Susanne Staer

UTEST graduate CoursePeer announces partnership with the Western GTA Summit

August 13, 2014
Susanne Staer
CoursePeer

CoursePeer’s social collaboration intranet solution successful in amplifying members’ and citizens’ collaboration and engagement

TORONTO, Aug. 13, 2014 — If you run a community-led group to discuss key issues facing over 1.4 million people, how do you help them to do the best collaboration possible? What’s the best way to capture and retain their feedback?

After seven years of successfully holding the Western Greater Toronto Area (GTA) Summit—an annual meeting co-chaired by the mayors and business leaders of Mississauga, Brampton, Caledon and Oakville to discuss issues of significant importance to the Western GTA—the Summit’s task forces decided to further enhance their members’ means of collaboration and knowledge retention by adopting an innovative technology platform.

This announcement was covered in Mississauga News, InsideHalton.com and the Brampton Guardian.

CoursePeer, a University of Toronto and MaRS Innovation start-up providing learning and collaboration solutions for enterprise and government, began a successful implementation at the Summit in January 2014.

“I find the program very intuitive, accommodating and simple to use. There is a bit of a fraternity building among the regular users,” said Peter VanSickle, co-chair of Brampton and president of the Brampton Downtown Development Corporation.

BioCentury features Encycle Therapeutics

Encycle Therapeutics, a MaRS Innovation start-up company from the University of Toronto, was featured in a BioCentury emerging company profile by Michael J. Haas.

The company is currently raising a Series A financing round and employs eight people.

Haas’ profile, “Encycle: Oral Macrocycles,” is available behind a pay wall on the BioCentury website.

Here’s a short excerpt:

Macrocycle therapies can block protein-protein interactions that are undruggable with small molecules; however, oral availability and cell penetration remain key challenges. Encycle Therapeutics Inc.’s chemistry platform generates drug-like macrocycles against validated targets to treat diseases for which oral therapies are needed.

Marketed inhibitors of protein-protein interactions include biologics and other molecules large enough to target the wide, shallow surfaces involved in those interactions, but can only bind extracellular targets. Macrocycles can have sufficient size to block protein-protein interactions yet remain small enough to penetrate cells and block intracellular interactions that biologics and small molecules cannot.

Founded on chemistry from University of Toronto for cyclizing peptides and non-peptidic molecules, Encycle’s macrocycles incorporate three features that are not all found in other companies’ compounds — the absence of sulfur, the presence of intramolecular hydrogen bonding motifs, and an upper limit on size, according to President and CEO Jeffrey Coull.

CBC’s Lang and O’Leary Exchange features Whirlscape’s Minuum keyboard

August 1, 2014
Susanne Staer
Media Coverage

UTEST graduate Whirlscape, makers of the wearable, one-line Minuum keyboard, were recently featured on CBC’s Lang and O’Leary Exchange.

Minuum has also broken the 100 billion pixels mark in screen space saved for its users. Read about it on input, the Minuum blog.

Founder and CEO Will Walmsley was interviewed by Amanda Lang. The footage was also made available on CBC News, and was included in CBC’s weekly summary of the week’s top business stories. Watch the video.

Here’s an excerpt:

Typing on a smartphone is hard enough – imagine doing it on a smartwatch or other wearable device.

A Toronto startup called Minuum is trying to solve that problem with a tiny virtual keyboard.

It’s a downloadable app costing $3.99 that combines a tiny keyboard with a powerful autocorrect that helps you get the message out, no matter how you punch it.
[. . .]
“What really drives us to work on this technology is the future potential it has. The core concept is a keyboard that is just one line of characters, which means if you can imagine typing on a line anywhere, that can be a keyboard,” he said.

MaRS Innovation and St. Michael’s Hospital revitalizing commercialization process

For principal investigators, a key component in taking their research ideas from the bench to the market is knowing what commercialization resources exist and when to use them.

Through the MaRS Innovation’s Technology Transfer & Scouting division (MITTS), manager Sahail Shariff is connecting with principal investigators (PIs) at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto on the front-line to better understand and advance their research.

Of the 180 PIs at the hospital, the majority are clinician scientists who spend a portion of their time caring for patients.

In collaboration with Samar Saneinejad, project director in the Office of the Vice-President, Research at St. Michael’s, Shariff established a research commercialization committee with regular monthly meetings to stay connected to PIs and their research status. He’s also taken note of the time constraints facing clinician scientists, making a point to provide them with more one-on-one time.

MaRS Innovation’s **Sahail Shariff** walks the halls at St. Michael’s Hospital to provide better commercialization resources to its researchers.

Invention disclosures from researchers at St. Michael’s have increased by almost 50 percent since October 2013, when Shariff joined MaRS Innovation. He has played a key role in this success and has also helped the hospital to acquire five commercialization-related funding applications and assisted in 12 interactions between PIs and industry members.

“Walking the halls has been really valuable for investigators who have great ideas and have spent a lot of time on their research and inventions, but don’t have excess time to devote to finding the right way to develop it further,” says Shariff.

The Varsity on UTEST and start-up culture at U of T; Whirlscape launches new Minuum smartwatch demo

“Start-up culture is fast taking hold at U of T, with an array of incubators and accelerators providing student entrepreneurs the resources and mentorships required to get their businesses up and running,” writes Ameya Charnalia of The Varsity, the University of Toronto’s student newspaper.

