Portfolio

BlueDot, formerly BioDiaspora Inc., secures Series A with Horizons Ventures

December 2, 2014
Susanne Staer
BlueDot

Toronto-based commercial arm of BioDiaspora research program tracks global spread of infectious diseases in real-time; fourth MI company to reach Series A

TORONTO (Dec. 2, 2014) — BlueDot, a Toronto-based social benefit corporation founded by Dr. Kamran Khan, an infectious disease physician and scientist, tracks and predicts the global spread of infectious diseases.

Spun off from St. Michael’s Hospital in partnership with MaRS Innovation (and formerly known as BioDiaspora Inc.), BlueDot, has secured a Series A venture capital funding from Horizons Ventures. Funded by Sir Li Ka-shing, Horizons invests in what they call “game-changing disruptive tech,” and has a proven track record in making early-stage investments (i.e., Facebook, Skype, Waze, Siri and Spotify).

TechVibes and MedCity News covered BlueDot’s Series A announcement, as did PE Hub and BetaKit. Read the BlueDot press release here.

The company is the fourth in MaRS Innovation’s portfolio to reach Series A. MaRS Innovation provided $400,000 in seed funding and worked with BlueDot and St. Michael’s to incorporate the company and develop its initial business strategy, intellectual property protection strategy and go-to-market plan. The Ontario Centres of Excellence also provided $140,000 in commercialization grants that helped BlueDot get off the ground.

BlueDot is the commercial arm of Dr. Khan’s academic research program called BioDiaspora, which was developed at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael’s. BioDiaspora models how infectious diseases can spread and impact populations globally by analyzing big data such as the annual movements of more than 3 billion travelers on commercial flights; human, animal and insect population data; climate data from satellites; and news reports of disease outbreaks. The program was inspired by the Toronto’s SARS crisis in 2003 and its capabilities scientifically validated in prestigious academic journals such as the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine.

Visualization of the final destinations of travellers departing countries in West Africa with widespread and intense Ebola virus transmission — Visualization of the final destinations of travelers departing countries in West Africa with widespread and intense Ebola virus transmission. Source: http://bluedot.global/work

During its development, BlueDot’s platform technology was used by numerous international agencies, including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and the Public Health Agency of Canada to evaluate emerging infectious disease threats, including those during global mass gatherings such as the Olympics and the hajj.

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

November 28, 2014
Susanne Staer
Media Coverage

TechVibes 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:

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

November 20, 2014
Susanne Staer
Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital

“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.

UTEST grad TrendMD makes Canadian national media splash

November 11, 2014
Susanne Staer
Media Coverage

TrendMD, a medical publishing company that helps doctors, researchers, and professionals in STEM-related fields to find the most relevant content amid an unending sea of daily publications, was recently featured…

Encycle Therapeutics developing lead molecule to tackle inflammatory bowel disease

Company’s collaborative partnership with IRICoR, Université de Montréal and MaRS Innovation, funded by Merck Canada, to advance macrocycle drug

Encycle IRICoR release — Encycle Therapeutics Inc., a biotechnology start-up founded by the University of Toronto in partnership with MaRS Innovation, is developing its lead orally-bioavailable macrocycle drug to target integrin a4b7, which is involved in the inflammatory process in a number of diseases, most notably for inflammatory bowel disease.

TORONTO and MONTREAL, Nov. 10, 2014 — Encycle Therapeutics Inc., a biotechnology start-up founded by Dr. Andrei Yudin of the University of Toronto in partnership with MaRS Innovation, is developing its lead orally-bioavailable macrocycle drug to target integrin a₄b₇, which is involved in the inflammatory process in a number of diseases, most notably for inflammatory bowel disease.

This announcement was covered in SciBX, Drug Discovery & Development, PBR, Yonge Street Media, Biotechnology Focus, and Bioworld Today (no public link available).

Read this release in French.

To support and advance this molecule, Encycle Therapeutics is collaboratively partnering with the Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer — Commercialization of Research (IRICoR), the Université de Montréal (UdeM) and MaRS Innovation. The partnership builds on the Merck Canada Inc. $4 million public-private funding partnership, announced at BIO in April 2013, to develop collaborative research projects with three Canadian academic commercialization centres, including MaRS Innovation and IRICoR.

“We are pleased to help support this important research collaboration that is made possible through the Quebec-Ontario corridor project in an emerging technology area. IRICoR, MaRS Innovation and Encycle have clearly leveraged their respective strengths to accelerate the discovery of novel therapeutics. As a research-focused company committed to early stage private-public partnering, we believe that such interactions will continue to fuel innovation in the life science sector in Canada,” said Mr. Chirfi Guindo, president and managing director, Merck Canada Inc.

The agreement brings a significant investment to fund Encycle Therapeutics’ development work, giving IRICoR an equity position and expanding MaRS Innovation’s equity stake. Cumulatively, Encycle Therapeutics has secured more than $2.5 million to advance its drug development platform.

AvidBiologics and National Research Council of Canada to collaborate on antibody-drug conjugates

Toronto-based AvidBiologics Inc., a leading Canadian biotech company, and the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) are collaborating on one of the most promising advances in the fight against cancer: antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs).

Recently signed research and licensing agreements will enable both organizations to continue developing a series of ADCs targeting breast, lung, and head-and-neck cancers. Unlike chemotherapy, ADCs specifically seek and destroy cancer cells, with minimal impact on healthy cells.

