Commercialization

The Problem

The combination of the size of a potential market and its income level are the key drivers for commercial investment in science and health innovation, since corporations typically calculate the sales and profit potential before launching a research and development project intended to deliver a product to market. Given that income levels are low in the developing world, most commercial innovation investments are targeted at health challenges that are prevalent in advanced economies where consumers are able to pay prices that ensure profits. This leads to systematic underinvestment in products to address the challenges of individuals in the developing world. This failure to invest in the health needs of the developing world is especially true for populations in Sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia.

As a result, there is an important opportunity to support and direct research capability and financial investments to meet the health needs of the developing world, through the development of new, innovative solutions – scientific, technological, social, business, or institutional –- that are tailored to the unique health challenges of the developing world. At the same time, there is an urgent need not only to help the developing world build up its indigenous capacity for research but also to assist in the development of innovation models that would ensure that the commercial potential of new discoveries is captured by businesses in the developing world.

Local solutions to health challenges in the developing world are also vital for the creation of affordable and culturally acceptable health products that can improve the lives of the poor. Developing local solutions to health challenges also promotes self-sufficiency, capacity building and economic development. There is an important opportunity to create new models both to enable the commercialization of local health technologies and to support the commercialization of global research in developing world markets.

How are we tackling the problem?

We develop models of how to support and enable science-based health innovation and commercialization in and with the developing world. This approach is supported by scholarly research, focused on questions like:

How have developing countries (e.g., those in Sub Saharan Africa) and emerging economies (Brazil, China, India and South Africa) been able to build up capacity and innovate in the life sciences?
What is the contribution of the domestic private sector in developing countries in providing life science solutions to meet local health needs? How can we strengthen its contribution?
How can we encourage North-South and South-South life science collaborations to contribute towards innovation and improved health in developing countries?
How are scientists, entrepreneurs, and policy makers harnessing novel technologies, such as regenerative medicine and genomic medicine, to address local health needs, while also ensuring that they can participate – and compete – in a global bio-economy?
What barriers are there on the critical path from discovery to delivery of life-science technologies in the developing world?

Our research includes extensive fieldwork and analysis of global health innovation in emerging markets and developing countries. For example, we interview large numbers of key stakeholders in health innovation systems to better understand the roles they play, the challenges they face, and how well the system functions overall. Interviewees have included key stakeholders from: universities which conduct health research; firms producing drugs, diagnostics and traditional medicines; non-government agencies which support business creation and health delivery; regulatory and funding organizations; and governmental policy makers.

"I came to the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health in 2006 to pursue a PhD in global health, with a focus on local health innovation in Sub-Saharan Africa. My case study countries are South Africa and Ghana – two fascinating but very different countries. In South Africa, I looked at more technically sophisticated firms working to create viable businesses, driven largely through government support for biotechnology, as a means to address disease and make economic gains. In Ghana, the landscape for health innovation focuses more on traditional medicine and involves more fragmented attempts to translate local health research into results.

Initial interviews in Ghana helped me to identify examples of indigenous health innovation in areas such as traditional medicine and to understand how the innovation process works in practice and to identify key bottlenecks. In 2008, I spent five months in Ghana working with the Ministry of Health and a multi-sectoral task force to address these bottlenecks. The consensus was that several key elements of the innovation system were in place but that the main challenge lay in encouraging networking and knowledge flow between groups so that ideas for health products or services reached the population.

The task force explored a number of ideas to overcome this problem including: creating an open access database of all science and innovation resources in Ghana in the health area, developing a road show of potentially useful Ghanaian health technologies which could be assessed by those working in the private sector, and creating a virtual platform around health innovation to organize networking events across the public and private sectors and offer support services to aspiring health entrepreneurs.

Since the Government of Ghana changed in late 2008, more emphasis has been put on science, technology and innovation for development. We have worked to highlight the results of our research and the deliberations of the task force to government officials, inputting these ideas into the draft innovation policy which is under development. The key message is that supporting health research alone is not likely to benefit Ghanaians without attention to the whole innovation system and the way that knowledge is used, shared and translated." ~Sara Al-Bader, PhD Candidate

What have we accomplished?

Given that our research is the basis for developing our commercialization models, our primary accomplishments to-date has been the publication of a range of papers and articles, underscored by our rigorous field work, that:

Showcase the innovative pipeline of products from emerging economy life science sectors, and the relevance of these products for tackling problems such as neglected tropical diseases. We have studied more than 100 innovative firms in 7 emerging countries and created a database of more than 650 health products that they market as well as identifying many more health products that are under development.
Identify indigenous health innovations that exist in Sub-Saharan Africa, and identify the major actors in the innovation chain of several Sub-Saharan countries (Ghana, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda), identify the strengths and weaknesses of their innovation system and provide recommendations on how to encourage the commercialization of health research through measures such as convergence platforms.
Develop knowledge of the potential of developing countries to work together in South-South collaborations to address their own health and innovation challenges and pinpoint strategies for strengthening these collaborations and their contributions to innovation. Our research here included interviews with more than 300 experts in the biotechnology sector in developing countries.
Investigate the potential for North (Canada) – South partnerships. This research included 183 interviews with researchers, entrepreneurs and policymakers in six developing countries experienced in international collaboration, to learn how North – South partnerships can be formed and managed for mutual innovation in global health.
Document the role that Canada plays in the health biotech sector in developing countries and emerging economies and how Canada can harness this collaboration for innovation to promote Canada’s global health agenda.
Help understand how developing countries can contribute to the emerging fields of regenerative and genomic medicine and harness cutting-edge knowledge to address their growing chronic non-communicable disease burden.
Create a series of case studies which clarify the benefits and challenges of advancing Southern R&D and product development as a means to overcome health gaps in the developing world.

