Tomatoes, the iUsask iPhone application and pig virus vaccines. The Industry Liaison Office has turned original research on all three into a huge source of revenue for campus researchers and the university.

Last year alone, the ILO generated $5.7 million in research revenue for the University of Saskatchewan.

Of that, roughly $2.75 million was paid out to inventors on campus and $1 million was injected back into the colleges where the licensed inventions were developed.

The ILO, which has been around since 2004, commercializes knowledge and research coming out of the university. Researchers and inventors whose work goes to market are entitled to 50 per cent of the net income garnered through the office.

Glen Schuler, who heads the ILO, says that commercialization isn’t at odds with basic research goals.

“This university is growing its research portfolio. So we’re growing basic research but also developing new opportunities.”

The ILO’s goal, at least since Schuler has been at the helm, has been to form a solid and open relationship between innovators and the business sector.

“We’re developing a collaboration with the industry,” he explained.

The idea is that when the office sells an idea, it lays the groundwork for future collaborations. The ILO prioritizes identifying a company’s research needs, so that as new research and technology comes out of the university, interested industry partners can get a first look and the opportunity to cement a deal.

Of course, this sort of prioritization has some effect on the kinds of work being done at the school.

“Part of what we look at when we license a company is what other things they might like to develop,” said Schuler.

That policy ensures that the U of S is among the top earning universities in Canada in terms of research. Through licensing revenues alone, the ILO, the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization and the Crop Development Centre rake in $7 million per year. That doesn’t account for targeted funding for research and development.

The office also offers support and guidance for researchers to turn their own work into profitable businesses. The iUsask app for the iPhone is one of those projects. Originally developed by the computer science department, the ILO took note of the app’s potential for expansion.

“It very quickly became a technology that you could do business applications across the board with,” said Schuler, citing an Affinity Credit Union app that is currently in development using the iUsask blueprint.

The ILO helps researchers with marketing strategies, patenting and developing a business framework.

“We had a home run” with the circovirus vaccine, said Schuler. To date, the vaccine has been the office’s most profitable technology.

Circovirus is a wasting disease with a high mortality rate that is found in swine. The vaccine developed by the ILO turned out to be extremely effective at combating the disease, prompting one farmer to personally thank Schuler.

“This individual used to raise hogs, and he told me, ‘The thing that hit my business harder than anything was circovirus.’ That vaccine increased the supply of swine by 10 per cent,” Schuler said.

Other ILO projects on the way to market include an extremely flexible chemical test developed by U of S environmental toxicology professor John Giesy, a new tomato strain with potential to be licensed in several international markets and a peptide production method with applications as extensive as cosmetics and lighting.

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Photo: Raisa Pezderic/The Sheaf