Evidence of meeting #88 for Health in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was money.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Libby Davies NDP Vancouver East, BC
Can you name a good example of where you think it is working, where generic information is being produced that helps you with research while still protecting patient privacy?
Professor and Director, Li Ka Shing Institute of Virology, University of Alberta, As an Individual
Yes, I would say the first one was Manitoba, and the second one is probably Ontario.
Professor and Director, Li Ka Shing Institute of Virology, University of Alberta, As an Individual
Certainly in Australia they've had some issues with this and they've overcome some of them. New Zealand has done the same thing. Parts of the United States—the Framingham study, for example—have been famous all over the world because they've been able to get access to the databases. You know, we have provincial databases that are fantastic if you can get access to them, but they're often protected and they say they can't give you access because of the privacy issues.
We're dealing with this in Alberta right now and trying to get better access. We have researchers who come to the province and then go outside the province to get access to the data so they can publish their work. It's ridiculous. Canada with its public health system should be leading the world in access to data and working out how we can improve the outcomes of health care.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joy Smith
No, actually the time is up, but thank you for your questions, Ms. Davies.
Now we'll go to Dr. Carrie.
Conservative
Colin Carrie Conservative Oshawa, ON
Thank you very much, Madam Chair and another exciting panel.
I wanted to start off talking to Dr. Hudson.
First, it's great to see another Waterloo graduate around the table. I want to talk about your research on natural health solutions to common psychiatric disorders, the natural source tryptophan and essential fatty acids. Since I've been here in Ottawa, I've seen a huge rise in prescriptions for antidepressants that seems to be out of control. Sleeping pills are out of control, as is pain medication and stuff like that. We heard Dr. Brindle talk about different fish oils and different botanical stuff like that.
With your product, the reason I'm really interested is that it seems we're looking at technological innovation and you're somebody who has been successful taking more of a natural type of thing and being successful getting it out there.
I was wondering what the challenges are when you're looking at venture capital to study natural health products and things along these lines or things along the lines that you would like to see being utilized a little bit more. You mentioned that physicians have to be more entrepreneurial. Maybe we could even save a lot of money if we used more natural products instead of pharmaceuticals, as well as avoid addiction issues and stuff like that. I was wondering if you could comment on the difficulty of venture capital with the natural health products.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Biosential Inc.
I would just say do more of the same. I think Canada is actually well situated to deal with this in many ways. I think there's sort of an advertising problem, if I can say that. With the hypnotic medications we use, if you look at the February 2012 British Medical Journal, you'll see there's a sixfold increase in cancer in people who are using hypnotics on a regular basis. That's a significant concern.
With Canada, we have a lot of things that were really established after I got started. The natural health products registry or directorate, as part of Health Canada, I think is a great idea. Likely you could just focus more on it and get it more disciplined in its focus and get a faster time to approval. It's the approval process that is really the valley of death. It's not so much the patent costs. The patent costs are fixed and you can manage those to a certain degree, but really what you have to do is get a product on the market.
So I think Canada has a unique opportunity because of the way Health Canada could regulate this to get the product out there a little bit faster. Health Canada approval is taken seriously by many other countries—Korea and the U.K, for example. If you're approved with an NPN in Canada, you'll make it faster into the other regulatory environments. So I think just more of that would be good.
I just think the other part is the education of physicians in the way we've talked about, sort of as an entrepreneur. How are they going to raise money? They might have to raise something. It's going to be family and friends for the first part. If you go to VCs too soon, it's just not patient capital, with all due respect to any venture capitalists who might be on the panel with me. It's not always patient capital, and that's the problem. It leads to conflict and it could ruin a company.
So I would just say more of the same is needed. You're doing it well already, really. It's just focusing it and making it clearer.
Conservative
Colin Carrie Conservative Oshawa, ON
Thank you very much.
My next question is for Dr. Friesen. I'm looking at your six points, and I think you're bang on. I was wondering if you could expand a little bit on the procurement policies to nurture the sector. I know that our government has been trying to lead the way in reducing red tape and looking at regulatory harmonization, and things along those lines. This has come up a couple of times. I was curious if you could expand on that for the committee, as far as recommendations are concerned. As my colleague said, we'll be writing a report. I'm curious to hear what you'd have to say about procurement.
As an Individual
I was going to give the example but didn't have time. For example, when we got WinRho approved in 1980, the Province of Manitoba immediately switched from Johnson & Johnson's RhoGAM product to WinRho. Next was Saskatchewan, Alberta, Quebec—interestingly enough—and I think the last one was Ontario. Back then in the eighties, the provinces switched if there was a locally produced product.
There are many other examples where that could happen, but the health organizations have to look for them. There are not that many drugs now being developed in Canada, but other devices are. Another example is a Winnipeg imaging company called IMRIS, mobile MRI, which is now sold throughout the world. The last province, the last place to put one in, was Manitoba.
There isn't a mindset by the governments to do this, and part of it is because they don't recognize there are some that are locally made. There's a distance between the health buyers, and the second part of it is that they're being inundated by the sales people from Johnson & Johnson, etc., and being lobbied.
There has to be a deliberate attempt to look at procurement opportunities—and there are some. Start small and expand on them.
Conservative
Colin Carrie Conservative Oshawa, ON
Okay, the last one is for Dr. Tyrrell.