Charnalia’s article focuses on new student-focused incubators, such as the UTEST program, which provide entrepreneurs cash, access to in-house expertise, working space and mentorship to advice their ideas.

It appeared in the same week that recent UTEST graduate Whirlscape released a new demo video showing their Minuum keyboard technology running on a LG G watch, which is also an Android Wear device. The announcement was covered in TechCrunch, engadget, Pocketnow, Android Police, SlashGear, BGR, Mobile Syrup, 9to5Google, and DroidLife, among other tech blogs.

Xagenic announces second closing of $25.5M Series B financing

TORONTO, July 14, 2014 - Xagenic Inc., a molecular diagnostics company developing the first lab-free molecular diagnostic platform with a 20 minute time-to-result, has announced a second closing of its…

WaveCheck campaign part of new study on crowdfunding medical research

MI’s Fazila Seker also interviewed in National Post article on what prompts medical researchers to consider crowdfunding

The WaveCheck crowdfunding campaign, which raised $53,390 on Indiegogo to support clinical trials for a clinical technique invented by researchers at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and Ryerson University, was included in a new Canadian-led study on the merits of crowdfunding to support cancer and rare diseases.

“Crowdfunding drug development: The state of play in oncology and rare diseases,” was published in Drug Discovery Today‘s June issue.

MaRS Innovation has confirmed with lead author Professor Nick Dragojlovic of the University of British Columbia that WaveCheck was among the campaigns included in the study.

Dr. Rafi Hofstein in Biotechnology Focus: What will it take to regain Canada’s biotechnology leadership?

**Dr. Raphael Hofstein**, president & CEO, MaRS Innovation.

Biotechnology Focus, a compendium of the Canadian life sciences industry, has published a guest column by MaRS Innovation President & CEO, Dr. Raphael Hofstein.

The article explores the role life sciences assets, financing and talented management–the three Ms–must play in revitalizing Canada’s biotechnology sector:

At the close of the 20^th century, Canada was perceived as a key contributor to the success of the global biotech voyage.

You know what happened next: the mechanisms to fund early ventures collapsed together with the collapse of the Canadian venture capital industry Finding suitable investment for early-stage technologies became incredibly challenging. Facing a dearth of opportunity, talented management sailed for other harbors.

It’s satisfying that on the eve of the 2014 BIO Convention, some indicators suggest to me that we are witnessing a rebound. But to accelerate our pace while holding this bearing, Canada needs to address certain strategic elements.

At MaRS Innovation, we call them the three Ms: merchandize, management and money.

Whirlscape releases demo of Minuum keyboard on the Moto 360 circular smartwatch

As part of their ongoing efforts to explore the future of wearable typing, UTEST grad Whirlscape released a demo of the Minuum keyboard working on a Moto 360 smartwatch.

This news builds upon Whirlscape’s activities in the wearables space; the company had previously announced a partnership with Omate Smartwatches that was covered in TechVibes.

This news was covered in the Los Angeles Times, Tech Crunch, Droid Life, Mobile Syrup, Digital Trends, SlashGear, Android Community and GigaOM. See also this article speculating on possibilities for the future of Canadian mobile wearable technology, also by Mobile Syrup.

Why would you need to type on a smartwatch? CEO Will Walmsley addressed the topic on input, the Minuum blog:

Accel-Rx Health Sciences Accelerator to Partner with BDC Venture Capital

MaRS Innovation co-partner in pan-Canadian effort to help create up to 20 leading start-up companies

CEBIO International Conference, San Diego – June 25, 2014: BDC Venture Capital and the Accel-Rx Health Sciences Accelerator (Accel-Rx) announced today a collaboration to provide critical seed funding to new and emerging Canadian health sciences companies.

This announcement was covered in TechVibes, PE HUB and BetaKit.

Together, Accel-Rx, BDC Venture Capital, and CDRD Ventures Inc. (CVI) which will provide the initial management to launch Accel-Rx operations, would focus on maximizing new health sciences company creation, and ensuring start-ups have the resources they need to grow and become a new generation of strong health sciences companies.

Accel-Rx brings together five of Canada’s leading health sciences Centres of Excellence for Commercialization and Research (CECR) to foster cross-Canadian cooperation and directly addressing the health science company creation challenge in Canada. They include:

The accelerator will help make a connection between: promising technologies; experts in drug development, clinical/regulatory affairs, deal-making and finance; entrepreneurs and mentors; and R&D infrastructure and resources.

BioCentury features Encycle Therapeutics

CBC’s Lang and O’Leary Exchange features Whirlscape’s Minuum keyboard

MaRS Innovation and St. Michael’s Hospital revitalizing commercialization process

The Varsity on UTEST and start-up culture at U of T; Whirlscape launches new Minuum smartwatch demo

Xagenic announces second closing of $25.5M Series B financing

WaveCheck campaign part of new study on crowdfunding medical research

MI’s Fazila Seker also interviewed in National Post article on what prompts medical researchers to consider crowdfunding

Dr. Rafi Hofstein in Biotechnology Focus: What will it take to regain Canada’s biotechnology leadership?

Whirlscape releases demo of Minuum keyboard on the Moto 360 circular smartwatch

Accel-Rx Health Sciences Accelerator to Partner with BDC Venture Capital

MaRS Innovation co-partner in pan-Canadian effort to help create up to 20 leading start-up companies

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