The essence of a good partnership is mutual benefit. Nowhere
is this truer than in the relationships between the NCE program
networks and their receptor industrial partners.
"This is a two-way street," said Dr. Eric
Atkinson, Director of Corporate Development at Vancouver-based
firm, StemCell Technologies. His company works in partnership
with the Stem Cell Network and the benefits flow back and
forth: "A lot of the network's scientists use our products
already. But sometimes, if they are doing cutting edge research,
they need products that we don't have yet. They are developing
their own tools that could be ‘productized' by us to
help their colleagues elsewhere do similar experiments. We
help them move forward with the tools we already have and
they help us develop new tools for the future."
As the chart below indicates, cash and in-kind contributions
by industry alone were over $28 million in 2004-2005,
significantly more than one-third of the NCE program's
annual budget of $77.4 million.
* Other partners include hospitals, research institutes,
and not-for-profit organizations.
