The Province of Québec rolled out a new “biopharmaceutical strategy” Thursday that they say aims to provide “development support for biotech and biopharmaceutical firms.”
The Roll-Out:
The announcement was beautifully coordinated with the relevant constituencies, as illustrated by the near-immediate chorus of support:
- Génome Québec said thank-you for the $30 million, we’ll get right to work.
- Merck Frosst Canada liked pretty much everything, particularly the boost for basic research and the initiatives to improve patient access to medicines.
- Sanofi-aventis also applauds the patient access initiatives, but focuses on the efforts in the new strategy to open lines of communication among government, pharmas, biotechs and academics.
- Rx&D and Pfizer chimed in along similar lines.
The Big News:
BIOQuébec can’t help bragging a little that “the Minister has retained some of the recommendations made by BIOQuébec.” The pride is justified, though. Biotech advocates have been asking — since before the last federal budget — for a way to monetize the refundable tax credits they’ve been banking. As part of the new strategy, BIOQuébec says the government will allow
“biotechnology companies within the human health industry [to] benefit from a short term support measure thanks to the quarterly financing of their tax credits.”
Interestingly, BIOQuébec appears to have some information about that initiative that is missing from the government publications (nope, not even in the French version), which only say it aims to “implement new methods of funding R&D tax credits adapted to the specific needs of health-related biotechnology firms.”
Money Talks:
On the financial front, the initiative also highlights a 10-year tax holiday (sparse on details, but expect it to look a lot like the OTEC in Ontario) and Teralys Capital.
Finally, the strategy notes “three specialized start-up funds aimed at the technology sectors” with $41 million each that will be supported by “private-sector partners.” Is the Pfizer-FRSQ Innovation Fund one of these? Wednesday, that fund announced grants totalling $2.3 million for genomics studies of inflammatory bowel disease and metastatic colorectal cancer.
My Bottom Line:
This looks like a broad set of initiatives that aims to improve everything from student recruitment through R&D and commercialization to purchasing and reimbursement decisions. I particularly can’t wait to see what the SR&ED monetization program looks like. Hopefully we’ll learn in time to work with other governments *cough*Ontario*cough* as they start 2010 budget processes.
