The British-Polish Chamber of Commerce, the British Embassy and the LifeScience Cluster in Kraków held the ‘International Partnership in Biotechnology and IT’ conference in Warsaw in an attempt to facilitate contacts between potential partners. Sandra Jacobson reports.

The conference focused on biotechnology, projects bridging biotechnology and IT and health care, showcased numerous models and case studies of institutions and their projects that successfully translate scientific discoveries into commercial products.

‘Commercialisation should be embedded in multidisciplinary research groups’ Barry Shafe of the Edinburgh Science Triangle said. ‘This can happen in close cooperation between four realms: knowledge, finance, business and built environment’ he explained. One of the issues Poland is struggling with is the built environment. ‘It should provide appropriate infrastructure with flexible terms, shared facilities, access to knowledge, networks and intensive business support’ Shafe said. Another key question to be answered is whether to go into a start-up or a spin-off, which differs in terms of who owns the IP. Claire Cockcroft of the Babraham Institute – an institute of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council – gave a detailed explanation of how their model of providing a full package for translating science into commercial products works. ‘To maximise the opportunities Babraham has established a dedicated Technology Development Laboratory to promote the translation of Institute and third-party technology into investment ready offers. It provides comprehensive aid in obtaining proof of concept, patents, research funding possibilities, contract projects and lab access’ she said.

Poland is actively developing similar knowledge clusters i.e. the LifeScience Cluster Krakow Initiative established by 32 institutions in 2006. It now employs 35,000 people and has acquired EUR 467 million for its projects. ‘Our aims are: healthy society, new jobs, new products, commercialisation, sustainable growth and clean environment’ Kazimierz Murzyn, the managing director of the cluster, said. ‘Our strategy is to be the single point of contact for networking and fostering cooperation’ he added. Professor Józef Dulak of the Polish Biotechnology Forum and the Jagiellonian Centre for Innovation described several examples of their successes. ‘The positive outcomes of Polish R&D are: developing prostacyclin, recombinant insulin, transgenic lettuce expressing hepatitis B antigen, anti-melanoma vaccine and cell therapy for myocardial infarction’ he enumerated.

The presentations were followed by an intense session of pitches presenting innovative projects, which hopefully will be the starting point of successful international cooperation.