His was no idle dream.

The polymers expert has come up with a non-stick gum, which may well become an early beneficiary of the growing number of commercial spin-offs at British universities.

The professor's inspiration for non-stick chewing gum came on a trip to academic conferences in the United States - not in a conference hall, but on American sidewalks, where he noticed wads of hardened chewing gum.

'You think perhaps it is pigeon poo,' he recalled.

'I came home and, as things go round, I tried to make a polymer to get as low an adhesive quality as possible.'

Eventually, his team came up with a formulation of polymers that would not stick. To determine whether it came off sidewalks and other surfaces, they pitted it against standard chewing gums on main streets across western England.

While the other gums stuck, Prof Cosgrove's rinsed off with rainwater - 'though some surfaces are better than others', he said.

If Prof Cosgrove had been at an American university instead of Bristol University, he might have been able to receive start-up capital for such a potentially commercially viable invention from a venture capitalist, private industry or perhaps even the government.

But for most of his career, there was no tradition in England of universities acting as incubators for purely commercial products.

'The UK had a good track record in scientific research, but it could not replicate that in turning it into value,' said Mr Magnus Goodlad, chief operating officer of the IP Group, a London-based venture capital group.

That may finally be changing. The number of commercial spin-offs at British universities has soared since former British prime minister Tony Blair established a so-called university challenge fund in 1999 to enable schools to finance the commercialisation of their research results.

In 2005 and 2006, there were 669 projects in total, compared with 592 in 2003 and 2004, according to the government Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills.

Venture capital is beginning to pour into these start-ups, and one of the early beneficiaries, if it wins approval from European and American regulators, could be Prof Cosgrove's Revolymer.

When Bristol University staged an enterprise competition in the summer of 2005 to showcase research at the school, his non-sticky chewing gum won. Having raised seed money from the university to get started, he raised US$1.5 million (S$2.2 million) in a first round of fund-raising from several venture capital funds.

Last February, a group of venture capital funds led by Swarraton Partners pumped another US$4 million into Revolymer.

Such sums are only a fraction of the money swirling around American universities, but in Britain, their impact is starting to be felt, and the IP Group is betting the entrepreneurial university trend will grow.

City governments in Britain estimate they spend US$305 million a year cleaning up chewing gum. At the same time, sales are soaring.

'There has to be a market. There is a real benefit to it,' said Mr Stephen Brooke of Swarraton, a venture capital fund investing in Revolymer. Next year, Revolymer plans to begin its own product and brand - Clean Gum, of course.

NEW YORK TIMES