Overview of the Life Sciences and Agri-Food Innovation Fund (LAIF-Ontario)

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The growth and prosperity of Ontario's Agricultural, Food and related Life Science sectors depends on continuous innovation. In the road from the laboratory to the market place, a particularly difficult section is the transition from a new technology to a product able to attract financing for its commercial development. This has been recognized as the "pre-commercialization gap".

The objective of the Life Sciences and Agri-food Innovation Fund (LAIF-Ontario) is to promote and accelerate the pre-commercialization development of new products and services in the Agri-food and related Life Science sectors in Ontario. LAIF-Ontario will provide funding for projects that clarify or enhance the commercial value of existing intellectual property and make it more attractive to potential investors.

Applications are sought from Ontario universities, colleges, and research institutions with demonstrated capability to perform quality research in their area of investigation. All proposals must clearly demonstrate benefits for the province of Ontario.

A call for proposals will be issued periodically on the OMAFRA website providing eligibility requirements, funding criteria and application procedures.

Eligible areas that will be considered for funding include:

• Research that clearly addresses a significant, identified industry need;
  
• Projects may include demonstration of proof of concept, prototype development, scale up of technology for demonstration purposes, beta testing of technologies;
  
• Ideas where earlier academic research has shown the potential for commercial application but where a small amount of funding is needed to better define the intellectual property and enhance the ability to realistically attract wider interest and funding;
  
• Ideas that have been disclosed to the research institution but have yet to be licensed or otherwise encumbered by a third party.

A portion of LAIF-Ontario awards may be directed to commercialization related activities including market research, evaluation and analysis of technology application opportunities, competitive intelligence gathering, business planning, or preparation of presentations for potential investors. Such activities will move the research forward in a clearly outlined commercialization plan.

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