posted on April 10: McMaster, City of Hamilton join forces on biotechnology-business incubator plan

McMaster's proposal to partner with the City of Hamilton to build a biotechnology-business incubator facility was approved in principle at city hall Tuesday.

The city's committee of the whole approved the partnership in principle and referred financial aspects of the proposal to staff to be dealt with in connection with budget discussions that are underway.

The committee councillors asked city staff and the University, represented at the meeting by John Capone, associate dean of research in the Faculty of Health Sciences, to work together on a proposal to obtain additional funding from the provincial government.

The University was asked to give a more detailed presentation to the committee of the whole within the next month.

“I am extremely encouraged by this morning's discussion,” said Capone. “The potential economic spin offs for both the city and the University will be unprecedented. Moving this partnership forward – from principle to practice – is a very high priority and we're committed to working with the city to make it happen.”

The Hamilton-McMaster Health and Biotechnology Strategy, which the committee considered Tuesday (April 9), includes a plan for an “incubator and discovery district” in Hamilton. The plan calls for an investment of $1-million a year over the next five years from the city to build this incubator facility, estimated to cost about $15 million.

This partnership is just one of the collaborative initiatives the University is pursuing with the city in a bid to develop stronger partnerships that will have economic and other benefits for both institutions.

Mamdouh Shoukri, vice-president research & international affairs, and Capone have been driving the health and biotechnology incubator initiative.

They have been working closely with the city during the last several months to produce a viable plan that would capitalize on the expertise at the University and its affiliated teaching hospitals and research institutes.

Last summer the city's economic development office redefined its priority areas and identified biotechnology as an area it wanted to pursue aggressively.

McMaster has long recognized this as an area of strategic importance and has invested accordingly by hiring new people and creating state-of-the-art facilities.

Shoukri says such a facility will bridge the gap between research and commercialization  a top priority for him  particularly in the field of health, biotechnology and bioengineering.

“Turning our research into marketable products and, in turn, creating companies is something that we must do at McMaster. We've talked about it for a long time, but the time has come to take action and now the timing is perfect.”

The timing is perfect but the window of opportunity is small, according to Shoukri.

“Right now, the momentum, the money and the interest are there at all levels,” he says.

He notes that the federal government's innovation strategy encourages innovation and commercialization of knowledge, that the province's goal is to make Ontario the third-largest home for biotechnology industry in North America and that the city has a commitment to biotechnology as an area for economic growth.

Besides the potential McMaster spin-offs, Shoukri says the incubator will attract other biotechnology companies to the area, creating professional and technical jobs in the community, and will act as a magnet for entrepreneurial researchers and health scientists.