Certainly.
Again, our institution is about 33 years old. From a very early stage, VIDO recognized the importance of intellectual property and patenting. So I guess from a very early age, if you want to talk of business sustainable, competitive advantage, basically a patent does nothing else but give you the right to sue. So the companies that come in now and work with us feel very comfortable that we've kept the notes, we have the due diligence in place, to actually protect them as they take a product forward.
The seven vaccines I talked about initially were vaccines created some time ago now, over various stages--over the last 20 years, even. VIDO initially started out with a spinoff company called BioStar. BioStar actually marketed and sold those products and actually had a revenue of about $2.6 million a year. They went on to out-licence that and sell that off, primarily to Novartis Animal Health.
So even when I talk about our commercialization success, most of our vaccines are now marketed by international companies, not necessarily Canadian companies. So I think that's still a challenge in Saskatoon. As someone mentioned, we all work together, we all know each other. I think Saskatchewan, and Saskatoon in particular, have done an incredible job of making this cluster work. But I think we're still finding some challenges in bringing larger companies here, and I don't know how we would approach that.
What we can do is really enhance the effectiveness of the start-up companies. The one that's been mentioned a couple of times today is a company called Saponin. They make adjuvants. From a vaccine perspective, there's another company called Prairie Plant Systems that's looking to make vaccines in plants.
I think we can work with those companies to help them succeed, and that's something we try to do. From a success and policy perspective, anything you can do to enhance the success of those companies--whether it's tax breaks for angel investors, whether it's new labour-sponsored funds, or whether it's putting money into that--I think that's going to be incredibly advantageous.