In September 2008, Mark Torchia found himself in an operating theatre at the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic, holding his breath.
The Winnipeg-based professor, researcher and medical device specialist was about to see the result of several years of hard work by himself and a team with members from the St. Boniface General Hospital, the University of Manitoba, and Monteris Medical.
A new medical device was meeting its first living patient. The surgeons had drilled a hole about one-half the size of a dime in the patient s cranium and were preparing to insert an MRI-guided, laser-tipped probe into the patient s brain in an effort to destroy what would have otherwise been an inoperable brain tumour.
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I will never forget that feeling as the probe entered the patient s cranium, not as long as I live, Torchia tells me. It was our first patient, all the relatives were there waiting outside the operating room, the patient knew he was dying and that this procedure, which had been explained to them, was the last resort.
They re looking at you, and you re the person who s going to fix this it s a tremendous feeling, both positive and negative. You re excited and terrified at the same time, and you just want to see it succeed.
Long road
The journey to that American operating room started with a conversation among colleagues at the hospital, Torchia recalls. It was sort of like the old stories we all hear about things sketched on the back of napkins, he says. We had an idea we thought would work, so our next step was to build a simple prototype and this wasn t anything fancy. The very first one we built was something I probably could have made in my basement.
The basis of the idea was already being investigated in other fields. Increasingly surgeons were finding new and innovative ways to use cutting-edge technology to avoid invasive surgery. Probably the best known example is heart surgery. Just a few years ago there was only one way to operate on the human heart cracking the chest wide open by cutting an incision directly down the middle of the breast bone.
These days however, surgery incisions are getting smaller and smaller and further away from the heart as surgeons use remotely controlled robotic tools to perform the surgery through what are known as keyhole incisions.
The basic idea behind the tumour treatment was the same. Rather than opening the skull and performing invasive surgery, the surgeons would use MRI technology to guide a laser-tipped probe through a small hole and right to the centre of the tumour, where it would then be used to destroy the tumour in place.
After building the prototype, Torchia and his team were even more convinced that they were onto something. What the team had was a new piece of equipment that could help doctors treat tumours, create better outcomes for patients, and ultimately perhaps save lives. There was just one problem it wasn t doing much good on the lab bench, and Torchia recognized his expertise was in medicine, not business.
Enter Harry Schulz
The day I visit Schulz is one of the last of the pleasant summer days in Winnipeg, and when I find him he is laughing at himself in his office at the National Research Council building in the gritty West End neighbourhood.
Schulz is a renowned medical fundraiser known throughout Manitoba as one of the key movers behind an emerging bio-medical cluster than includes public research institutes allied with hospitals, universities and other public institutions, pharmaceutical companies and other medical supply and medical technology companies.
The subject of his self-effacing humour is a set of six Rolodexes that perch behind his desk something he insists is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the virtual phone directory of contacts he s made after decades in the business.
That s just the current ones that haven t made it onto my computer yet, Schulz says with a laugh. You should have seen my first day of work I started syncing my contacts to the computer, the lights dimmed and a few hours later it was finally done.
The new job he s referring to is one that s very similar to his old role as the chief innovation officer for the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority. In that job his primary task was funding good medical ideas in their various forms. That might mean finding a name sponsor for a new research centre at Health Sciences Centre, the city s major teaching hospital, or perhaps working with a researcher like Mark Torchia to bring a good idea to life in the operating room by commercializing an innovative new technology.
But these days Schulz is beginning his post-retirement career as the head of Prairie Fire Growth Ventures, a new organization jointly funded by the federal and provincial governments that aims to use similar strategies to develop agriculture-related research work into economically viable commercial companies.
As he details the effort, a clearer picture emerges. Prairie Fire, with some initial seed money from the two governments, will essentially function as a venture capital fund, with a target of raising $100 million which will be used to fund about 20 start-up companies.
Typically this is where researchers and other innovators face their most significant hurdle the very early work to commercialize their research, Schulz says. It s where you see angel investors like friends and family, because there are significant risks and it s very likely that you ll see your initial investment greatly diluted or it could fail outright.
That’s the opening for Prairie Fire, an entity that could probably only come from the strange blend of a provincial NDP government and the Harper Conservatives in Ottawa.
It recognizes that there is a role for at least limited government activism but insists that those government footprints be the light tracks of the facilitator, rather than the heavy hand of the regulator or central planner. It is in many ways the perfect expression of the pragmatic brand of Prairie politics that Manitoba is known for, never straying too far to the left or right no matter what ideologues are in power.
Essentially the Prairie Fire model will see the professional fundraisers pull together a venture capital pool, scout out investment opportunities and make deals with companies throughout the region. It won t direct or fund research, but rather fund the commercialization of promising existing research that s currently sitting on the lab bench. That s a very important distinction, Schulz insists, because it means that the economic development will be market driven and therefore more sustainable. It also will likely mean that the companies stick around Manitoba once they re up and running.
