A Smart way to sell our biotech sector

'Matchmaker' makes bright ideas pay

A very smart Hamilton man is selling - or at the very least, licensing -- southwestern Ontario's best-kept scientific secrets to the world's biggest and brightest biotech firms.

Sheldon Smart is the go-between guy who puts discoveries and innovations created at McMaster University and nine other area research labs into the hands of companies with pockets deep enough to turn ideas into products.

Smart represents a consortium of companies called C4, which stands for Co-ordinate Co-operate Collaborate and Commercialize, founded in part by McMaster.

For most of the year, he hangs his C4 open-for-business sign at a storefront on the former Camco site, soon to be home to fledgling biotech and research firms at what is now McMaster Innovation Park.

This week, however, C4 hangs its sign on an island of red carpet under the Canada Pavilion umbrella at BIO 2008 - the world's largest assembly of biotech firms from around the world.

"We try to figure out what they're interested in and match them with what we have, and the breadth of our research is huge," Smart explained. "Everybody here has a very specific need, so our challenge is to find out what they're interested in."

Read the complete story at: http://www.thespec.com/article/388937