Invest in basic science to reap rewards: expert

Mark Crowell -- a leading US technology-transfer expert -- has a message for Australian universities wanting to make money out of research: it is vital that the public sector continue funding good, basic science to drive the knowledge economy.

Crowell is associate vice chancellor and director of the Office of Technology Management at the University of North Carolina.

He is also president-elect of the Association of University Technology Managers, and was visiting Australia with Lycos co-founder Mark Coticchia, vice-president for research and technology management at Case WesternReserve University in Ohio.

Crowell said one of the biggest issues confronting the biotechnology industry worldwide was defining measures of success, other than profitability.

"We've done ourselves a disservice in the US, where everyone focuses on which universities are making the most money.

"They say, 'Columbia made US$140 million last year, but the University of California made only $30 million. What's wrong with the University of California?

"Yet some of the universities that aren't making a ton of money are doing incredibly important and innovative research.

Success in biotech research, development and commercialisation required a commitment to long term investment and effort, he said.

"Forty-nine of the 50 US states have now announced major initiatives in biotechnology.

"Many have just started, but Boston, San Diego and Research Triangle Park in North Carolina were doing this 40 years ago."

Crowell said the whole knowledge economy started with public-sector investment.

"But the focus must be on partnership - it only works when the universities, business and government work shoulder to shoulder, and partner to partner, promoting new programs and approaches to create an environment in which new biotechnology companies could thrive."

Public benefit should also be a metric of success. "How many diseases are now treatable with new drugs? How do we define the benefits of developing drugs for those parts of the world where success is not measured in dollars or the number of companies spun off?

"For example, one US company is trialling a new AIDS vaccine that is effective only against a particular HIV strain common in South Africa. They won't make a dime out of it."

Another university had recently licensed an anti-fungal drug to a startup company as a potential therapy for African sleeping sickness - the data from the African trials would give the company an idea of its broader market applications.

In addition to doing public good in developing nations, such companies could obtain proof-of-concept for new technologies with wider applications in the industrialized world.

Mark Coticchia said that, although his background was in the physical sciences, engineering and IT, there were many similarities to biotech.

But a major difference was that, in areas like software development and electrical and electronic engineering technology, product development cycles were relatively brief - only 3 to 5 years, compared with 8 years or more for biotech.

"The money, and the barriers [to commercialization] are a lot a lot higher in the biotech industry. It typically takes only a couple of million dollars to become acquired, and go public.

"But the VC markets are starting to free up.

"A lot of this stuff in computer science and electrical engineering is actually underpinning the biotechnology and medical device industries.

"One of the major responsibilities of the major research institutions is to promote interdisciplinary research. One of my roles is to look for areas of opportunity in which to facilitate interactions, and it has been happening more in the past five years than any other time."