If you work in the B.C. tech community, there’s a solid chance you’ve heard the name VoxCell BioInnovation because the company is doing truly exciting work. VoxCell is a biotech startup focused on tissue engineering and 3D bioprinting—it almost sounds like science fiction, but VoxCell is making it a reality.
The Victoria-based company is creating human-like cancer tissue models for the pharmaceutical industry to use as a drug screening platform. That’s to say, pharma companies will be able to use VoxCell’s model to test drugs and eliminate which ones don’t work more quickly. Currently, getting a drug on the market takes on average 15 years, so knowing where researchers and developers should be focusing could have an enormous impact.
“We provide pharmaceutical companies with an in-house drug screening service using our advanced tissue models, allowing us to assess drug efficacy through the blood vessels in our models and help eliminate ineffective candidates early in the development process,” said Asees Kaur, Business Development & Strategy Specialist, VoxCell BioInnovation.
VoxCell’s solution is made up of three components, and IP is essential to almost all of them:
- High-resolution bioprinter with 600-times higher resolution than the standard bioprinter
- Top-secret (too secret even for IP protection!) vascularization software that enables printing of a human-like blood vessel network within VoxCell’s tissue models—together, the printer and software work to print a model with life-size human capillaries
- Universal BioinkTM that mimics the mechanical and chemical properties of human cancerous tissues
For VoxCell, having an appropriate and strong IP portfolio has been invaluable. Read on to hear more about the direct impact that AccelerateIP has had on VoxCell’s future.
How much experience did you have with IP before coming to the Accelerate IP program?
We went through Stream 3 with AccelerateIP, the funding stage, so we’d had some experience already. Prior to the program, we had one provisional patent and a second was in the process of being filed—that was just for our Universal BioinkTM. We hadn’t even talked about patents for the printer.
And how did you actually hear about the program?
We’ve been a part of the New Ventures BC community for a long time and heard about the program through their coordinators.
I had just started on the business side of the company—I’m a mechanical engineer by trade. Our CEO and founder, Dr. Karolina Valente, and I discussed it together, and we both agreed that we should apply and give it a shot. The more we looked at the program, the more we realized how much of an impact it could have on our business.
We had planned on applying for Stream 2, but someone at New Ventures BC suggested that we might be eligible for Stream 3, and in the end that’s what we did.
Can you tell us about the impact of the program on Voxcell’s business?
Biotech innovation is very capital intensive. There’s a lot of money that needs to go into experiments and testing, as well as the labour and equipment behind all of that. So truth be told, we’d never had very much capital to put towards IP.
The AccelerateIP program really gave us an opportunity to work closely with our patent lawyer, Matthew Leaper, to build a strong IP portfolio. It helped us accelerate our IP approach, probably from years to a matter of months. We went from having one and a half patents to having five provisional patents in total.
The AccelerateIP program helped us generate interest, which ultimately played a key role in closing our seed round—a significant milestone for our company. It provided the credibility we needed to attract investors.
And if you hadn’t taken part in the program, where do you think your team would be now?
We wouldn’t have been able to finance the patents on our hardware, so we’d probably just be starting to fill those out now.
It would have been significantly harder to generate interest to close this round of fundraising, and it probably would’ve been delayed until September or October.
And thanks to that funding, we’ve been able to hire more team members to keep driving the company forward.
It’s funny, because it really all goes hand-in-hand. I can draw a direct line between AccelerateIP and having the funds to add more people to our team. That has had a significant impact on the growth of our company.
If you were talking to someone thinking about taking part in the AccelerateIP program, what would you tell them?
I would tell them that they can’t lose with this program. It’s a win-win.
Whether your primary need is funding towards IP or just understanding the importance of IP and working with a service provider, this is a great fit.
I think a lot of founders and people in business generally aren’t really aware of the impact that a strong IP portfolio can have. I’ve gone to so many pitches and meetings where the first question an investor asks is how many patents we have.
And really, your corporate strategy is the strategy of growing and scaling your business as it aligns with your IP strategy. It goes back and forth, and they contribute to one another.
I think the question is actually, why wouldn’t you take part in this program?
