Intellectual property (IP) waits for no one. Once your idea is out there, the clock starts to get a patent in place and protect your finding, invention or research. For growing businesses that rely on IP, there’s a whole other type of time pressure to contend with – investments, deadlines and proposal dates.

For Mesosil, a biotech company that develops silica-based bioactive fillers for dental restoratives (fillings) and medical devices to enhance efficacy and prevent infection and failure, it was this time crunch and deadline pressure that brought them and ElevateIP together.

Cameron Stewart, Founder and CEO, shared how timing was everything with IP.

Entering the world of dentistry

When you think about IP, dentistry probably isn’t the first industry that comes to mind. When you think of biomedical engineering, it probably doesn’t come to mind either. Stewart used to be in the same boat.

“I started my PhD at the University of Toronto in 2013, mostly focusing on drug delivery technologies, but I was co-supervised by a professor in the faculty of dentistry, ” he said. “I wasn't particularly interested or involved in dentistry at the time.”

Very quickly, Stewart realized the potential and value of dental biomedical research.

“We were looking at ways to have silica come together and co-assemble with antimicrobials to use in fillings. The biodegradation of dental materials by bacteria causes something called secondary caries, which is when you get a cavity next to any dental treatment,” he said. “The more I worked in the dental side, the more I realized that there's a lack of quality research being done in this space. We could make a real difference in this niche area.”

Turning PhD research into a business

With his interest in dentistry and biomedical research solidified, Stewart felt another pull — one towards entrepreneurship.

With previous experience working at startups, he wanted to find a way to take his research and build his own business.

“Through U of T, we were able to develop our first patent. The company would grow out of that initial patent. After a few years, we were at a phase where we wanted to expand our patent portfolio.” Stewart said.

From that point on, he began to understand just how important patents and IP would be for the future of his company. The ElevateIP program enabled Mesosil to independently pursue further freedom to operate in their space without having to dilute IP ownership.

“That's one of the first questions you get with any kind of investor in the life sciences space – “Is it patented?”” he explained. “We were very new at this when we started and the initial patent we went for with U of T tried to be very all-encompassing early on. In order to grow, we needed to niche down, secure more patents and protect those off-shoot technologies we have been creating.”

Meeting urgency with urgency

As Mesosil grew and began to invest more into R&D, the team needed to begin filing patents quickly, without burning through their funding.

“In the last 18 months we've really grown the team quite a bit, especially on the R&D side of things. We knew that there were going to be three or four [patent] filings coming up,” Stewart said. “At the same time, we had real-time pressures upon us. We had some external contracts approaching and we needed to delineate what our IP was and protect it as much as possible before signing.”

Filing patents and dealing with IP legality is both expensive and time-consuming.

“I've been through it once before. It’s an incredible lift and the pressure was there,” Stewart said.

ElevateIP: Supporting founders in IP protection and patent filings

Originally, Stewart and Mesosil were working with a patent agent, who knew about ElevateIP and suggested the program as an option to consider.

“Once we started looking into it, we realized how much support – both monetary and otherwise – was available. There’s a lot of government support to develop IP in Ontario, and it was exactly what we were trying to do,” Stewart said. “Having the potential to offset a bunch of these costs would empower us to move fast without needing to wait for future financing. With those time pressures, that was a huge relief.”

With ElevateIP, you get an IP partner who truly cares.

“I found Communitech to be quite hands-on and interested throughout the process,” he said. “They wanted to know about the technology, our company, what our current challenges were and how they could help. It was helpful to use their experience and get their input on how to utilize the support funding available, as opposed to assuming we had already made the right choices of what to do.”

Mesosil recommends ElevateIP

“It’s been so smooth. We’ve only been working with ElevateIP for three months or so, during which we’ve absolutely been under a timeline crunch for the support. Everyone had to complete all their work in a really tight time span,” Stewart said. “Thankfully our patent agent and ElevateIP were able to work quickly. They matched the speed we needed and it worked out so well.”

“We plan on continuing to use ElevateIP for as long as we can,” Stewart said. “If you are newer and earlier in the IP development process, having that kind of opinion on your IP strategy is very helpful. ElevateIP is an incredible program and I’d recommend it to other IP-focussed companies, absolutely.”