Technology Transfer and Entrepreneurship - Volume 7, Issue 1, 2020

Targeted Protein Degradation (TPD) is an emerging new modality of drug discovery that offers unprecedented therapeutic benefits over traditional protein inhibition. Most importantly, TPD unlocks the untapped pool of the proteome that to date has been considered undruggable. Captor Therapeutics (Captor) is the fourth global, and first European, company that develops small molecule drug candidates based on the principles of targeted protein degradation. Captor is located in Basel, Switzerland and Wroclaw, Poland and exploits the best opportunities of the two sites – experience and non-dilutive European grants, and talent pool, respectively. Through over $38 M of funding, Captor has been active in three areas of TPD: molecular glues, bi-specific degraders and direct degraders, ObteronsTM.

The Polish Life Science sector has been growing for the last decade and has received billions of euros in EU funding, but has still failed to attract significant private investment. Despite the EU financing, there are still no real market or investment success stories, although companies are emerging with the potential to be globally competitive. This article examines the financing and behaviour of the Polish Life Science sector in the context of the Polish innovative economy and provides a cultural perspective to the challenges facing the sector.

Organizations managing technology transfer from universities to the private sector, although born in Poland with a significant delay compared to Western European countries, are currently important actors in the Polish innovation system. The article summarizes the process of shaping the role and models of the functioning of these organizations. It discusses the status and functions of technology transfer centers and the institutional environment of academic technology transfer in Poland: legal framework, support programs, and partner organizations. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of cooperation networks in technology transfer and draws attention to specific initiatives focused on technology transfer in the biotechnology and pharmacy sectors.

Ryvu Therapeutics and Selvita originated in 2007, a time when drug discovery in Poland was still not pursued by industrial enterprises. For many years, both entities operated one company and were known under a common name Selvita S.A., combining their efforts on both innovative small-molecule therapeutics for oncology and expertise in Contract Research Services (CRO). Following more than a decade of such a hybrid business model, Selvita established a strong position in the field of drug discovery and built trust among partners, clients, and investors globally. This encouraged the leaders of the company to separate the two divisions into fully autonomous units, which in fact, had already been operating quite independently and both were successful in diverse areas of drug discovery activities. At the beginning of October 2019, two new companies were established and both parts were given independence and more opportunities for growth. Discovery and development engine was named as Ryvu Therapeutics, and the CRO part of the company remained with the name Selvita. To reach this stage, both the divisions went through an interesting journey together, supporting and strengthening each other for the benefit of both.

The present article is a case study of a Polish biopharmaceutical company, “Pure Biologics”. The company was founded in 2010 by a group of scientists and, over the last nine years, grew substantially from just a few individuals to nearly one hundred professionals. Initially, a privately-funded civil partnership, Pure Biologics, has been transformed into a publicly-traded company. Such a transformation has been possible not only because of the expertise and growing experience of corporate management, but also the specific economic environment and substantial public funding dedicated to innovative Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).

Jagiellonian University (JU) is one of the top universities in Central and Eastern Europe. Several faculties of the university are conducting research in the life sciences area. These projects include both direct drug discovery and development activities as well as research aimed at the creation of novel technologies with significant commercial potential. The present case study is based on a series of examples illustrating the cooperation between JU and various business entities, both in Poland and globally, which successfully implemented the inventions made at the university. These cases include JU technologies already commercialized and also some of the most promising inventions still awaiting further development in close collaboration with various business partners. The article also describes a few examples of JU world-class research centres and their unique collaboration opportunities with scientific and business entities.

OncoArendi Therapeutics SA (OAT) has been founded in 2012 as USstyle biotech operating in Poland. From the beginning, OAT has been focused on first-in-class or best-in-class programs involving interactions with novel targets with no clinical validation. The experienced group of founders thought that Poland offered an abundance of young talent and non-dilutive financing from European and national grants and subsidies, newly established research infrastructure and relatively little competition, as the biotech sector was still in its infancy. With strong proprietary IP, they thought, an experienced group of medicinal chemists could launch a competitive small molecule discovery business. Furthermore, the net cost of developing small molecules in Poland was several-fold lower than in the US or in western European countries. Based on these competitive factors, one could develop several programs in parallel with limited private investment, thus diversifying the high scientific and technological risk and increasing chances of long-term success. This case study shows how this strategy played out for OncoArendi over the last 7 years and how OncoArendi positions itself within the Polish biotech sector and on the increasingly competitive global biopharmaceutical scene.

The aim of this paper is to give an overview of the current state of technology transfer in Poland by examining various stages of the process and indicators associated with different actors involved. In order to examine the role of technology in polish enterprises, it takes into account different forms of intellectual property, both created and acquired in Poland. Data taken into consideration include domestic and external sources, focused on the years 2013 - 2017. The main sources of the statistics are the Polish Patent Office and the Central Statistics Office. Phenomena observed in the data are supported and elaborated by domestic research articles concerned with technology transfer and open innovation. The most striking feature of such juxtaposition is the fact, that some of the indicators presented in the article are surprisingly low, considering overall economic situation. All of the above represents the context of the Open Innovation Network project, which is also presented in the paper. Interpretation of the presented results is included in the discussion section. Some of the indicators confirm the status of polish economy as moderately innovative, however trends in performance of a small group of technical universities show a promising development in the field of technology transfer.