28 May 2010

TTS Ltd. were invited to chair and speak at a couple of sessions at the increasingly important BioVision Alexandria. Held biannually, this particular event has great significance and differs from others in that it strives for the inclusion of the BioSciences in the developing world. To TTS Ltd. this is a wonderful event that focuses on different perspectives than those more readily heard at other events and we are delighted to continue helping support the initiative in any way we can. Bluntly it is a refreshing event and the discourse throughout is always interesting with many subjects being approached from a completely different angle from that which one would more commonly encounter.

If I may take a few words from Dr Ismail Seargeldin, Conference Chair and Executive Director of the Alexandria Library "...our aim is to explore the future. Policy makers and distinguished speakers from the fields of industry, science and civil society will get together to discuss the new frontiers of life sciences with the aim of challenging its enormous potential to the benefit of humanity. Therefore not only do we aim to discuss the novel discoveries and breakthroughs in science, but also examine how the discoveries of today could create a better world for oncoming generations". Admirable, and with six Nobel Laureates amongst a notable line-up of speakers, one would like to think eminently achievable. 

TTS Ltd. chaired and spoke at two sessions covering "Research, Education, Innovation and Industry: The Gap". Both were intriguing for their breadth, wealth of sector experience. To highlight a few Iain Gillespie, Director, OECD gave an enlightening overview of the current economic challenges related to the sector per se, whilst Anatolle Krattiger, Research Professor, University of Arizona, gave a perspective on the issues surrounding IPR and the raging debate of public-private ownership and importantly the impact on collaboration. Further details can be found on the BioVision Alexandria website (www.bibalex.org/bva2010) but in short, this is a wonderful initiative that the biotech sector ought to actively support.

26 May 2010

Welcome to the Global Tech Transfer Summit Initiative

The new TTS Ltd website is being designed to serve as a hub for the members of the Tech Transfer Summit Global Initiative and all active stakeholders in international life sciences focused technology transfer, licensing, business development, and venturing.  TTS defines technology transfer as the entire process of taking promising research and bringing it to the market, whether through R&D collaboration, licensing or start-up, and the Global Tech Transfer Summit Initiative serve as the key international platform and network for the key stakeholders in the community, including industry licensing executives, technology transfer officers, university and research institute executives responsible for innovation, early stage investors, VC investors, and national biotechnology development agencies. The online community provides an on-going network and forum for exchange for the active participants in the Initiative’s key global series of Tech Transfer Summits, which in 2010 includes exclusive Summits with the leading universities, research institutes, science parks, biotech associations, and government agencies in Europe, Russia, and North America.  If you are an active stakeholder or executive active in technology transfer, licensing or venturing in the life sciences, we would like to welcome you as a member of the Global Tech Transfer Summit Initiative, and we look forward to meeting you in the coming months in Paris, Saint Petersburg, or Toronto.

12 May 2010

Over the past several months, TTS Ltd has been called on to support on number of key biotechnology events in Europe, the U.K., Russia and the Middle East.  While TTS Ltd does not "sell" serices or advertizing to events organizors, we do actively support those initiatives that are organized by key stakeholders and are designed to make a difference and improve the environent for biotechnology innovation. In short, we like to support those initiatives whose missions are complementary tothe Global Tech Transfer Summit Initiative.

Various governmental organizations and biotechnology associations organizing these events have called on TTS Ltd to put together key panel discussions, to involve keynote speakers, and to help ensure a more focused event with a real potential for positive impact in the biotech sector and the environment and conditions in which we work. This sort of collaboration offers a win-win outcome, supporting our fellow stakeholders, while at the same time benefitng the sector generally, and it has been a pleasure for us to help.  At the same time, we've been able to involve various members of the Global Tech Transfer Summit Initiative network in various high level discussions, where they have had the opportunity to share expertise and advice, but also to continue to build their own networks and collaborations.  The Global Tech Transfer Summit Initiative will of course continue to focus primarily on our shared network and global series of high-level interactive Summits, but we will selectively endorse and support some of the best initiatives we see which are organizd by real stakeholders in the biotechnology and innovation communities, whose missions are complementary to the Summit Initiative's own, and who seek to make a real contribution to or impact on the biotechnology sector.  TTS Ltd will highlight the most important of these for you on our Affiliate Events page, and share more details on each within future blogs.  All the best, and if we didn't see you in Moscow, Alexandria or Brussels, we hope to see you soon in Paris, Saint Petersburg and Toronto!

