It seems that your role is to be the facilitator and champion.

Yes. We have built a powerful network – our members are involved in managing Intellectual Property arising from university and hospital research. They include Hospital for Sick Children, University Health Network, Mount Sinai Hospital, Sunnybrook Hospital, Toronto Rehab, St Michael’s Hospital, Centre for addiction and Mental Health and Ryerson University.  This network will be expanded in 2007 with the addition of 2 or 3 new members.

We aim to contribute what is needed for success.  We can tailor the recipe to selectively contribute financial resources, expertise, management techniques, and skills along the way, where and when it is needed. Being the facilitator and champion, and having the knowledge to do work in the biomedical field, we have to make sure we can bring the critical resources to overcome the main challenges of technology transfer and commercialization.

There are close ties between BioDiscovery Toronto and Rimon Therapeutics. Can you speak about the relationship?

Rimon President Michael May has been on the board of directors almost since BioDiscovery started. He is also a member of the Executive Committee. He represents a voice of experience from industry, providing guidance on how we should deploy our own resources. As you know, the challenge is really to make your time, your money, and your people’s efforts all count. Michael is a great leader in this respect, and has been immensely helpful to BioDiscovery in its formative stages. He is on the front line with Rimon Therapeutics, a company with very, very promising wound-healing technology and a unique way of getting these technologies to market. I know his scientific, managerial, and entrepreneurial methods will stand the test of time.

Rimon Therapeutics, as you alluded to, is commercializing Theramers™, which are therapeutic polymers. Can you speak to the promise of that technology, the team and company overall?

Rimon’s products are based on a very solid knowledge of the cascade of biochemical and physical events that occur in a chronic wound site. Rimon’s Theramers™ can accelerate the process of wound healing, reduce infection, and at the same time reduce one’s stay in the hospital for serious injury. Also the Theramer™ approach is being shown to be effective for chronic wounds that otherwise would fester. This is just tremendous. Wounds take a lot of effort for hospital staff to prevent infection, to change dressings for patients etc. Any improvement is good for the patient and good for the system overall. Rimon’s Theramers™ have great potential.

Michael May is supported by the scientific leadership of Dr. Michael Sefton and other highly talented people.  Theramers™ are unique and differentiated in the marketplace.

It’s a new approach for the old problem of healing chronic wounds – an area where innovation is badly needed.

How do you see BioDiscovery Toronto and Rimon collaborating in the future?

We would like to see them work with other investigators, or other companies in Toronto or world wide. We can assist Rimon to make connections with other investigators that have related technology to create offshoot products - to pursue other ways of using Rimon’s base of commercial intellectual property and knowledge. So this has two dimensions: We can hopefully find ways to help Rimon- and Rimon through its leadership - can find ways to help us. 

These kinds of relationships are long-lasting. They continue over long periods of time because the core value proposition is fundamental: “How can we help each other to achieve health-related objectives in our society?”