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 20th 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.
There’s been lots of activity in MI’s portfolio this week (and it’s only Wednesday). Read down for what you need to know about Whirlscape, Crowdmark, OtoSim, and ApneaDx.
Whirlscape launches Google Glass demo video
Whirlscape’s Minuum keyboard nabbed a four-star review from CNET’s editors only days before announcing their technology is now available for Google Glass. Watch the UTEST graduate‘s newest demo video.
Crowdmark named “Most Innovative” at SIIA conference
The Education Division of the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) showcased some of the newest and most innovative products in the education technology market, and recognized the best among them as part of the Innovation Incubator program at the 13th annual Education Industry Summit, the leading conference for the K-12 and postsecondary education technology market, held May 12-14 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco.
MI’s Dr. Raphael Hofstein (left), the Honourable Minister Reza Moridi (centre) and Dr. Mark Poznansky of the Ontario Genome Institute on the January 2014 cover of Biotechnology Focus.
In a January 24, 2014 Biotechnology Focuscover article, author Shawn Lawrence discusses MaRS Innovation President and CEO Dr. Raphael (Rafi) Hofstein‘s recent visit to learn more of the emerging science and technology markets in Singapore and Japan.
The trip allowed Hofstein to discuss current MI projects, specifically start-ups XLV Diagnostics Inc. and DVLR Therapeutics Inc., whose products could benefit from Singapore’s proximity to medical technology markets in India and China.
U of T professor shares tips to her team’s commercialization success
When it comes to bringing research from the lab to the market, the University of Toronto’s Dr. Shana Kelley knows firsthand what it takes. She’s co-founder of Xagenic, a MaRS Innovation and U of T start-up company that’s developed the first lab-free molecular diagnostic platform with a 20-minute time-to-result based on her research with fellow U of T colleague Professor Edward Sargent.
In her guest blog post for the Ministry of Research and Innovation, Kelley outlines what she’s learned through her experience in the commercialization process (emphasis ours):
1. When ready to commercialize, look in your own backyard for investment and support
Dr. Shana Kelley, co-founder of Xagenic Inc. and University of Toronto professor.
When the Xagenic technology was mature enough to consider commercialization, we started to call venture investors all over the world to see if we could get them to back the company. We always got the meetings we wanted, and lots of enthusiasm and encouragement, but it was difficult to get people engaged. We were fortunate to get seed funding from a group of local organizations including MaRS Innovation, Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, the Innovation Acceleration Fund (IAF), and Ontario Centres of Excellence and then finally found the group that would eventually be our Series A lead investors, CTI Life Sciences Fund.
With CTI, we immediately got the traction we had been looking for from a venture investor that indicated genuine interest in the company. When we later made the rounds for the Series B investment outside of Canada, we repeatedly heard the comment: “we’re glad to see you could do the Series A in your own backyard.”
When I probed about why this was important, I found that the investment community thinks it is important to have your early investors as close geographically as possible. The level of interaction when a company gets off the group needs to be fairly intense — being geographically closer helps entrepreneurs and investors keep in better contact. This is definitely not a hard-and-fast rule, but I found it interesting that many investors had this perception. And it creates a particular challenge for Canadian companies given how little venture capital is available locally!
The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and Assurex Health combine resources to bring personalized medicine in psychiatry, reducing the current trial-and-error approach
TORONTO – The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), Canada’s leading hospital for mental health, and Assurex Health, a global leader in personalized medicine, have signed an agreement for a joint venture to bring the benefits of this treatment approach to more Canadians.
The personalized approach helps to match the right medication at the right dose for each patient, based on their genetic makeup. Using Assurex Health’s GeneSight panel, physicians can easily see which psychiatric medications are likely to be effective for each patient and which ones are not, often avoiding treatment failure and side effects.
“This partnership between CAMH and Assurex Health is essential to advance the widespread use of personalized medicine in psychiatry, and improve health care for Canadians who need medications for mental health problems,” said Dr. James Kennedy, head of the Tanenbaum Centre for Pharmacogenetics at CAMH. This approach is a game-changer from the current trial-and-error approach to prescribing, which results in many patients having to try different psychiatric medications, each with potential side-effects, before the best medication for them can be determined.
AssureRx Canada (ARxC) has been established as a subsidiary of the U.S. company, with its Canadian office and laboratory on CAMH premises. Assurex Health will provide backing for ARxC operations. CAMH holds a minority equity share in AssureRx Canada and will receive royalties on the sale of genetic tests that incorporate CAMH-discovered genetic markers.
Indiegogo campaign to raise funds for North American clinical study during Breast Cancer Awareness Month; 12 artists donate 13 original works worth over $15,000 to support campaign
Toronto, Canada (October 9, 2013) — WaveCheck— a painless, non-surgical clinical technique developed by a Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre oncologist and a Ryerson University physicist and supported by MaRS Innovation — is poised to transform chemotherapy response monitoring for women with breast cancer.
Dr. Gregory Czarnota of Sunnybrook Health Sciences (left) and Professor Michael Kolios of Ryerson University, WaveCheck’s inventors.
WaveCheck combines traditional ultrasound with new software to detect responses to chemotherapy in breast cancer tissues. By making better, more accurate information available about a woman’s response to her chemotherapy treatment in weeks rather than months, WaveCheck creates greater transparency through dialogue between a women and her doctors, empowering her to participate in discussions about whether a given chemotherapy treatment is effective.