10 May 2010

At BIO in Chicago this year, the main topics of conversation tended to center around two things: money and rate of attrition. How much is available and how many companies are hanging on by their finger-toips is the gist of it so we won't go into that further here. There was another talking point related to BIo itself and that was attendance per se. Taking this latter point first (why not?) it is true that attendance was depleted from the previous boom years of 20k+ attendees however is this a bad thing? Lower numbers make it easier to access and network with the right people. Perhaps BIO had simply become too big? Regardless there seemed - to this seasoned attendee - to have been a wealth of opportunities this year and those most certainly included business. TTS Ltd. can also report from the horse's mouth as-it-were that the Biopartnering section was the most successful to date with the likes of Merck, J&J, AstraZeneca all posting 450+ partnering meetings. We can only assume that all these were indicative of the continued value of attending BIO. 

Of the many breakout sessions, two were particularly interesting for different reasons. Firstly the session announcing Taiwan's Mega Fund and indeed concentrated push into Biotech centered around a new strategic plan which the Taiwanese Gov have named the “Biotechnology Take-off Package,” which aims to make Taiwan the indispensable center in the Asia-Pacific region for biotech R&D, manufacturing and operations. Taiwan has upgraded its discovery research activities over the past decades, and they now wish to develop and implement a mechanism that translates these into successful commercialized results. The Package, which contains four components, aims to translate fundamental research through preclinical development for new drug and medical devices. The aim is to: 1) strengthen the industrial value chain and preclinical development in the commercialization process; 2) establish a biotechnology venture capital fund of US$1.76 billion, so-called “The Mega Fund”; 3) promote an integrated incubation mechanism; and 4) establish the Taiwan Food and Drug Administration. The core interest was the belief that as "Made in Taiwan" became synonymous with success in IT, Taiwanese Biotech start-ups will become the same through an integration of abundant funding, applying technology(s), capital, manpower, facilities and regulations to their existing foundations. 

Finally the other session that caught the eye of TTS Ltd was the "Outsourcing of Big Pharma Drug Discovery Research to Academia". It is indicative of the changing market that such a topic was one of the more interesting to TTS Ltd. For many years Big Pharma have been chasing Blockbuster drugs and have even gone so far as to say that developing $350MM pa drugs is not viable. Has this now changed? The outsourcing by Big Pharma of the routine aspects of preclinical drug development has long been well-established and whilst Pharma has maintained a strong presence in early drug discovery, characterized by its biological experimentation to identify targets suitable for drug intervention, it is now recognising the need to reach back to the primary source of innovation in drug discovery (academic labs and tech transfer offices) where increasingly research is being channelled toward drug discovery via public-funded initiatives (e.g. in the NIH, molecular library screening and chemical biology projects). Whether this is a good or bad thing, i.e. should public funds be used to develop Drugs that are ultimately for a commercial market per se or should they be used to fund so-called Blue Sky Research that creates better understanding of science is open to debate, but this was seen as a clear indication of Big Pharma recognising that innovation is still based in academic lab environment and it is not easy, if nigh on impossible to recreate that in a corporate environment. Although there have been successes (e.g. J&Js long established policy of outsourcing entities with the more recent Pfizer incubator concept) much was left hanging and open to debate. However it was clear from the line of questioning from many TTOs in the room that there was significant interest - if only the issues of finance, ownership and royalties could be as simple!