Beyond Trust – Three Years of Collaboration with the Leibniz Association

When Ascenion started to cooperate with nine institutions from the Leibniz Association in 2005, the partners agreed that fostering relationships with researchers would be one of the most important tasks. “Scientists must believe that it is worthwhile sharing their results with Ascenion,” they emphasised when asked for mid-term goals. Today, the question of trust is no longer an issue.

“Meanwhile, researchers are well aware of IP-relevant matters in their work and voluntarily approach Ascenion with their ideas and findings,” says Prof. Dr Rolf Horstmann, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine (BNI), one of the Leibniz institutions that chose Ascenion as marketing partner. “For us, the most significant outcome of working with Ascenion is that we identified the lack of translational research within our institution as a bottleneck in technology transfer. Typically, scientists design individual experiments and end their projects once they have gained a new insight – which is fine if the objectives are to deepen our understanding on human diseases and compile new scientific publications. If the goal, however, is to advance these findings into medical applications, we need to go further and develop experimental settings that enable systematic screening for putative drug candidates”, Horstmann points out. “Only then, we will be able to enter research projects into the drug discovery process, attract funding or get an industry partner on board,” Dr Peter Ruile, COO of Ascenion confirms.

Supporting translational research
Therefore, the partners came up with a new tool to support technology transfer at the BNI: The institution set up a “translation fund” with an initial volume of 200,000 Euros per year, solely dedicated to financing the internal maturation of promising projects. The initiative met with a strong response from scientists and received a range of excellent applications. A project in the field of malaria was selected for funding. Ascenion is currently trying to attract funding from other sources for further projects, targeting Lassa fever, Chagas’ disease or malaria,. “All these projects hold strong potential”, Dr Hinrich Habeck, Ascenion’s Technology Manager at the Hamburg Office comments. “But given the philanthrophic nature of these projects, there are only very few support programmes that come into question. Nevertheless, we hope to get at least one of them externally funded, e.g. by the Gates Foundation or the Wellcome Trust.”

Looking at the detail
“The BNI example has offered us a major insight,” Ruile adds: “Improving technology transfer means looking at the detail, case-by-case, and working individually with each partner to find appropriate solutions.” Ascenion’s partner institutions differ significantly in terms of structure, funding policy, research topics and commercial opportunities. While the BNI focuses on diseases which mainly affect the poor, other institutions address key pharmaceutical markets such as cancer or cardiovascular diseases. “And these open different opportunities in terms of funding and commercialization,” Ruile says. While the creation of an internal fund was most appropriate for the BNI, projects from other institutions were amenable to federal support programmes such as GO-Bio that provide prospective founders with funding for translational research. For another partner, a broad collaboration with industry is currently under negotiation.

The advantage of variety
“We have also learnt that the diversity and breadth of our partners’ combined know-how and IP is an enormous plus,” Dr Christian Stein, CEO of Ascenion adds. “We can easily connect experts from various institutions whenever a project requires complementary tools or expertise to take the next step.” In addition, Ascenion has created new platforms for the exchange of experience and marketing of technologies to industry, e.g. the BioVaria. “These and further initiatives we have in mind can only work because we have gained a critical mass.”

Down to figures
Summing up three years of collaboration with the Leibniz Association also means: 59 patent applications, 61 agreements with industry, 2 spin-off deals and a total of 370,000 Euros in returns from license fees. Taking into account all the groundwork required – building awareness, establishing regular publication screens and clearing existing patent portfolios – these results are quite respectable. “Yet for us, it is not the raw number of patents, deals or revenues that counts,” Horstmann from the BNI emphasises. “It would certainly be great to feed our translation fund from commercial revenues someday. But in the first instance, we want to see our results be translated into novel medicines. Being the only public research organisation in Germany that focuses on tropical diseases, we regard this as central to our mandate.”

Outlook
That is why Horstmann wants to continue the chosen path with Ascenion. “We need to go ahead, see what works and adapt our strategy accordingly. Ascenion is an excellent sparring partner in this process,” he says. The other Leibniz institutions that started to work with Ascenion three years ago share Horstmann’s positive evaluation of the partnership, as well as his ambition to carry on. Ascenion and its partners therefore applied for continued support from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), which co-funded the initial three years of collaboration to a total of 1.5 million Euros. “We hope to keep or even extend the number of our partner institutions”, Stein says. "The critical mass of licensable technologies already accumulated is an important prerequisite in helping us to shape an increasingly effective and professional technology transfer landscape in Germany." Now, that the groundwork is done, Ascenion will focus on the development of new technology transfer tools to address the translational gap, which is certainly not confined to the BNI, but is a major hurdle to technology transfer in general. “One of our major objectives is to provide our partners with access to early drug discovery and drug development expertise”, Stein continues. “Only then we will be able to make a real difference in technology transfer over the longer term.