“The work performed by NRC is crucial to assembling the data package needed for clinical trials,” said Ilia A. Tikhomirov, president and CEO of Avid Biologics, which focuses exclusively on ADCs. “We are privileged to be able to continue the rapid development of our lead candidate while advancing the other candidates in the pipeline in collaboration with the NRC. We thank the NRC and all of our partners for their support as AvidBiologics transitions from a discovery-stage to a development-stage company.”

Triphase announces Celgene collaborations and license deal with PharmAbcine

October 28, 2014
Susanne Staer
Industry Partners

Triphase Accelerator Corporation, a private, drug development company dedicated to advancing novel compounds through Phase II proof-of-concept, announced October 27, 2014 new and expanded strategic collaborations with Celgene Corporation.

This announcement was covered in Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News (GEN), BioCentury Extra (no link available), Pharmaceutical Business Review (no link available), Scrip and BioWorld Today (no link available). It builds on Triphase’s original collaborative agreement with Celgene in January 2014.

The company has also announced a new global license for a fully human, bi-specific antibody targeting VEGFR-2/TIE 2 with Korea’s PharmAbcine.

Triphase initiates Phase I Study Evaluating Marizomib in Glioblastoma (GBM) with Celgene

Triphase has expanded its strategic collaboration with Celgene Corporation. The supplemental agreement adds a Phase I development program that will explore combining an intravenous (IV) formulation of marizomib with bevacizumab in glioblastoma (GBM), an aggressive malignant primary brain tumour.

BioCentury features Vasomune Therapeutics

October 27, 2014
Susanne Staer
Media Coverage

Vasomune 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.”

Vasomune Therapeutics awarded $1.5 million to advance lead asset for renal disease

TORONTO (October 20, 2014) — Vasomune Therapeutics, a biotechnology start-up founded by Drs. Dan Dumont and Paul Van Slyke of Sunnybrook Research Institute (SRI) in partnership with MaRS Innovation, has received $1.5 million, in part through Genome Canada’s Genomic Applications Partnership Program (GAPP), to advance Vasculotide, the company’s lead Tie-2 activating agent, towards clinical development.

This announcement was covered in Biotechnology Focus.

The Honourable Ed Holder, Minister of State (Science and Technology) and Dr. Pierre Meulien, president and CEO of Genome Canada, announced the funding as part of 12 selected projects under Genome Canada’s Genomic Applications Partnership Program (GAPP), on October 15 in Wallenstein, Ontario.

**Parimal Nathwani**, president and CEO of Vasomune Therapeutics Inc.

“We believe that our technology is well positioned to accelerate from preclinical research into clinical development based on its strong data package,” said Parimal Nathwani, president and CEO of Vasomune Therapeutics. “This award, in combination with industry funding, validates the Vasculotide opportunity and gives us the required funds to advance the drug candidate toward the clinic.”

In preclinical studies, Vasculotide has shown to be an effective treatment for multiple renal diseases including acute kidney injury (AKI), which in humans is a possible outcome of kidney function loss that manifests in nearly a third of high-risk cardiac patients. AKI may result from short-term interruptions in blood flow during surgery; 11 percent of patients who develop AKI after bypass surgery will die. People who survive AKI are at risk of developing longer-term kidney complications such as chronic kidney disease or End Stage Renal Disease. Vasomune’s founders conceptualized and designed Vasculotide to bind to the Tie-2 receptor, which is responsible for maintaining vascular health (and thus blood flow).

With this new funding, a third from Vasomune and MaRS Innovation, a third from Genome Canada and a third from a leading multinational pharmaceutical company, Vasomune can transition its program into manufacturing optimization, pharmacokinetics and toxicology studies to prepare for clinical development in early 2016.

Xagenic announces $6 million GAAP partnership for Hepatitis C testing; appoints president and CEO

Xagenic Inc., a molecular diagnostics company developing the first lab-free molecular diagnostic platform with a 20 minute time-to-result, announced October 15, 2014 that its project in partnership with the University of Toronto was successful in securing funding from Genome Canada under the Genomic Applications Partnership Program (GAPP).

The funding, announced by the Honourable Ed Holder, Minister of State (Science and Technology) and Dr. Pierre Meulien, president and CEO of Genome Canada, is part of 12 selected projects under Genome Canada’s Genomic Applications Partnership Program (GAPP), on October 15 in Wallenstein, Ontario.

The project titled “Development of Low Cost Testing Chip and Device for Hepatitis C Testing” was approved with funding up to a maximum of $5,999,865 over three years. The Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation is supporting the project with a grant matching the Genome Canada contribution.

“This is a tremendous opportunity for us to leverage the viral assay development and electrochemical detection expertise in the labs of Dr. Shana Kelley and Dr. Edward Sargent at the University of Toronto to significantly advance our own research programs on several fronts,” said Dr. Graham D. Jack, Xagenic’s senior director of Research and Development. “Under this joint program, we anticipate development of a new lower-cost substrate chip, which will significantly bring down the total cost of our in-cartridge AuRA™ detection technology.

Timothy I. Still appointed Xagenic’s president and CEO

On October 16, 2014, Xagenic also announced that Timothy I. Still has been appointed president and CEO, and will serve as a member of Xagenic Inc.’s board of directors.

This announcement was covered in PE Hub.