Building from this knowledge base, we have developed a range of models that will help facilitate the commercialization of health products in the developing world including:

African Life Sciences Convergence Platforms: This model is based on the Ontario MaRS convergence centre model and is meant to bring together policy-makers, research institutions, capital providers, the private sector, and donor groups, in order to develop and commercialize African life sciences research, products and services that meet local and regional health needs.
The Global Health Accelerator (GHA): The GHA would: a) help build R&D partnerships and financing for developing economy firms to develop products for neglected diseases; b) help small- and medium-size firms expand their businesses to new markets by developing their capabilities in regulatory issues, market research, distribution channels, and obtaining financing and international partners; and c) build a global support network for developing country entrepreneurs, drawing on pro bono contributions from leading management consulting, accounting and planning firms.
Making Collaboration Work: This model illustrates that North-South and South-South collaborations are interactions between innovation systems in the participating countries. It highlights the key importance of alignments of different factors that shape health innovation and shows how the financial systems and regulatory systems in participating countries can work together to promote global health innovation. The impacts are enhanced contributions of North-South and South-South collaboration to innovation and global health.
Matchmaking / Partnering Service: This model would offer the following services to promote collaboration between firms in Canada (North) and firms in emerging markets (South): a) Identify partnering needs for Canadian firms; b) Scope market-demand and business opportunities in emerging economy countries; c) Initiate partnerships between Canada-based firms and emerging economy-based firms through a matchmaking service; and d) Provide a suite of Business Development Services, either directly or indirectly through partners that will facilitate these partnerships and the potential entry of Canada-based firms and technologies into emerging economy markets.
Southern Health Innovation Fund Trust (SHIFT): The SHIFT would build on existing health venture funds to mobilize large-scale capital market participation for health innovation impacts. By tapping venture investor expertise, high-value health technologies can better be identified and developed, and follow-on investors brought in – all contributing to sustainable funding and faster scale-up of promising Southern health technologies.

What are the next steps?

We will continue to carry out research that helps us understand health science innovation systems in the developing world. For instance, we will study innovative financing models to support Southern firms in developing health innovation. We will also study how health innovation is shaped by regulatory systems. In addition, the development, implementation and evaluation of the models discussed earlier in this section and of any new models we develop in the future, will require us to work together with key partners and stakeholders either from the developing world or from organizations that are focused on global health. For example, we have been and will continue to work with:

The governments of Ghana, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda to develop an African Life Science Convergence Platform in their respective countries.
The Global Health Forum, to identify ways to implement and scale up a Global Health Accelerator.
Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and Canada’s International Development Research Centre on how Canada’s researchers and firms can adjust to the 21st century by promoting new partnerships in health biotechnology with emerging economies, aimed at fostering innovation and global health.

Key Publications

This paper provides a more balanced account of China's contribution to the regenerative medicine field. Consequently, it has significantly influenced global media coverage of China's stem cell research and therapies:

McMahon DS, Thorsteinsdóttir H, Singer PA, Daar AS: Cultivating regenerative medicine innovation in China. Regen. Med. 5(1), 35–44 (2010).

This paper has led to Canadian governmental organizations planning a dialogue on how Canada can strengthen its collaboration with emerging economies and a wide spectrum of stakeholders:

Ray M, Daar AS, Singer PA, Thorsteinsdóttir H. Globetrotting firms: Canada's health biotechnology collaborations with developing countries. Nature Biotechnology, vol. 27, no. 9, pp. 806-14, September 2009.

This paper demonstrates that scientists and entrepreneurs in the developing world are growing their local capabilities in creating affordable solutions to local diseases. This paper also presents the Global Health Accelerator model:

Frew SE, Liu VY and Singer PA. A Business Plan to Help The ‘Global South’ In Its Fight Against Neglected Diseases. Health Affairs, vol.28,no.6, pp.1760-1773,2009.

This paper lays the framework for the development and implementation of Life Science Convergence Platforms in Sub-Saharan Africa with African governments:

Singer PA and Abdallah S Daar with Sara Al-Bader, Ronak Shah, Ken Simiyu, Ryan E Wiley, Pamela Kanellis, Menaka Pulandiran and Marilyn Heymann: Commercializing African Health Research: Building Life Science Convergence Platforms-Global Forum Update on Research for Health Volume 5 (October 2008) pp 143-150

This paper demonstrates that emerging economies and developing countries are investing in cutting edge technology to address an increasing burden of chronic non-communicable diseases as well as setting themselves up to compete in a knowledge-based economy: