Europe makes poor showing in bio tech transfer survey

Image courtesy LBL

It may seem unlikely to some, but this institution is ranked top of the world for the impact of its biotechnology research publications in a global analysis of university biotechnology transfer and commercialisation published this week by the US economics think tank the Milken Institute.

However, this does not tell the whole story: when the total number of publications and an activity measurement are factored in to produce an overall biotech publication ranking US universities are overwhelmingly dominant. They hold eight of the top ten positions and 33 of the top fifty.

In 40th position overall in the publcations table, the University of Wales is surpassed by its European counterparts the universities of London (3rd), Cambridge at 15th, Oxford 17th, Paris 23rd, the Karolinska Institute 35th and Geneva 39th. Others European universities to make the top fifty are Basel at 43rd, Dundee 46th, Edinburgh 48th, Strasbourg 49th and Zurich 50th, as the table shows.

Similarly, Europe is classed as an also ran in biotech patenting, in a technology transfer and commercialisation index, and in licenses granted and licensing income. The one bright spot is that European universities are the source of more start-ups that their US or Canadian peers.

The role of professionals

The study sets out to examine the process of innovation from knowledge creation to technology transfer and early stage commercialisation. A key focus in it is the role played by technology transfer professionals.

The researchers use three measures to compare university biotech innovation pipelines: publication rankings, patenting activity and technology transfer outcomes. Although acknowledging that the raw data are very lumpy, they use them to develop indexes that make it possible to systematically compare each university’s international standing.

The survey covers 492 universities, of which 222 are in Europe (45 per cent), 161 in the US (33 per cent), 44 in Japan, 23 in Canada, 9 in Australia, 5 in China and 17 in the rest of Asia.

In a similar fashion to the publication index, the researchers used four indicators to create the patenting index. Here, Europe’s overall standing is even lower, with only the University of London at 10th, the University of Oxford at 24th, Queen’s University Belfast at 31st and University Louis Pasteur at 47th making the top fifty.

Worse still, there are no European universities in the ranking of overall commercialisation performance.

Paucity of data

In part this may be explained by the paucity of data the researchers had at their disposal. The principal source of data on technology transfer is the Association of University Technology Managers of US and Canadian institutions, which has been published since 1991.

Elsewhere the sources are much thinner. In Europe the main reference was a survey published in June this year by the Association of European Science and Technology Transfer Professionals, which provides data on 16 universities and seven government or non profit research institutes only. (See the commercialisation table here.)

As the researchers note, “We tried to include the maximum number of universities. However, we were limited by the paucity of comparable global data. Additional transparency should be a top priority, especially since much research funding comes from public sources.”

European universities surpass their US and Canadian peers in just one category: the number of start-ups, with European universities providing the base for three times as many companies relative to research expenditure.

Even this is not unalloyed. As the study notes, “This reflects an emphasis on start-up activity as a public policy priority …[it] says nothing about survival rates and whether start ups become publicly traded firms with high levels of employment.”

And, in another turn of the screw, the study reveals that the University of Wales’ top ranking in publications impact is a statistical outlier saying, “This remarkable performance stems from its high impact within the subfield of microbiology, where its research efforts are focussed.”