To the editor

The fascinating article “European exploitation of biotechnology—do government policies help?” (Nat. Biotechnol. 18, 605–608, 2000) had one noteworthy omission. This is the “Biotechnology Exploitation Platform” (BEP) program, a successful scheme funded specifically by the UK Department of Trade and Industry to improve the protection and commercial exploitation of biotechnology arising from UK academic research.

The BEP program was designed to overcome two perceived obstacles to successful exploitation of academic research in the biosciences. To enhance the knowledge and expertise of university technology transfer offices in the modern biosciences, funding is provided to allow the recruitment of additional staff with qualifications and expertise in some area of the biosciences and (hopefully) some experience of industry or technology transfer; and to overcome the suboptimal nature of much technology arising from individual academic institutions or departments, the program requires the formation of consortia of universities who will work together to package and exploit their combined technology.

The program started in 1997 with a pilot scheme that made a total of £2.45m of funding available. Awards were competitive, and to a maximum of £250k over three or four years. Private matched funding had to be provided by the participants. Awards to eight consortia were made during the pilot scheme. Some of these consortia were regionally based, and others focused their activities on specific areas of bioscience, for example, cancer.

Bearing in mind the fact that the program has been running over only a short time scale in technology transfer terms, it has been very successful in stimulating the protection and exploitation of intellectual property. At the last count six months ago, 80 patent applications had been filed, 25 spinout companies formed, 20 licenses signed, and significant revenue from industrial research and development contracts secured (all numbers approximate).

The success of the pilot program led to the announcement of a full BEP program in August 1999 with a total of £6.5m funding available. The first six successful bids under the new scheme will be announced shortly.