to Jewish parents of immigrants from Russia. He came from humble roots and had no social advantages.
Polio was considered to be the most serious public health problem in the post-war United States. In fact, the longest serving President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, suffered from the debilitating effects of polio and this lead to the disease having a high profile as a research project. In 1955, as a result of Salk’s research work, the polio vaccine was first introduced.
Now that polio is eradicated in the United States, and throughout most of the world, the human population suffers from other diseases which have risen in prominence. Cancer, heart disease, diabetes are all new killers. These new killers are challenging society and governments to find new ways to improve human health. Innovation is essential to the eradication of these diseases and research is ongoing around the world with this purpose in mind.
What has changed from Salk’s day is that innovation has become a global activity and solutions are coming forward from unexpected places. New life science companies are being formed in the USA and Canada, Europe, Asia, Latin America and elsewhere, and each new company channels innovation and the fruits of research into a global marketplace.
In 1999, TVG developed C21 BioVentures™ (C21) conference in order to tap into the incredible innovation that happens in the northern California region. C21 was termed an “engine of innovation” best symbolized by a virtual place termed Silicon Valley. C21 continues to showcase innovation. Come to Napa, California and meet this year’s innovators. Experience how C21 taps into the breadth of skill, experience and knowledge found in Silicon Valley, and vested in universities such as Berkeley, Stanford and UCSF; venture capital companies on Sand Hill Road in Palo Alto and elsewhere in the Bay Area; young start-up companies and mature biotechs which have now become divisions of big pharma companies, such as Genentech/Roche and Chiron/Novartis.
The anniversary of the introduction of the polio vaccine is an important milestone, because it shows that disease can be eradicated by a concerted effort to solve a specific problem. We live in a world that has been created by the application of science and technology. Nearly everything we use in our daily lives is the product of scientific thinking. The computer I am writing on; the electricity that powers it; the internet that will deliver this blog; the lights overhead in my office; the automobile that brought me to work, and on and on. And yet, the great innovations and the scientists, inventors, entrepreneurs, and investors who have all created the technology that feeds, clothes and houses us, are almost invisible to the general public.
When innovation and action are combined, to solve specific social problems, it is amazing what can be done. The history of science has many examples. Salk left another legacy which is not widely known. His sole focus was to develop a safe and effective vaccine as quickly as possible, without any interest in personal profit. When Salk was asked in a television interview who owned the patent to the vaccine, Salk remarked “There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”
Who do you think will be the next Jonas Salk? Where will he/or she, come from?
Dr. Robert Lee Kilpatrick
Partner, TVG
Europe getting jiggy with it
All across Europe right now, as funding season opens for the main European Commission funding programme FP7, companies and researchers are experiencing the hitherto undiscovered experience of getting up close and personal, quite often with complete strangers.
The mating game of the Framework Programme Seven call is a strange one for many. Academics are used to the familiar faces and routines of a lifetime within the same small circle, in many ways the gentry of science – plenty of close marriages there to protect the bloodline. While small companies are the wide boys of the game – circling warily and nervously, looking for that elusive marriage that brings status and money that they can squander on some high risk turn of the card…. Finally, the large co.s, like enormous crocodiles basking in the sun, watching what’s going on, sometimes striking successfully and other times a little too slow off the mudbank.
Let’s leave out the big co.s, the machinations of internal workings needed to get permission to do anything within 6 months of initial request, usually counts them out of the FP7 tango. The academics and small companies provide enough entertainment to last the season. As Europe wonders where all the money went (a familiar lament within biotech for many years now, glad you could join us), the increasingly SME-oriented Framework Programme is financing marriages never seen before.
The game starts with a jolly good idea from a company or academic group. At the very start, the expectations are wildly different – the academic daydream is another 3 years of secured funding and a step in the right direction towards that Nobel prize, while the company will be watching the dwindling coffers, feeling the hot breath of investors on their necks and looking for the dreamy partnership of a large pharma and lots of lovely money (don’t worry dear readers, it is crushed early in the process).
The next step is to read the call for proposals fully and realise that it wasn’t written just for you – sometimes it has impertinence to suggest that you might not be able to do it all by yourself and that you may have to bring in one or two other people. Phooey say the applicants and they start eying up the contenders on the dance floor. Academic groups will be generally looking for other academic groups to start with – stay in your comfort zone, before realising that you have just allocated 99% of the budget to other academics and that call did mention 35% needing to go to SMEs. ‘What on earth do they need all that money for?’ is the lament and they start the messy business of trying to understand how on earth their brilliant research could actually leave the lab and fall into the grubby hands of the wide boys.
