drug development

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.

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.

Johnson & Johnson Innovation Announces Collaborations with Two Canadian Early-Stage Drug Technology Development Centers

The commercialization process: Moving transformational ideas from the lab bench to the street — MaRS Innovation’s commercialization process helps inventors move their transformational ideas from the lab bench to the market.

Johnson & Johnson Innovation and its affiliate Janssen Inc. in Canada announced new collaborations with two Canadian early-stage drug technology development centres, Montreal-based NEOMED and Toronto-based MaRS Innovation, to identify and advance promising bio/pharmaceutical technologies that have the potential to impact human health.

Read the original release via The National Post or in French. MaRS Innovation’s November 25 announcement about the partnership is also available.

This story was covered by GEN: Genetic Engineering Biotechnology News.

Through these collaborations, technical experts from the Johnson & Johnson Innovation Center in Boston, Massachusetts will work with NEOMED and MaRS Innovation to identify investment opportunities emerging from well-validated scientific research discoveries within their communities of academic institutions and biotechnology companies.

Merck invests in pan-Canadian life sciences research innovation sector

A $4-million public-private partnership will promote research innovation involving three academic commercialization centres in Canada

CHICAGO, Illinois – April 22, 2013 – Merck Canada will be announcing today at the BIO International Convention that it is reinforcing its commitment to the Canadian life sciences research innovation sector.

Merck will provide $4 million in funding to the Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer – Commercialization of Research (IRICoR) for future corridor projects developed in collaboration with two other Canadian Centres of Excellence for Commercialization and Research (CECRs) based in Ontario and in British Columbia.

This partnership announcement was covered by PEHub.

IRICoR will work in conjunction with MaRS Innovation and the Centre for Drug Research and Development (CDRD) to identify, develop and commercialize technologies in healthcare. All three CECR institutions – identified as CECR in 2008 by the federal government – share a common objective: facilitating and accelerating the commercialization of research breakthroughs that will improve the quality of life of Canadians and others around the world.

Biotechnology Focus’ December issue covers MaRS Innovation projects and partnerships

January 10, 2013
Susanne Staer
Industry Partners

Stem Cell Therapeutics Corp.

MaRS Innovation’s (MI) projects and partnerships earned three separate article mentions in the December 2012 issue of Biotechnology Focus, including:

MI and UHN’s partnership with Stem Cell Therapeutics was covered in the magazine’s Dealmakers subsection. Read the write-up on the Biotechnology Focus website.
Cellax, a licensable technology that may produce a nanotechonology-based cancer drug, was highlighted in the magazine’s Business Corner section (read the write-up). Cellax is a joint project between MI and the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research.
MaRS Innovation’s collaboration with the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine was highlighted in a feature article, “Efforts to commercialize regenerative medicine in Canada growing steadily.”

Montreal’s La Presse covers life science research funding project among MI, CQDM, OCE and OBI

This week, MaRS Innovation (MI) announced a new partnership agreement with The Québec Consortium for Drug Discovery (CQDM), the Ontario Brain Institute (OBI) and Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) to launch the Québec/Ontario CQDM Funding Program.

The funding program will support collaborative life science research projects between the two provinces that seek to develop new tools for biopharmaceutical research.

Encycle Therapeutics Launches Ground-Breaking Chemistry Platform

Platform for cyclizing peptides promises to increase efficiency of early-stage drug discovery

BOSTON, June 18, 2012 – Encycle Therapeutics, a MaRS Innovation spin-off company, has created a ground-breaking chemistry platform for cyclizing peptides that promises to increase the efficiency of the early-stage drug discovery process.

Peptides have long been sought after as therapeutics due to their high specificity — they can hit specific cellular targets, especially complex protein-protein interaction targets implicated in cancer, cardiovascular disease and metabolic disorders.

Encycle investigators receive CQDM investment

CQDM invests $1.5 million in two collaborative projects within the Québec/Ontario Life Sciences Corridor

Toronto, December 6, 2011 — The Québec Consortium for Drug Discovery (CQDM) is pleased to announce $1.5 million in funding for two joint Québec/Ontario research projects in biomedical research.

The news was released today at the conference, Connecting Life Sciences Across the Ontario-Québec Corridor, which was held in Toronto.

MaRS Innovation and GlaxoSmithKline Announce Strategic Partnership to Accelerate Translational Research in Health Sciences

TORONTO (May 31, 2011) — MaRS Innovation (MI) and GlaxoSmithKline Inc. (GSK) today announced a new development fund — the GSK-MaRS Innovation Fund — that will support and fast-track the commercialization of some of the country’s most promising translational research coming from 16 leading academic health sciences centres, hospitals and universities derived from MI’s member institutions.

**Raphael Hofstein**, president and CEO of MaRS Innovation.

“From the discovery of insulin in 1922 to the discovery of stem cells, Ontario has a rich, proud history of world-class medical and scientific breakthroughs,” said Raphael Hofstein, president and CEO of MaRS Innovation. “Our partnership with GSK Canada furthers Ontario’s position as a major international research hub by providing much needed capital to fund exciting drug discovery and development technologies and bridging the gap to successful commercialization.

“Launching this development fund is also part of a global trend where government, researchers and industry are partnering at the early stage of translational research with an eye to achieving global impact and improving patient care,” Hofstein added.

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