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UBC has big role helping a biotech

By Luke Timmerman
Seattle Times business reporter

GREG GILBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES Martin Gleave got help from University of British Columbia to find venture capital and rent cheap space in a hospital to develop a cancer-treatment company.

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VANCOUVER, B.C. — Martin Gleave was beginning to make a name for himself as a cancer researcher and surgeon in 1998, when he hit something potentially big — a technique that could make tumors more susceptible to standard cancer drugs.

He was revved up about the potential benefits for medicine, but he had zero experience in business. Both places he worked, the University of British Columbia and Vancouver General Hospital, shared the enthusiasm, and set out to help.

The academic institutions concentrated on building a business around Gleave. They matched him up with a venture capitalist, and set aside some cheap lab space inside the public hospital, instead of forcing the new company to pay higher rent in a private development. The company still rents at the hospital, even after it has successfully raised $11 million from private investors.

Now the company, OncoGenex Technologies, has a partnership with a leader in Gleave's field of research, Isis Pharmaceuticals. Its prostate-cancer drug is advancing into human tests. Gleave never had to give up his day job. He kept his academic research going, while adding the job of the company's chief scientist.

Caroline Bruce, a top UBC liaison to industry, who led the university's effort to launch the company, said it's one of her proudest accomplishments. She said she doesn't see OncoGenex having problems with conflicts of interest — like using public resources for private gain.

The university will get a royalty stream if OncoGenex develops a product. She noted that the company doesn't get public labs for free. The idea could have languished without the nurturing from the public institutions, she said.

"I've seen so many companies go and lease expensive office space, get expensive equipment and expensive people," Bruce said. "You can go through millions of dollars before you even get into (human testing). You need to keep spending down. This is a way that makes sense."

The aggressive style, Bruce said, is good for the academic institutions, the company and hopefully someday for cancer patients and the Canadian economy.

At the University of Washington, it's a different picture. There is no lab space on campus for startups, so such a model of a company tightly knit inside public facilities would not fly, said Jim Severson, UW head of tech transfer.

It would be unusual, but not impossible, to arrange for a scientist like Gleave to evenly split time between the university and a business, he said. UW focuses more on licensing technologies to existing companies, partly because it doesn't have the manpower to craft business plans for startups, Severson said.
 
But without that sort of help, and ties with the academic institutions, Gleave said his ideas could have been licensed away like most others from Canada — to an American drug company.

"By helping create an environment to keep IP (intellectual property) here, we can grow an industry here," Gleave said. "We need to do things like this, because we don't have the critical mass the U.S. has."

Luke Timmerman: 206-515-5644 or ltimmerman@seattletimes.com