QB3, Canada find common ground with entrepreneurs

From the San Francisco Business Times,

QB3 Director Reg Kelly,
Consul General of Canada in San Francisco Cassie Doyle,
Canadian Ambassador Gary Doer, and SF Mayor Edwin Lee
Photo: Chris Waddling

QB3 took an early step Tuesday toward becoming — as director Regis Kelly calls it — “a United Nations of entrepreneurship.”

Canadian Ambassador to the United States Gary Doer and San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee cut a ceremonial ribbon opening the Canadian Technology Accelerator at Genentech Hall on the Mission Bay campus of the University of California, San Francisco.
QB3, a cooperative of scientists at UCSF, UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz, oversees the incubator space rented by four small Canadian companies.

OK, so maybe it isn’t on a par with another big international accord signed in San Francisco 67 years ago, but Kelly and Douglas Crawford, QB3’s associate director, say the Canadian venture could be the first of several deals with other countries. Just recently, Crawford received an email from someone in Chile who expressed interest in working more closely with QB3.

QB3 already has a longstanding relationship with Malaysia.

And now there’s one with the folks in the Great White North.

The QB3 accelerator actually is the Canadians’ fourth incubator in the Bay Area — information and communications technology hub in Sunnyvale, cleantech space in San Jose and gaming/digital media at RocketSpace south of Market. It's part of a plan, Doer said, to move from research papers to patents to products.

The four initial Canadian companies at the QB3 incubator, each staying for about six months, are:

• Aquinox Pharmaceuticals of Richmond, B.C., which is working in inflammatory disease and cancer;
• BioMark Technologies Inc., a Vancouver, B.C., medical diagnostics company developing a non-invasive screening test for cancer;
• Clinisys EMR Inc., which is offering software and services to the health care industry; and
• Precision NanoSystems Inc., which has developed microfluidic devices to make next-generation lipid nanoparticles.

There already is one connection between one of the companies and UCSF: Aquinox Chief Medical Officer Dr. David Chernoff is a UCSF graduate who worked with Chiron co-founder Bill Rutter.
Mayor Lee noted that San Francisco hosts more than 70 consul-general offices, 20 international trade offices and has 18 sister city arrangements worldwide.

“This research reflects the international flavor of the city’s efforts,” Lee said.