While medicine to agriculture might seem quite a stretch, it was actually through his earlier work that Schulz says he gained his first significant exposure to agriculture. That was where he saw commodity groups like Pulse Canada partnering with research institutes like the U of M s Richardson Centre for Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals and cancer researchers at St. Boniface Hospital to explore the health effects of pulse-rich diets. He also points out that there is a fundamental similarity between today s advanced life-science companies and pharmaceutical companies with their research-driven focus.
Frequently they re actually even the same companies, Schulz says. Take Bayer, for example. They re an agriculture company and a pharmaceutical company.
Ag focus
A few hours down the highway at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada s Saskatoon Research Centre, Sue Boyetchko might be slightly outside Schulz s catchment area, but she s right in the demographic he s looking for.
Boyetchko, a plant pathologist by training, has spent the past two decades finding ways to disrupt weeds using natural bio-controls. One of the most promising she has found is a soil-borne bacteria that occurs naturally in Prairie soils and that attacks the roots of grassy weeds.
Among its primary targets are green foxtail plants that are becoming increasingly resistant to the established chemical control products.
We isolated and tested thousands of potential organisms before finding a really promising one, Boyetchko says. In retrospect, finding the organism was probably the easiest part. It was labour intensive, of course, but it was relatively straightforward.
Then Boyetchko began the painstaking process of designing a workable delivery system. It s been a process of trial and error because the bio-pesticide industry is still in its infancy, she says.
These are new products, so we still need to develop ways to formulate them and deliver them to where they need to be delivered, Boyetchko says.
And that s without ever getting off the lab bench. In that department Boyetchko is luckier than most. She s in the final stages of inking a development deal with Mycologic, a smallish industry partner that began life as a spinoff by University of Victoria researchers, and which has accrued significant expertise in the bio-herbicide field.
Finding the money
But getting there wasn t easy. It took years of working the industry circuit and making the necessary contacts to know who to call, what to propose and how to strike a deal. When Boyetchko hears the story of Schulz s Rolodexes she concedes it might have been good to have someone like that in her corner.
It s so important to have the right combination of people if you want to succeed, Boyetchko says. Having your network in place is so important.
For a scientist like her, that s meant learning a whole new set of skills. While she welcomed that challenge, other research scientists may prefer to spend their time at the lab bench and as a result may never commercialize their work.
Back in Winnipeg, Mark Torchia agrees that for him it s been a roller-coaster ride, learning new skills, meeting new people and taking on new roles. But overall he enjoyed the process so much he did it twice.
Torchia also developed a robotic system that frees hospital pharmacy staff from the drudgery of mixing IV solutions, as well as the ever present danger from handling toxic substances like chemotherapy treatments. Schulz also played an instrumental role in bringing that product to market.
It s been the experience of a lifetime, Torchia says. When Harry and I get together for dinner, I sometimes think our wives don t believe a word we say and I can t really blame them. It went from despair to elation and everything in between, from wondering how you d possibly move forward to holding a cheque for $7 million to fund the startup.
But ultimately Torchia says there s no arguing with results, and in this case the result is two viable companies, based in Winnipeg, employing other Winnipegers in stable, well-paying jobs.
And then of course there s the small matter of the contribution to better medical technology and better results for patients.
None of those more philosophic rewards are likely to come unless the dollars come too, however, and it’s here that Schulz knows his job, and how important it is: My reputation is being the guy who can find the money. CG
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Somewhere in every diversified portfolio, everyone should have at least one long shot. Harry Schulz
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WHERE S YOUR CASH?
THE CASE FOR INVESTING IN HIGH-RISK RESEARCH
The cost of research can be astronomical. Spending as much $100 million before ultimate commercialization isn t unheard of, which raises the question, where does anyone find that kind of money?
For farmers, the question might also be, should some of that money be yours? That s why both researchers and investors listen closely to Harry Schulz, head of
Prairie Fire Growth Ventures, who believes that most major projects will need several streams of cash.
For example, an average investor might want to consider sinking some cash in a high-risk portion of their portfolio.
Somewhere, in a diversified portfolio, everyone should have at least one long shot, Schulz says. This isn t what you want to plan on for your retirement, but it s the small piece that could really pay off in a big way.
Doing that through a structured vehicle like an investment fund allows those investors to play that game, but also helps hedge risk by making a number of investments. Some will fail, but the law of averages also suggests that a few will succeed and when they do the payoff can be handsome.
Or there might be companies in related fields like pharmaceuticals or even agriculture life science that make an investment not with an eye to making money, but to knowing just what s going on in ag research from a prime vantage point.
Research is very, very expensive, Schulz says. Many of them look at this sort of investment as a cost-effective way of keeping an eye on what s being developed, and possibly identifying areas where they may want to make investments.
