Toronto

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.

Yonge Street Media Highlights MaRS Innovation Bioprinter Project

December 5, 2013
Susanne Staer
Media Coverage

MI Project Manger Fanny Sie discusses Toronto’s impact on 3D printing landscape

Fanny-Sie-web-7227 — MaRS Innovation’s **Fanny Sie** is project manager for the Bioprinter, a 3D printer that can print on organic material.

In a December 4 article, part of a feature series on technology in Toronto, Yonge Street Media reporter Andrew Seale highlights the creative and innovative technological work surrounding the 3D printing and cyber security sectors in the city.

MaRS Innovation’s Fanny Sie is managing business development for the Bioprinter, a 3D printer using University of Toronto technology that’s capable of printing on organic material, including skin.

By printing on skin, the cost of treating burns on the body could be reduced.

Here’s an excerpt from the article (links and emphasis ours):

“Cells are very intelligent, you just have to be able to put them close enough to one another in order for them to take over,” says Sie adding that some of the research is a partnership with the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and Research Institute.

MaRS Innovation launches streamlined funding program

Applications invited for MI’s Industry Access Program, which matches early-stage, high-potential technologies to partners and funding

MaRS Innovation (MI) has launched a unique funding program to match researchers with industry partners while advancing early stage technologies: the MaRS Innovation Industry Access Program (MI-IAP).

This program provides a simple mechanism to connect researchers with MI’s industry partners. The process and application form are intentionally brief to save researchers time and allow MI’s partners to review a wide range of remarkable technologies within the Toronto academic community in a short period of time.

ParimalNathwani8757 — **Parimal Nathwani**, vice-president, Life Sciences, MaRS Innovation.

“Many granting programs require an industry partner, but leave finding that partner to the researcher,” says Parimal Nathwani, vice-president of life sciences at MI. “Our Industrial Partnership Program completes that step for them. We also know researchers within our member institutions are incredibly busy, which is why we’ve adopted a streamlined process to save them time.”

The program is open to any researcher affiliated with our 16 member institutions working on technologies in:

therapeutics
diagnostics
medical devices
health IT

MaRS Innovation focus of Yonge Street Media article on growing technology sectors

November 1, 2013
Susanne Staer
BresoTec Inc.

President and CEO Dr. Raphael Hofstein speaks on healthcare innovation in Toronto

Screen Shot 2013-12-18 at 12.21.01 PM — **Dr. Raphael Hofstein**, MaRS Innovation president and CEO, was featured in an article by *Yonge Street Media*. (Photo Credit: Yonge Street Media)

In an October 30 article, Yonge Street Media‘s Andrew Seale spoke with MI’s president and CEO Raphael Hofstein on the booming healthcare innovation coming from Toronto since 2005.

Seale’s article is the first of a two-part series on technological innovation.

In the article, Hofstein credits the city’s intellectual infrastructure and access to healthcare resources for allowing innovation to flourish.

Three of MI’s start-up companies are also mentioned in the article.

Here’s an excerpt (links and emphasis our own):

“The Intellectual Property that is being generated in Toronto (is) a major chunk of the IP that’s being generated across Canada,” he says.

He points to ChipCare Corporation‘s state-of-the-art handheld analyzer, which allows doctors to run multiple diagnostics on a patient’s blood on site as opposed to bringing the patient to the clinic. The University of Toronto developed cell analyzer could prove to be a game changer in the fight against HIV. “Lab-in-a-chip” technology like this is crucial in third world countries where healthcare access is severely limited.

Xagenic’s AuRA platform—another diagnostic tool for blood samples—uses ultra sensitive microelectrode arrays (nano-sensors) developed by another team of researchers at University of Toronto. The inexpensive tech makes it possible for molecular diagnostic testing outside of labs.

MaRS Innovation-backed ApneaDX has developed a clinical-quality sleep-monitoring tool. Previously, diagnosing for sleep apnea—a sleep disorder characterized by abnormal breathing patterns—often required an expensive overnight stay at a sleep clinic. The device is a fraction of the cost and records the data on a chip, which is then analyzed by the company’s software.

BioDiaspora among technologies redefining digital disease mapping

June 20, 2013
Susanne Staer
BlueDot

Dr. Kamran Khan, founder of BioDiapsora, was cited in a New York Times‘ Bits article on the Big Data solutions evolving to track the global spread of disease: “In New Tools to Combat Epidemics, the Key is Context.”

Amy O’Leary‘s article appeared as part of a special blog/supplement on June 19, 2013 (Big Data 2013).

Here’s an excerpt (links and emphasis ours):

One of the doctors in the field who can benefit from these types of insights is Dr. Kamran Khan, an infectious disease specialist and researcher at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.

Dr. Khan, who said he had a “bad habit of being around emerging diseases,” has worked on the front lines of the 1999 West Nile virus outbreak and the H1N1 pandemic of 2009. But the event that hit closest to home was when his own hospital was affected by a deadly outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, which hit Toronto in 2003.

Yonge Street Media: Crowdmark, moderated marking and helping teachers grade better

June 19, 2013
Susanne Staer
Crowdmark

Yonge Street Media, a weekly online magazine that covers talent, innovation, diversity and quality of life stories in the Toronto region, covered Crowdmark‘s efforts to disrupt the way teachers grade and interact with students in their Innovation section on Wednesday, June 19, 2013.

