Technology developed by Dr. Stuart Berger at UHN is first project funded through partnership TORONTO, Dec. 11, 2013 - MaRS Innovation, a Centre of Excellence for Commercialization and Research, has announced…
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.
Following an appearance on the CBC’s “Lang and O’Leary Exchange” on November 28, MaRS Innovation UTEST company, Granata Decision Systems, appeared on CBC news “The National.” The segment included an interview with Amanda Lang.
Watch Boutilier’s interview with Lang for “The National” on CBC’s website.
Founded by Craig Boutilier and Tyler Lu, Granata Decision Systems is one of the first six companies incubated through the UTEST program for early-stage technologies, jointly administered by MaRS Innovation and the University of Toronto.
Granata is one of eight companies to join OneEleven’s accelerator program for companies tackling big data problems.
Their software allows marketers to optimize the effectiveness of their campaigns.
The segment features co-founder Craig Boutilier’s pitch at an invitation-only investor gathering at OneEleven to secure funding to further the success of Granata Decision Systems.
TORONTO, Nov. 25, 2013 – MaRS Innovation (MI), a Centre of Excellence for Commercialization and Research, today announced a new collaboration with Johnson & Johnson Innovation and its affiliate Janssen, Inc., in Canada to advance early-stage technologies related to human health in therapeutics, medical devices, and diagnostics.
This announcement was covered by Biotechnology Focus and the Village Gamer blog.
Through the collaboration, MaRS Innovation and technical experts from the Johnson & Johnson Innovation Center in Boston, Massachusetts will jointly identify and fund high-potential opportunities emerging from well-validated scientific research discoveries within MaRS Innovation’s 16 member institutions, which include the University of Toronto and its affiliated teaching hospitals.
“We are looking forward to working with Johnson & Johnson Innovation,” said Dr. Raphael Hofstein, president and CEO, MaRS Innovation. “There are many high quality opportunities coming out of the Toronto research community, and these opportunities can benefit from our close collaboration.”
Through the agreement, Johnson & Johnson Innovation will provide funding over a three-year period to support promising individual projects based on joint due diligence, which will be leveraged with financial support from MaRS Innovation.
Mount Sinai’s Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute has developed a new test that could make a big difference to men facing infertility.
A study published in a leading international journal, Science Translational Medicine, details the discovery of a key biomarker that can pinpoint the cause of infertility without the need for invasive surgery.
This story was covered by BBC News, ABC News’s “PM” with Mark Colvin, CTV News, CBC News, The Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, Ottawa Citizen and the Calgary Herald.
About half a million Canadian men are infertile, according to clinician-research Dr. Keith Jarvi. As a urologist who treats men with infertility, he knows how valuable this simple, inexpensive test could be. “Testing a semen sample can be done in the doctor’s clinic as it’s noninvasive and much easier for the patient than surgery,” he says.
Dr. Jarvi directs the Murray Koffler Urologic Wellness Centre, is head of Urology, and associate scientist at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute. He is a professor of Surgery at University of Toronto.
MaRS Innovation, which commercializes discoveries made by University of Toronto hospitals and research institutes, is already working on the project, which Jarvi believes may lead to commercial tests within the next couple of years. [For more information, contact Barry Elkind].
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.
On October 11, 2013, The Hindustan Times covered a technology developed by UTEST start-up graduate Thotra (invented by Frank Rudzicz) for its speech-transformation software.
The article commends Thotra for recognizing the communications gap surrounding accents, hailing the technology as the solution to “put an end to all accent problems.”
On October 2, 2013, Thotra’s technology was also covered in the National Post:
The software, which filters out aspects of speech that can hinder comprehension, is put to the test by processing lines from Colin Firth in the movie The King’s Speech. The results showcase the potential of the software and how it can assist comprehension of accents.
Posted online on October 2, 2013, the article explains how the Centres of Excellence in Commercialization and Research (CECR) programme, and specifically MaRS Innovation, develop research and put it into practice:
“MARS Innovation and its sister organization MARS Discovery District are not-for-profit organizations that are tightly integrated in Canadian research commercialization. They are based in a heritage building that once belonged to the Toronto University Hospital, in the heart of the city’s ‘discovery district’ — the inner-city conglomeration of universities, institutes and hospitals which has a reputation as a research hotbed. “Here, all the different actors in the commercialization sphere come together in one space,” says Ilse Treurnicht, CEO of MARS Discovery District.
OTTAWA, September 16, 2013 — An innovative, handheld point-of-care analyzer, developed by ChipCare Corporation, has secured one of the largest ever angel investments in Canada’s healthcare sector.
Phase II financing has closed, with an investment of $2.05M to support ChipCare’s continuing development and commercialization over the next three years.
Media coverage: Biotechnology Focus, TechVibes, BetaKit, Healthrender, Crunchbase, Toronto Star and VentureLab.
The financing evolved through a uniquely collaborative funding model among Canadian social angel investors, including Maple Leaf Angels, MaRS Innovation and the University of Toronto (Connaught Fund), with special financing leadership from Grand Challenges Canada and the Government of Canada.
This op-ed on Canadian biotechnology and the knowledge economy appeared in The Hill-Times (subscription required), Canada’s politics and government newsweekly, September 9:
Obesity, cancer, heart disease and stroke, diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s, or the more general stresses of an aging population: no matter which area of concern holds our collective gaze from moment to moment, improving health outcomes and healthcare is the No. 1 challenge for the world’s economy.
Canada has the holistic approach and translational research necessary to address health care’s pervasive challenges, with particular strengths in biotechnology.
In 2007, the Government of Canada made advancing translational research a top priority through the Science and Technology Strategy, with emphasis on cancer, metabolic disorders and, most recently, neurology, as part of the government’s response to the burdensome realities of neurodegenerative disorders.
Scientific research has made significant progress in unraveling the underlying causes of disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease, but translating these findings into useful clinical treatments is the key to attaining meaningful accomplishments. Only clinical treatment successes will alleviate pressure on the economy.
Transformational research is the essential first step in this process, but even more importantly, it needs to be put in the hands of those who can translate it into realistic and useful outcomes for patients in particular and society in general.
Thanks to research analytics that capture publications, citations, and other significant metrics, we know Canadian researchers punch above their weight, particularly in medical research. Canada’s challenge is not the quality or quantity of our research ideas but our ability to commercialize those ideas and translate them into market-ready products.
Aware of and concerned by this gap between fundamental basic research and useful patient, social, and economic outcomes, the Canadian government established the Centres of Excellence for Commercialization and Research (CECR) program in 2007. Part of the internationally-recognized Networks of Centres of Excellence suite of programs, the CECR program is a unique collaboration between the three federal granting agencies (the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council), along with Industry Canada, and Health Canada.
Designed to bridge the challenging gap between innovation and commercialization, the CECR program matches clusters of research expertise with the business community to share the knowledge and resources that bring innovations to market faster.
MaRS Innovation was among the first CECRs to be created in 2008, largely based on the founding belief of its members that Toronto is a fertile research land for precisely this kind of translational activity.
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