Media Coverage

A discovery that could help millions of diabetics worldwide is the subject of a lucrative pharmaceutical deal that will enrich the Toronto hospital that created it – part of a growing trend of selling science to help shore up Canada’s troubled health-care system.

Tuesday’s agreement between Sanofi-Aventis and Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre on a wound-healing molecule demonstrates how entrepreneurial hospitals can become when the very sustainability of medicare is in question.

But the licensing deal with one of the world’s biggest drug companies is also savvy medically. Until recently, some hospitals were reticent to capitalize on their discoveries, seeing commercialization as unsavoury, but now many believe it’s one of the quickest ways to get a drug to their patients.