Bioscience bosses break bread with Hungary; Proficiency in research, commercialization deficiency make country ripe for partnership
BYLINE: CHUCK SODER
Northeast Ohio's bioscience community is expanding its circle of overseas friends.
Several of its leaders three weeks ago visited Hungary to start a relationship that could give companies from both regions access to new markets and could lead to overseas collaborations among researchers and institutions.
The relationship is in its early stages, but within five years it could resemble Northeast Ohio's main trans-Atlantic friendship, said Baiju Shah, president of BioEnterprise Corp., a nonprofit that assists health care companies in the region.
``It has the potential to be our new Israel,'' Mr. Shah said.
Hungary, like Israel, does a lot of bioscience research because that was one of its focuses while it was part of a planned communist economy before the fall of the Soviet empire in 1990.
The country still needs help commercializing the research, however, so officials from both Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Clinic plan to help Hungarian institutions learn to transfer their technologies to the marketplace.
Mr. Shah said he and others also would lend the institutions advice on how to grow the county's small number of seed and venture capital funds.
Israel didn't need help with technology commercialization or starting investment funds, but it wanted access to markets in the United States.
Mr. Shah would like to see the region lay down the welcome mat for Hungarian bioscience companies as it has for Israeli businesses. There are already more than 20 health care companies in Northeast Ohio that have connections to Israel, such as medical training and simulation company Simbionix Ltd.
Likewise, companies and institutions in Hungary could help Northeast Ohio bioscience companies sell products throughout the entire European Union because it is an EU member, unlike Israel.
Businesses that want approval to sell products within the EU must test them in a country belonging to the union. Hungary has the facilities and inexpensive skilled labor that can help companies run those tests, Mr. Shah said.
A personal tie
The idea for the scouting mission was proposed by Jeannette Grasselli Brown of the nonprofit Cleveland Hungarian Development Panel. Ms. Brown, who originally is from Hungary, has collaborated with the country's scientists for years. She made phone calls to her contacts to get the relationship started, and Jennifer Thomas of the Cleveland Foundation organized the trip.
The Cleveland Hungarian Development Panel for 15 years has sponsored student exchanges and helped connect business people between the two countries, but panel president Carolyn Balogh admitted that the relationship is a bit lopsided.
``We felt it was time to get a real exchange going - not just a one-way exchange,'' Ms. Balogh said.
The panel plans to help Hungarians who might move to the region find housing, mentorship and other assistance.
The group exists in the first place because Cleveland has been home to a large number of Hungarians since 1956, when many fled their homeland following a brutal Soviet response to the Hungarian revolution.
Mr. Shah said many of the Hungarians he spoke with on the trip had friends and family in Northeast Ohio, and some had studied or worked here at some point.
``You don't have to explain where it is,'' Mr. Shah said. ``They've all been here.''
The BMW test
Chris Coburn, executive director of CCF Innovations, the tech commercialization arm of the Cleveland Clinic, said he's interested in cardiovascular technology coming out of Hungary, mainly because the Clinic is building a $60 million Global Cardiovascular Innovation Center to develop ways to prevent, diagnose and treat heart disease.
Mr. Coburn said he expects Hungary's seed and venture capital base to grow because its residents have money.
``There's no shortage of expensive European cars on the streets of Budapest,'' he said. ``Someone's paying for those BMWs.''
Mark Coticchia, vice president of research and technology at Case, agreed that Hungary has great technology. And its commercialization efforts are improving, he said, noting the country in 2004 passed laws that allow federally financed institutions to own and commercialize intellectual property.