Crowdmark graduated from the UTEST program earlier this spring. Last week, the company announced it has raised $600,000 in seed funding and completed two successful proof-of-concept pilot projects. Its co-founders are from the University of Toronto.

Here’s an excerpt from Hamutal Dotan‘s article (emphasis ours):

It is the bane of every teacher’s existence: grading. Though essential, it’s also repetitive and time-consuming. It is also increasingly prone to concerns about inequity: from grade inflation to inconsistent standards across different classrooms, sometimes parents, students, and even teachers themselves have a hard time deciding just what the grades they have assigned actually mean.

Aiming to help with both those problems is Toronto startup Crowdmark. Founded by two University of Toronto mathematics experts–the department’s associate chair, James Colliander, and graduate student Martin Muñoz–Crowdmark provides teachers with a suite of tools to facilitate faster grading, and enables teachers to handle large volumes of grading collaboratively.

Dr. Raphael Hofstein’s MRI blog post: How Team Ontario’s biotechnology takes on the world

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.

ClevrU Corp. acquires NewMindsets Inc. to transform online education market

April 23, 2013
Susanne Staer
Acquisitions

Deal strengthens competitiveness of online learning platform for global mobile learners

The ClevrU platform will integrate New Mindsets Inc.'s technology through this acquisition. — The **ClevrU platform** (shown here) will integrate NewMindsets Inc.’s technology through this acquisition.

WATERLOO, ON, Canada (April 23, 2013) — ClevrU Corporation today announced that it has acquired NewMindsets Inc., a company founded on online pedagogy researched and developed by two Schulich School of Business professors that has provided leading-edge educational content and services to over 10,000 Schulich students at York University over the past decade.

Through the acquisition, ClevrU will fully integrate NewMindsets’ proven e-teaching pedagogy in leadership, researched and developed by Professors Gareth Morgan and Jean Adams, into its world-class e-teaching platform, to be presented to York as a pilot and then delivered to millions of students worldwide.

TechVibes, EdSurge, Private Equity Hub, Yonge Street Media, and the Waterloo Record covered this announcement. The release is also viewable on CNW and in Chinese (.pdf).

The two companies announced a partnership in October 2012 to establish a second-generation online learning standard.

Is screening air travellers effective in containing a pandemic?

April 10, 2013
Susanne Staer
BlueDot

Toronto Star covers Khan’s new WHO paper on H1N1 outbreak

Dr. Kamran Khan, founder of BioDiaspora and an infectious disease physician and scientist at St. Michael’s Hospital, is among the experts studying the emergence of the H7N9 bird flu outbreak in China and the new coronavirus in the Middle East and Europe.

Global News National also covered this story on April 11, 2013. Watch Beatrice Politi and Carmen Chai‘s report, “Canadian scientists pioneer new formula in airport disease screening,” on the Global website.

The Toronto Star featured Khan’s research and BioDiaspora following the publication of his new paper in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization which assessed the impact of airport screenings in containing the 2009 H1N1 outbreak in Mexico.

Khan’s findings were covered in “Airport disease screening rarely worthwhile, Toronto study says,” by Helen Branswell.

BioDiaspora Founder: Travellers unlikely to bring H7N9 bird flu to Canada

April 9, 2013
Susanne Staer
BlueDot

Dr. Kamran Khan, founder of BioDiaspora and an infectious disease physician and scientist at St. Michael’s Hospital, is among the experts studying the emergence of the H7N9 bird flu outbreak in China.

Jennifer Yang interviewed Khan in today’s Toronto Star about the likelihood of the disease being easily transmitted from human to human or arriving in Canada, as SARS did in 2003.

Here’s an excerpt:

“This isn’t necessarily an event that poses a significant risk to Canada, at least based on all the current knowledge,” said Dr. Kamran Khan, an infectious disease specialist at St. Michael’s Hospital and founder of BioDiaspora, a program that predicts the potential spread of outbreaks. “Even if a case were to find its way into Canada, the likelihood of it spreading locally is quite low.”

BioDiaspora collects data on everything from air travel and weather to global distribution of disease-carrying insects and uses this data to forecast the potential spread of new diseases.

It has already performed a risk analysis of H7N9 for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which contacted Khan last Tuesday for help.

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

Yonge Street Media Highlights MaRS Innovation Bioprinter Project

MI Project Manger Fanny Sie discusses Toronto’s impact on 3D printing landscape

MaRS Innovation launches streamlined funding program

Applications invited for MI’s Industry Access Program, which matches early-stage, high-potential technologies to partners and funding

MaRS Innovation focus of Yonge Street Media article on growing technology sectors

President and CEO Dr. Raphael Hofstein speaks on healthcare innovation in Toronto

BioDiaspora among technologies redefining digital disease mapping

Yonge Street Media: Crowdmark, moderated marking and helping teachers grade better

Dr. Raphael Hofstein’s MRI blog post: How Team Ontario’s biotechnology takes on the world

ClevrU Corp. acquires NewMindsets Inc. to transform online education market

Deal strengthens competitiveness of online learning platform for global mobile learners

Is screening air travellers effective in containing a pandemic?

Toronto Star covers Khan’s new WHO paper on H1N1 outbreak

BioDiaspora Founder: Travellers unlikely to bring H7N9 bird flu to Canada

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