There are a couple of parts to your question. Let me try to answer each of them.
For almost all of our programs, we don't require partnerships. We actually line up the partners ourselves. We would go to the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, the Heart and Stroke Foundation, or a drug company and would line up the partnerships for our programs. That's the first part of the question.
The second part is about commercialization. Commercialization is a complex issue. It involves many players in a complex ecosystem. It involves venture capital, the local institutions, physical facilities for actually setting up a company, management expertise, seed capital—all kinds of things.
What we have tried to do initially is ask what our role is in that very complex ecosystem. I think our roles are several-fold. First is to fund the research—if you will, to put the oil in the ground so that it actually makes sense to have a pipeline—and secondly, to provide some early seed capital, almost, to allow some of that research to move down toward something that is commercially of interest.
We started a new program—I didn't mention it in my talk—called the proof of principle program. The proof of principle program or POP has been extremely well received by the research community and by industry as an extremely innovative program. The intent of that program is not to fund more research, but to add more value to the research, so that the researcher can go out and find a commercial partner. We don't require a partner for the POP program.
Another program, just as an example—which I did mention—is “Science to Business”. Again I think it's a very innovative program. We've recognized that there aren't enough people in this country who are familiar and comfortable both with science and with business. These are two silos. With science to business, what we're doing is taking young graduates with a PhD in research and science and in partnership with business schools in Canada providing them with an MBA, provided it's in biotechnology. That started two years ago.
I've met, actually, with a number of these students at the Rotman School in Toronto and at the Ivey School in London, Ontario. It's just a fabulous group of young people. I think as we develop a cadre of these individuals who can straddle both worlds, it'll go a long way to solving some of these ecosystem issues I've been alluding to.