What caught my eye in the half-time results for Imperial Innovations (IVO), the AIM-listed tech ‘incubator’ arm of London’s Imperial College, was the headline: “£109.5m funds available”. That’s on top of the £109m IVO has already invested in over 80 pharma and tech start-ups since its 2006 IPO.
IVO has a specific brief as the ‘technology transfer office’ for Imperial College, but this has since been extended to IP developed at Cambridge University, Oxford University and University College London. OK, ‘others need not apply’, but these four universities are arguably our most successful hotbeds for British innovation and deserve all the help they can muster to commercialise their R&D.
Of course, not every investment pays off – indeed the majority probably don’t. For example, there was no further mention of visual search technology start-up, Cortexica, after management changes late last year (see Cortexica eyes next phase under Imperial’s wing). And even one of IVO’s spin-out success stories, biopharma firm, Thiakis, turned out not to have a happy ending under new ownership. IVO sold Thiakis to US-based Wyeth Pharmaceuticals (now Pfizer) in Dec. 2008 for $100m of which the bulk ($80m) was performance based. Pfizer gave notice to IVO earlier this month that it has discontinued R&D at Thiakis and is looking for an exit.
So let’s not get too depressed about the state of UK start-up funding, at least in academe. Beyond those cloistered halls, well perhaps there’s a different conversation to be had.
(Update: Just heard from IVO that Cortexica is actually making good progress and is performing in line with expectations. Good stuff!)