In their September 11, 2019 online edition as part of their “Innovation this Week” newsletter, Re$earch Money talked about TIAP’s partnership agreement with Amgen:
“A few days after celebrating its 10th anniversary and changing its name to Toronto Innovation Acceleration Partners (TIAP), the commercialization organization formerly known as MaRS Innovation announced a new collaboration with the biotechnology company Amgen. The aim of the collaboration is to identify and jointly fund disruptive technologies derived from discovery research conducted in Toronto and managed by TIAP.
Amgen is an American biotech giant with annual revenue of USD $23.75 billion and a market cap of USD $118.6 billion. The human therapeutics company develops biomedical devices and therapies with a focus on areas of high unmet medical need. The company’s two most important blockbuster drugs are Epogen, which helps the body create red blood cells and raise hemoglobin levels, and Neupogen, which triggers the proliferation of blood cells. Both are used especially after blood transfusions and chemotherapy treatment.
History of a partnership
Founded in 1980, Amgen — whose name stands for “applied molecular genetics” — is a top R&D spender in Canada, investing approximately CAD $70 million annually into research, according to the company’s website. Amgen launched Amgen Canada in 1991, with operations in Mississauga, Ontario and a research facility in Burnaby, British Columbia. The company also conducts clinical trials with Canadian academic research institutions and hospitals.
Throughout the 90s, Amgen invested heavily in biomedical research in Toronto, particularly in the laboratories of the University Hospital Network, where it established the Amgen Institute. That approach shifted in the early 00s when Amgen brought its research investment in-house, creating their own capacity for discovery research and terminating the Amgen Institute.
In the years after MaRS Innovation was founded in 2000, Amgen’s business development group began visiting once or twice a year to review the portfolio in search of licensing opportunities. Although no deals were struck, MaRS established a positive relationship with Philip Tagari, Amgen’s vice president of therapeutic discovery. Tagari ultimately sought to broaden the relationship into the new strategic partnership with TIAP, marking a partial return to Amgen’s former strategy of relying on external R&D.
Curating promising research
TIAP’s role is to save Amgen some of the trouble of shopping around for good opportunities for development. “We do the initial vetting. [Amgen] gives us guidance in terms of where they want to put the emphasis,” explained Rafi Hofstein, president and CEO of TIAP, in a phone call with RE$EARCH MONEY.”
Read the original article here: http://bit.ly/2kpZ4ct