SASKATOON – Genetic engineering has accomplished much, but it hasn’t found a way to grow money on trees.
So research organizations that use today’s expensive new technologies are constantly looking for new sources of cash.
The Veterinary Infectious Diseases Organization in Saskatoon has been signing up corporate and commercial partners to help foot the bill for developing new vaccines, a bill that can reach $10 million for each vaccine.
“Obviously VIDO is working on a whole variety of different vaccines and we do not have a budget of $100 million,” said VIDO director Lorne Babiuk. “So we need to develop collaborations with the industry to help support the science.”
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At a recent meeting in Winnipeg, VIDO’s board of directors approved an operating budget of $3.97 million for the coming year.
And they issued a statement saying the Saskatoon-based research facility must work more closely in the future with the private sector.
“Expanding our interactions with commercial companies is necessary if leading edge technology is to be made available to the livestock industry now and in the future.”
Babiuk said in an interview that over a five-year period, about 40 percent of the organization’s funds have come from industry partnerships, ranging from major multinational biopharmaceutical companies to livestock producer groups.
“That’s a very significant amount of money and we’re hoping to increase that over the next few years very significantly,” he said.
Two vaccines for shipping fever have already been developed and put on the market as a result of corporate collaborations, while others are in various stages of negotiation and development.
And it’s not always a case of VIDO approaching potential partners and pleading for money.
“We’re very well recognized internationally,” said Babiuk. “A lot of them come to us.”
The cost-sharing arrangements vary with each agreement. VIDO usually covers most up-front costs of the basic research, while the partner finances product development, production and marketing.
A partner with expertise in production and marketing can sharply reduce the amount of time it takes to get a new product from the laboratory into farmers’ hands.
As government funding for agricultural research has been cut back in recent years, private companies have taken on a bigger role. Some farm groups fear those firms will direct research into areas that can produce a quick profit at the expense of so-called basic research that’s just as important but may not produce immediate benefits.
Babiuk said he believes VIDO has struck an appropriate balance between basic and applied research. And the real bottom line is whether useful products are coming on to the market.
“We’re here to serve the farmer,” he said. “We try to be their research arm and arrange our business in such a way that it will be beneficial for them.”
