News from the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research

Office of Technology Transfer (OTT)

McGill, through OTT and Transfert Technologies Commercialisation Capital (T2C2/Bio), has concluded an exclusive option agreement regarding the commercialization of genes and related technology affecting aging. The agreement is based on research by Dr. S. Hekimi of the Department of Biology and his team, supported by grants from NSERC and MRC.

The commercialization will take place through the creation of a spin-off company in which Dr. Hekimi, McGill and T2C2/Bio will have equity, together with firms providing the necessary venture capital, amounting to several million dollars. McGill will transfer the technologies through a royalty-bearing licence to the spin-off company and agree to further related research at McGill under a research contract.

T2C2/Bio is a seed capital firm, one of two recently created by Sofinov, a subsidiary of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, and the Business Development Bank of Canada to provide seed capital for the identification, evaluation and commercialization of health science technologies primarily originating from universities and public and private research centres.

Once the identification and evaluation of the technology has been completed and an appropriate agreement such as this option agreement concluded, T2C2/Bio will participate in the creation of the spin-off company by providing a business plan, attracting investors and providing a management team.

The T2C2 seed capital firms, and others such as GENECHEM in Laval, UMDI and CS&T Growth Fund in Toronto, are thus closing the gap between early-stage technology and investment by venture capital firms. Until recently, this gap was the reason such early-stage technologies were frequently licensed out to existing, usually off-shore, companies rather than serving as the basis for the creation of spin-off companies. Accordingly, the benefits were usually limited to future royalties and other payments, sometimes associated with a contract for further research, and the more important benefit of local job creation was lost.

However, OTT now has an increasingly interesting portfolio of inventions and software, growing by about 70 disclosures yearly, as a result of a greater awareness among the McGill community of the value of technology and of the services and expertise of OTT and Martinex. We are confident that this agreement will be the first of many others to be concluded with the T2C2 seed capital firms leading to spin-off companies which will benefit McGill inventors, the University, Quebec and Canada.