Contribute to WaveCheck‘s Indiegogo campaign and help make this technology available to all women with breast cancer faster.
Developed by Dr. Gregory Czarnota, chief of Radiation Oncology at Sunnybrook’s Odette Cancer Centre, and Michael C. Kolios, professor of Physics and Canada Research Chair in Biomedical Applications of Ultrasound at Ryerson, WaveCheck has been used in clinical studies with nearly 100 women receiving upfront, neoadjuvant chemotherapy to treat locally-advanced breast cancer. These results are published in two leading journals, Clinical Cancer Research and Translational Oncology.
In the Indiegogo campaign video, Czarnota, Kolios and three of the 100 women who participated in the first Sunnybrook study explain WaveCheck’s impact.
“The hard truth for women with breast cancer is that 60 to 70 per cent of chemotherapy treatments fail,” said Czarnota, who is also a senior scientist and director of cancer research at Sunnybrook Research Institute and assistant professor in the University of Toronto’s Departments of Radiation Oncology and Medical Biophysics within the Faculty of Medicine. “The 1.5 million women worldwide who will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year need to know that their chemotherapy is working as soon as possible. But this kind of treatment monitoring doesn’t currently exist in standard clinical practice. Instead, a woman’s tumour response is evaluated after she completes her chemotherapy treatment, which is typically a four- to six-month process.
MaRS Innovation (MI) seeks applicants for the Medical Sciences Proof-of-Principle (MSc PoP) program, which supports early-stage medical science technologies and allows their founding teams to conduct crucial proof-of-principle work.
Through the two-year MSc POP program, MI will distribute funding awards to qualified applicants within its membership on behalf of the Ministry of Research and Innovation (MRI). Funds are available in $25,000 or $75,000 grants.
“At MaRS Innovation, the PoP program functions as a kind of internal Dragons’ Den,” says Dr.Raphael Hofstein, president and CEO of MaRS Innovation. “For three years, we’ve used a panel of industry leaders to hear pitches from the founding teams of the most promising technologies in our intellectual property pipeline. Based on their assessments, the strongest projects receive PoP funding to fuel their prototyping and other proof-of-principle work.”
Dr. Raphael Hofstein, president & CEO, MaRS Innovation.
Dr. Raphael (Rafi) Hofstein is president and CEO of MaRS Innovation (MI) – the commercialization agent for an exceptional research discovery pipeline stemming from 16 leading Ontario academic institutions. As a single entry point to annual member research and development activity of $1B, MI provides a gateway for investors and licensees who wish to access Ontario’s technology assets.
During the 2012 BIO convention in Boston, Dr. Hofstein blogged about how CQDM of Montreal and MaRS Innovation of Toronto had teamed up to help “fill” the QC-Ontario corridor and why the corridor is good for business in both provinces.
In my previous blog post during BIO2012, I talked about how MaRS Innovation and CQDM had jointly collaborated to form Encycle Therapeutics, a startup that was created around disruptive technology, developed by Professor Andrei Yudin of the University of Toronto, involving the cyclization of biologically active peptides.
A year later, I’m pleased to report that Encycle is alive and kicking. The company has since recruited seasoned management, and its developing product line is drawing tremendous interest from global pharmaceutical groups. In the next few months, we expect Encycle to raise significant capital and establish meaningful ties with strategic allies.
Taking a wider look at the life sciences sector, this has been a vintage year for Ontario in general and MaRS Innovation’s ecosystem in particular.
Every six weeks, MaRS Innovation’s marketing and communications manager writes a guest post for the MaRS Discovery District blog profiling MI’s activities or one of our start-up companies. You can read the original post on the MaRS blog.
Nearly 14,000 delegates—representing over 1,100 biotechnology companies, academic institutions, state biotechnology centres and related organizations across the United States and more than 60 countries—attended the 2013 BIO International Convention from April 22 to 26, 2013.
The event drew biotechnologists, pharmaceutical industry executives and life sciences researchers, along with sector-based organizations and associations, to Chicago.
According to a press release issued by the conference organizers, BIO 2013 offered “a record number of partnering meetings and panel sessions on the latest science, policy issues and business opportunities and challenges facing the biotechnology industry.”
Through this collaboration, MaRS Innovation and Pfizer will jointly identify investment opportunities emerging from well-validated scientific research discoveries within MaRS Innovation’s 16 member institutions, including the University of Toronto and its nine affiliated teaching hospitals.
“There’s growing consensus that transferring technologies from the university lab bench and into the market requires unique public-private partnerships,” said Dr. Raphael Hofstein, president and CEO of MaRS Innovation. “Partnering with MaRS Innovation gives Pfizer access to Toronto’s robust innovation pipeline and a close look at emerging IP from Canada. It signals both the strength and attractiveness of our commercialization model and Toronto-based research technologies to global industry players.”
“Our government is committed to making Ontario the best place to translate great ideas into innovative products that will gain demand around the world,” said the Honourable Reza Moridi, Ontario Minister of Research and Innovation. “Today’s announcement from MaRS Innovation is an exciting collaboration with Pfizer that will both advance healthcare technologies for Ontarians and help to strengthen our economy.”