You mentioned the valley of death. We've heard that over and over again. We need to learn some lessons. You brought up the United States and its SBIR grants.
I was wondering if you could elaborate a little bit about them and what they are. You mentioned some of the challenges. In the U.S. they seem to be able to get these things going and we don't.
I notice that in the States, too, they have a system where they actually encourage people to donate to universities, angel venture capital, stuff like that, where they partner. They raise the private capital. If you know that you have private money, this is probably going to be a very good idea. Then the government climbs on board. Other people climb on board.
I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the SBIR grants, and also what they do differently to get the private money upfront to partner.
Professor and Director, Li Ka Shing Institute of Virology, University of Alberta, As an Individual
Of course, if you carry the product a little further on, it's easier to bring in the private money.
But let me just point out that the SBIR grants are $100,000 over the first year, and you can use that for patenting. A lot of your patenting costs are already covered by the SBIR grant.
The second phase is $1 million over two years, and you can use that for getting across that valley of death, and proof of concept and nano models, etc. The success rate of going from phase 1 to phase 2 is such that only about 30% go to phase 2, but 48% of those that have produced products on the market have a phase 2 grant. We just don't have an equivalent in Canada to get across that valley of death. That has been extremely important.
Canadian researchers are often asked to move down to the States or open an office in the States and they'll help you get an SBIR grant to help you get across that valley of death.
Conservative
Liberal
Hedy Fry Liberal Vancouver Centre, BC
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
What we're hearing from you is somewhat repetitive; we're hearing it from everyone who has come before us.
There are two issues I wanted to talk about. One of them is, how do you see government levering money for the basic scientific research, which you say is absolutely necessary, curiosity research, etc., so that you can take that and jump it to commercialization, if necessary. But sometimes it doesn't become commercialized. What is the vehicle that you see government using to do that? That's the first question.
The second question has to do with translational research and commercialization, and how the government could play a role.
There was a government program that started around 1998 with the help of people like Michael Smith, who pushed it. It was called Technology Partnerships Canada. Today, Technology Partnerships Canada only deals with widgets, things you can see, hold, feel, etc. But Technology Partnerships Canada was based on what Libby was talking about, which is that the university does the research, the university comes up with the idea, and then they twin with a commercial venture capitalist or commercial venture company and the government provides equal funding. If the government put funding in, there would be equal funding put in by a private sector investor or by a company, for instance.
Some of the best examples actually don't come out of biomedical research but come out of aerospace, such as MacDonald Dettwiler that did work on the CASSIOPE, a huge Canadian venture that is now up in space and being used by everyone. It came out of the University of Alberta, which worked with MacDonald Dettwiler and the government to partner and commercialize it. It worked. It worked very well for a while and it's no longer there.
My question is, do you think that is still a good vehicle to move forward with in terms of biomedical research? If so, do you think that the tripartite partners—the university, government, company or commercial group—could bring it together, or do you think there's another partner that should come in? Are the three partners the only solution? How do you see that?
The first is a basic research question and the second one, of course, is the one about how you see something like Technology Partnerships Canada coming back and being applied to biomedical research. This is one of Canada's biggest niches that we can excel in. Really, we should be looking at how we do that. I agree with you on that.
Liberal
Hedy Fry Liberal Vancouver Centre, BC
I would open it up, because everyone seems to be on the same kind of—
Professor, Brock University, As an Individual
I think one of the things is that universities, particularly smaller universities, are so busy chasing undergraduate enrolment that they are then not able to put funding into basic research. I think that's one of the problems.
I think there are a lot of universities where there are not commercialization enterprises going on. I come back to the comment that was made earlier about basically making sure that you have the resources to be able to run through the process of taking an invention all the way to discovery and commercialization.
Another thing that I think is important is the development of a philanthropic dimension, which is perhaps the other one that you've talked about. In the last few months for a variety of reasons, I've had interactions with the Broad Institute—which I'm sure some of my colleagues are aware of, if not the rest of you. This is a joint venture through Harvard and MIT that was funded in part by the Broad family. They have a number of missions, if you will. I have them listed here. Each one has two words essentially: act nimbly, work boldly, share openly, and reach globally. Those are the criteria through which Eli and Edythe Broad mandated the growth of this institution, which is working on an enormous range of biomedical applications.
I'll leave it at that.
Conservative
As an Individual
The TPC was a very successful program. It led to a number of companies, Neurocan and others, becoming fairly successful, and a lot of products. In basic research, there are some good programs. One of the things I would very quickly say is that changing is a problem. CFI is a great program. It's a struggle to keep it going. NSERC is a good program. It has reduced funding. It has got to get more funding again. But on and off, research organizations take decades to develop. You can't cut them off and then start them up again.
Professor and Director, Li Ka Shing Institute of Virology, University of Alberta, As an Individual
The TPC program may have been replaced a little bit by the centres of excellence for commercialization and research, and I think they're going to work. But I really would echo that you've had some wonderful programs in Canada. We often put a horizon on them that says an NCE must be self-sufficient in 14 years, and we stop a number of really successful centres by saying that's the term, and it's then over. Canada needs to recognize that you don't need to keep changing. We have some great programs and we should continue to support some of those because they are very successful.
Conservative