Media Coverage

UTEST gets a mention in TechVibes piece on Canada’s growing start-up scene

utestTechVibes gave UTEST, an incubator program jointly run by MaRS Innovation and the University of Toronto, a mention in Laura Leslie‘s “Canada’s Startup Communities Shining Brighter Than the California Sun,” published November 24, 2014, which explores the ecosystem-wide supports in place to encourage entrepreneurship in Canada.

Leslie writes:

Silicon Valley may be the first place that comes to mind when you think of tech startups, but when considering resources, financial support, and a welcoming atmosphere, Canada has been steadily putting itself on the map. The startup communities in cities such as Vancouver, Waterloo, Toronto, Calgary and Montreal have proven to be a sought after home for some of the world’s most notable tech  innovations of the last few years.

In a section on university supports, two of MaRS Innovation’s member institutions, the University of Toronto and Ryerson University, are cited for encouraging technology incubation and entrepreneurship: 

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Holland Bloorview’s Anxiety Meter included in Globe and Mail’s neuroscience feature

Holland Bloorview Kids Rehab“Research labs across Ontario are full of ingenious – and even life-saving – inventions. Unfortunately, many of them never make it to market,” writes Wendy Leung in “These six great neuroscience ideas could make the leap from lab to market” in the November 20, 2014 edition of the Globe and Mail.

MaRS Innovation, which was created to help researchers solve exactly this problem, has a project with Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital that was featured in Leung’s article. Asim Siddiqi founded the anxiety meter app for children with autism.

Siddiqi recently competed in the Ontario Brain Institute’s OBI Entrepreneurs Program, funded in part by the Ontario Centres of Excellence.

Here’s an excerpt:

As much as 80 per cent of children with autism suffer from anxiety, but they often have trouble recognizing and communicating their anxiety states, Siddiqi explains. “Just like we sometimes have difficulty ourselves recognizing when we’re kind of stress-eating and things like that, they have it a little worse than we do.”

Using sensors on the body, Dymaxia’s anxiety meter picks up physiological signals, such as heart rate and skin conductance – or the amount of electric current that passes through sensors on the skin, which increases with stress and body temperature. It then processes those signals and provides feedback of the child’s anxiety state in real time on a mobile phone or tablet.

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BioCentury features Vasomune Therapeutics

Vasomune Therapeutics logoVasomune Therapeutics, a MaRS Innovation start-up company from Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre’s Sunnybrook Research Institute, was featured in a BioCentury emerging company profile by Michael J. Haas.

The company is currently raising a Series A financing round and recently closed a seed investment with Genome Canada and an unnamed industry partner. MaRS Innovation also contributed a third of the investment, bringing the round’s total to $1.5 million.

Haas’ profile, “Vasomune: Lassoing Tie2,” is available behind a paywall on the BioCentury website.

Here’s a short excerpt:

Agonizing Tie2 could restore vascular integrity and limit tissue damage in kidney injury, but bringing together the four copies needed to activate the receptor is a job too big for small molecules or antibodies. Vasomune Therapeutics Inc. has shown its four-armed peptidomimetic, vasculotide, activates Tie2 and restores vascular integrity in [preclinical]  models.

“Many renal diseases are ultimately characterized by a loss in vascular integrity that damages tubules in the kidney,” CEO Parimal Nathwani said. “Our idea is to use vasculotide to fix the problem and restore normal vascular integrity before it gets out of control.”

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Whirlscape develops predictive keyboard for Will.i.am’s wearable Puls cuff

Whirlscape logoWhirlscape, makers of the Minuum keyboard, have developed a small, predictive keyboard for Will.i.am’s wearable Puls cuff. The company is a graduate of the UTEST program‘s first cohort.

The Puls, announced by the musician and entrepreneur on Wednesday, October 15, 2014 at the Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce conference in San Francisco, is expected to be released in time for the 2014 holiday season.

The Puls announcement and Whirlscape’s involvement were covered by Mashable.

Mashable’s Karissa Bell describes how Whirlscape’s keyboard integrates with the Puls:

Puls uses a small predictive keyboard that fits in the very bottom section of the screen. The keyboard was developed by Minuum, the Y Combinator-backed company that has also developed keyboards for Android Wear and Google Glass.

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Toronto Star features Minuum keyboard’s successful iPhone product launch

Whirlscape founders William Walmsley (left), Severin Smith and Xavier Snelgrove. The company is a graduate of the UTEST program's first cohort.
Whirlscape founders Will Walmsley (left), Severin Smith and Xavier Snelgrove. The company is a graduate of the UTEST program’s first cohort.

UTEST graduate Whirlscape was featured in Raju Mudhar’s Toronto Star article, “Toronto’s Whirlscape debuts tiny Minuum keyboard on iPhone,” which examines the company’s successful launch of their innovative, one-line keyboard for Apple’s iOS 8.

The UTEST program, co-directed by MaRS Innovation and the University of Toronto’s Innovations & Partnerships Office, gives nascent software companies start-up funding, office space, mentoring and business strategy support. Whirlscape was among the program’s first cohort.

