When diagnostic testing company LipoScience began to cast about for new ways to use its nuclear magnetic resonance technology outside its traditional base of fighting heart disease, it tapped into a new economic development pipeline to Canada.
The company is now working with the Institute of Biodiagnostics in Winnipeg, Manitoba, to develop a test to detect colon cancer.
LipoScience Chief Executive Ron Stanton says the work is in the early stages, but the goal is that his company will eventually commercialize the test and split the revenue with the Canadian organization.
“We’re always looking new applications for the NMR technology platform, and when we learned of their work (in Winnipeg), it seemed like a great fit,” says Stanton, whose company is in the pipeline for a proposed $100 million initial public stock offering. “Diversifying our base is important to our future growth.”
The venture between LipoScience and the Institute of Biodiagnostics is partially funded by the National Research Council of Canada, the major source of government-sponsored research in that country, under an informal agreement between the NRC and Raleigh-area economic development officials.
Ken Atkins, who heads up Wake County’s economic development program, has been working for two years to build a relationship with his counterparts in Ottawa, Ontario, because of the similarities between the two areas: They’re both capital cities with research universities and growing technology industries.
“It just became apparent that we would be much more successful if we worked in partnership with them rather than just try to raid each other’s companies for relocations,” Atkins says, adding that the two development organizations now contact each other if they have a local company looking for international expansion possibilities.
Linking with “centers of excellence”
Using Ottawa’s status as the national capital city, he also has been able to establish relationships with Canadian government agencies. He began meeting with NRC officials last fall with the idea of getting some of the $110 million the agency has earmarked to create “centers of excellence” for technology research.
To accelerate innovation and create new businesses and jobs in various technology industries, the NRC is building research centers nationwide, from studying fuel cells in Vancouver, British Columbia, to expanding e-commerce in St. John, New Brunswick, says Arvind Chhatbar, NRC’s director of regional innovation center.
Chhatbar says his agency has worked with other countries, from Taiwan to Spain, on research collaborations but has never had a formal program with the United States, so he was open to Atkins’ idea.
“We look at the States as almost the same country because we’re so close and most people in the industry know each other,” he says. “An institutional requirement was never needed to encourage activities.”
But a formal arrangement with Wake County and other U.S. technology hubs could produce many more joint efforts, like LipoScience and the Institute of Biodiagnostics, and more commercial opportunities, Chhatbar says.
Much potential seen
Brent Keating, who heads up the technology lending unit of RBC Centura in Raleigh and has worked for years with Canadian technology companies at Centura’s parent company, Royal Bank of Canada, says he sees much promise in the cross-border arrangement.
“If you’re going to partner with anyone, the NRC is the place to go,” Keating says. “I think there’s a lot of potential for companies here to access research opportunities there.”
Atkins says he expects to pair up Triangle companies with a photonics center being built in Ottawa and with pharmaceuticals research program in Montreal in addition to the Institute of Biodiagnostics.
“I don’t think you’ll ever see the NRC give direct funding to companies here in the Triangle,” he says. “But if the money goes into joint research efforts in Canada, the benefits in new products and opportunities flow directly to them.”