The wide boys, I mean small companies, on the other hand, have come up with a wizard way to spend the money all on themselves, even though they have a staff of 6, and that includes Chris who makes the tea and fills the pipette boxes. And surprisingly, for companies often borne of academic innovation, the view back into academia for partners is rather cloudy, particularly beyond the close academic group that may have provided the founding technology.
But the dance finally starts with a few contacts and the general idea that their various talents might contribute towards the topic of the EC call. It starts slowly, after all, it’s weeks until the deadline…with nicely phrased suggestions and plenty of pretending that you know what the hell one of the others is talking about. There will be a mad one – it’s the law – and your project idea will suddenly grow horns and charge off into the next field, scattering innocent victims left right and centre. If you are lucky, somebody will see sense and ask why a project aimed at developing a new therapy really needs a floating laboratory in the Med and technicians with see through labcoats or the need to smuggle snails out of Chile in your pockets.
While you are fitting in occasional project conversations around the edges of your usual full time job, time is ticking on – without realising it, the band has finished the drum solo and is moving on towards the grand finale. The deadline, once so far away is suddenly next week and people find themselves taking off all their clothes without even asking the surname of their partners.
Luckily, the terror of an imminent deadline overcomes all shyness (and madness) and the project idea rapidly finds a more sensible focus, especially after you realise that you forgot to add 60% overheads onto all your costs and have to cancel the order for the transparent yacht and coat with snail smuggling pockets.
One final night and day of frenzied activities, where children are forgotten, coffee is drunk cold and you have shouted (through the magic of Skype) at somebody with a Nobel prize for chemistry, the proposal is submitted. You emerge blinking into the sunlight (well, rain if in Brussels), realise you have just spent a torrid night with a group of semi-strangers and slowly put your clothes back on. You check what their surnames were from the project description (just to make it respectable), smile in an embarrassed fashion at each other and survey the scenes of devastation in your email box and waste basket.
Don’t worry, you’ll recover and you will do it again next time, you floozy.
Claire Skentelbery
Secretary General
European Biotechnology Network
The European Biotechnology Network is part of a charitable foundation with the mission to build partnerships across the biotechnology sector in Europe. As well as a directory with over 2400 R&D active company listings, the Network runs a Biotechnology Funding Hub which tracks research funding available to companies across the globe, including FP7 and NIH funding programmes. It works with partners all over the world to build the right partnerships for successful delivery of biotech to the market, field and clinic. Individual membership is free of charge so come an join the family!
It is time for Latin America
In 2009, Robert Kilpatrick and I decided to bring the BioPartnering events to Latin America. The main objective was to create business opportunities for local life sciences companies and to expand horizons for international companies into the region.
The decision proved to be right. Latin America is experiencing robust economic growth in comparison with other regions that were strongly affected by the 2008 financial crisis. Policies in several Latin American economies that help control deficits and keep inflation low, combined with strong international demand for commodities like iron ore, tin and gold, are encouraging investment and fueling much of the growth. The region’s economy is now growing at the rate of 4-5 percent.
In terms of life sciences, we also note a strong development in the last couple of years. Recognized competence in research areas, such as genomics and stem cells, together with recent developments in the areas of food production and bioenergy are some of the factors that are calling attention to Latin America. The results are becoming clear: international companies are expanding their scouting programs into the region, local corporations are starting to invest in innovative projects, new and dedicated life sciences venture capital funds are being created, the number of start-ups companies is growing and universities are establishing technology transfer offices.
It is also clear that there is still much to be done to include Latin America countries as major players in the life sciences and biotechnology worldwide. There are many challenges, including regulatory issues, access to biodiversity and infrastructure, especially for biological product scale up and manufacturing.
The first BioPartnering Latin America was held in Rio de Janeiro in September 2010. With 15 sponsors and 35 supporters, we were able to join together over 200 executives from 20 countries. A great success for our first meeting! For 2011, we decided to move the event to São Paulo, the main business city in the continent and one of the biggest in the world.
By now, a strong group of companies, including six of the main international pharma, are sponsoring BPL 2011. Equally important, we will have the tech transfer offices of the main universities and research centers (for example the University of São Paulo which is the biggest university in Latin America) presenting their technologies and a group of prominent start ups in the region, coming from the Mercosul* and other countries.
*Mercosul: Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay
I look forward to seeing you in São Paulo this September!
Eduardo Soares
CEO & President, Biominas Brasil