The article was published October 6, 2014. Here’s an excerpt:

An Indiegogo success 18 months ago, the company created a tiny keyboard called Minuum for Android devices. Now, iOS and the vast Apple market beckoned. It required new hires, a couple months of round-the-clock development, and a practical rebuilding of their product from scratch so it could be ready to launch with iOS 8. All the work paid off: in the first two weeks of availability, they have sold more than 30,000 apps to the new iPhone audience.

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Kaypok, MI’s director of intellectual property quoted in the Financial Post

Article focuses on importance of intellectual property protection for small businesses

StacyIvanchuck8791
Dr. Stacey Ivanchuk, director of intellectual property for MaRS Innovation.

Dr. Stacey Ivanchuk, MaRS Innovation’s director of intellectual property, was quoted in Denise Deveau’s article, “Intellectual property protection is a game small businesses can’t afford to lose,” for the Financial Post on September 26, 2014 regarding the importance of protecting intellectual property for small businesses.

Here’s an excerpt:

Stacey Ivanchuk, director of intellectual property for MaRS Innovation in Toronto, says that protecting a startup’s technology is important especially from an investor’s perspective.

“One of the first questions investors will ask a company is, what is your IP position? To them it’s something they can talk about as an asset and shows that you are distinguishing yourself,” [Dr.] Ivanchuk said.

Ivanchuk said businesses run the gamut from doing nothing to protect their ideas to filing for patents on every idea that comes out of a brainstorming session. “Too early is not good because it can be a waste of money if the proof you expected down the road doesn’t happen,” she said. “But if you wait too long someone might beat you to the punch.”

Kaypok logoThe article also quotes Atul Asthana, CEO of Kaypok, a tech start-up in the text analytics space spun out from York University in partnership with MaRS Innovation:

In the high tech world especially, it’s not always easy to determine whether something should be protected or not, according to Mr. Asthana. “You have to be able to enforce it. If you do it poorly, you will be giving your ideas away and spending a whole bunch of money. It can become a real cat and mouse game sometimes,” he said.

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Tech Transfer Central features MaRS Innovation’s partnership with St. Michael’s Hospital

St. Michael's Hospital LogoTech Transfer Tactics, the monthly newsletter for Tech Transfer Central.com, has published a feature highlighting MaRS Innovation’s Technology Transfer & Scouting (MITTS) services to St. Michael’s Hospital.

The interview explores the increase in disclosures and commercial activity achieved after MaRS Innovation began offering technology transfer services to the hospital, and was triggered by a July profile published on MaRS Innovation’s website describing the collaborative working relationship between the two organizations.

The interview includes conversations with Sahail Shariff, commercialization manager in the MITTS division, and Samar Saneinejad, director of strategic projects in the Office of the Vice President of Research at St. Michael’s, explores the success

Here’s an excerpt:

MaRS Innovation, a member institution of the Networks of Centres of Excellence of Canada, has dramatically increased invention disclosures at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto by providing hospital researchers with an embedded technology transfer expert who offers commercialization guidance and access to other vital tech transfer resources.

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BioDiaspora founder appears on CBC’s “The National” to discuss the Ebola crisis

Dr. Kamran Khan, founder of BioDiaspora, appeared on CBC’s “The National” on September 23, 2014, as part of a health panel examining the current state of the Ebola outbreak in west Africa.

CBC anchor Peter Mansbridge hosted the discussion.

Dr. Kamran Khan, an infectious disease clinician-scientist at St. Michael's Hospital and founder of BioDiaspora, on CBC's "The National."
Dr. Kamran Khan, an infectious disease clinician at St. Michael’s Hospital and founder of BioDiaspora, on CBC’s “The National.”

Watch the clip on CBC’s website.

BioDiaspora, spun off from St. Michael’s Hospital in partnership with MaRS Innovation, developed an easy-to-access, web-based solution that generates and communicates customized, actionable intelligence about global infectious disease threats in real-time.

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Xagenic’s Shana Kelley named to Globe and Mail’s Top 12 Canadian Innovators

Xagenic 2014 logoDr. Shana Kelley, co-founder of Xagenic Inc. and a professor of biochemistry at the University of Toronto, has been named to the Globe and Mail’s Top 12 Canadian Innovators list.

The contest solicited nominations from across Canada that were assessed by a panel of judges. According to the Globe, the contest “recognizes talented Canadians who not only have great ideas, but also turn them into reality.”

Here’s an excerpt:

Another innovator who is taking on the traditional way of doing things is Ms. Kelley, a winner in the Health category. Ms. Kelley, a University of Toronto professor and founder of Xagenic, developed a lab-free molecular diagnostic platform that can test for cancer and infectious diseases in the field, with results that are available in 20 minutes.

It’s a product, says Mr. [Dan] Debow, [senior vice-president of emerging technologies at Salesforce] that is in line with a bigger trend that’s happening in health care: the decentralization and democratization of diagnostics.

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