CCRM

Institutional Strategic Initiatives

Subheadline

The partnership will help build a strong pipeline of regenerative medicine technologies and therapies

The University of Toronto’s Medicine by Design initiative and CCRM, a non-profit that supports the development and commercialization of regenerative medicines, are launching a new strategic alliance that aims to unlock Toronto’s potential as a world-leading ecosystem for regenerative medicine.

The partnership, which was announced at Medicine by Design’s 8th Annual Symposium on Dec. 6, will see the organizations build on their existing strengths in bridging high-risk, high-reward research to industry expertise, biomanufacturing infrastructure and the clinic.

The goal of the alliance, whose key members also include the University Health Network (UHN) and U of T, is to create co-ordinated, end-to-end capacity that spans discovery through to clinical translation and commercialization.

“Medicine by Design has its deep academic network and track record of supporting world-class research across the Toronto Academic Health Science Network (TAHSN). CCRM has 12 years of success in launching and scaling cell and gene therapy companies at the interface of academia and industry,” said Allison Brown, executive director of Medicine by Design.

“With this alliance, CCRM is making an investment to sustain Medicine by Design’s discovery programs well into the future. It will enable us to build upon a strong regenerative medicine pipeline of breakthrough technologies and therapies that will ultimately provide health and economic benefits to Canada and the world.”

Leah Cowen, U of T’s vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives, said the alliance is in keeping with U of T’s strategic plan, and will bring an array of benefits to academic-led innovation.

“In addition to the investment into Medicine by Design, for U of T, this partnership unlocks a global network of biomanufacturing expertise, infrastructure and a network of industry partners that expand beyond regenerative medicine – a strategic benefit to the research and clinical communities in Toronto,” said Cowen.

Launched in 2015 with the support of a $114-million investment from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF), Medicine by Design has made large-scale, strategic investments in high-risk, high-reward research, advancing more than 190 projects. A U of T institutional strategic initiative, it has recruited world-class faculty and provided training programs to thousands of graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and other personnel at U of T and its affiliated hospitals.

CCRM, which is funded by the Government of Canada, Province of Ontario and academic and industry partners, has accelerated translation of scientific discovery into new companies and products, with a specific focus on cell and gene therapies.

Michael May, president and CEO of CCRM, said the collaboration will contribute to ensuring that the life-saving potential of regenerative medicine is realized and that a talent pool is developed that will position Canada as a leader in the global cell and gene therapy industry. “Medicine by Design and CCRM, put together, represent an end-to-end perspective of the bench-to-bedside process – research and discovery to company development to manufacturing to bringing the therapy to market,” said May.

He noted the alliance will leverage both U of T’s and UHN’s reputations for world-class research and medicine and tap into a network of regenerative medicine-focused faculty and clinicians, as well as experts from the social sciences and other non-STEM fields.

Brad Wouters, executive vice-president, science and research at UHN and a member of Medicine by Design’s executive committee, said the alliance will facilitate access to funding and infrastructure for the clinical translation of new cell and gene therapies being developed by Toronto investigators.

“Toronto is known globally for the strength of our stem cell and regenerative medicine accomplishments,” said Wouters, a senior scientist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and professor in the department of medical biophysics in U of T’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine. “UHN is excited to build on our existing partnerships with CCRM through the Centre for Cell and Vector Production and Medicine by Design to support this strategic alliance and its goals to create end-to-end capacity in our ecosystem to create new medicines that will have global patient impact.

“From discovery through to clinical validation and manufacturing, we look forward to advancing the next generation of living therapies for our patients.”

Experts explore strategies for strengthening Canada’s bioinnovation ecosystem at Medicine by Design event

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 05 Jan 2022 17:06:42 +0000

Experts explore strategies for strengthening Canada’s bioinnovation ecosystem at Medicine by Design event

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 01/05/2022 - 12:06

Cutline

Toronto’s MaRS Discovery District, which shares close connections to U of T and its hospital partners, is a major Canadian hub for biotechnology innovation in Canada (photo by Makeda Marc-Ali)

Julie Crljen

Topic

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Donnelly Centre for Cellular & Biomolecular Research

Institute of Health Policy Management and Evaluation

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Faculty of Arts & Science

University Health Network

What can the unprecedented speed of vaccine development during the COVID-19 pandemic teach us about strengthening our bioinnovation ecosystem?

For David Walt, a professor at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, many of the pandemic’s innovations promise to have a lasting effect since, as a society, we “now have some of the tools in place to help catalyze continued innovation and collaboration” in the field.

“Everyone who was working on [COVID-19] had the potential to be affected by it. It was a global imperative that we all co-operate,” he said during a recent symposium hosted by the University of Toronto’s Medicine by Design program.

Walt, who co-leads the Mass General Brigham Center for COVID Innovation, made the remarks during a panel discussion titled “Strengthening Our Bioinnovation Ecosystem” that followed his plenary talk.

David R. Walt

The symposium – “A Systems Approach to Regenerative Medicine” – was held over two days and attracted more than 500 registrants. It included talks from invited speakers Ruslan Medzhitov, a professor in the Yale School of Medicine at Yale University, on the topic of inflammation systems biology; and Linda G. Griffith, a professor in the department of biological and medicalengineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who spoke about organ-on-chip technologies, including their application to endometriosis.

The panel discussion on strengthening the bioinnovation ecosystem looked at the symposium’s broad theme in a more “holistic fashion,” said Medicine by Design Executive Director Michael Sefton, who is also a University Professor in the department of chemical engineering and applied chemistry and the Institute of Biomedical Engineering.

“[We’re] looking at health-care systems and innovation systems with a focus on health policy and social science lessons learned from COVID-19.”

The panel discussion was timely as Medicine by Design seeks to ensure the bioinnovation system in Canada is well-prepared to advance the regenerative discoveries coming out of the labs of researchers at U of T and its partner hospitals.

“We are looking forward to continuing to excel and to prepare the future of human health – to continue to transform but also translate,” said Sefton, whose lab is located at the Donnelly Centre for Cellular & Bimolecular Research, in his opening remarks. “Our goal is to not just write great papers but to also show that these papers can be translated into impact –maybe not immediately, but certainly over the next five or ten years, if not beyond.”

The impact of COVID-19 on the bioinnovation pipeline was just one of themes panelists touched on during a wide-ranging discussion. The panel was moderated by Shiri Breznitz, who is an associate professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and the director of the master of global affairs program at U of T.

A clinical pull rather than technology push

Often innovations begin with an engineer or scientist inventing a technology and filing a patent before determining the clinical need for their product. But using “design thinking” to innovate can accelerate the timeline of implementation by years, Walt said during his talk.

“If you start with the clinical need first rather than the technology – a clinical pull rather than a technology push – then you come up with a [design-thinking] model.”

In the design-thinking model, clinicians identify unmet needs and then scientists and engineers develop solutions to solve those problems. Design thinking “starts with the problem. It has a human-centred core,” said Walt.

Collaboration and trust are important elements of an ecosystem

Catherine Beaudry

The strength of an ecosystem can be measured by its level of collaboration and trust, said panelist Catherine Beaudry, who leads the Partnership for the Organization of Innovation and New Technologies (4POINTO) and is a professor at Polytechnique Montréal.

“At the heart of all these models, you have to remember that it’s individuals who are collaborating with other individuals. The glue that maintains the ecosystem is trust.”

Beaudry pointed to the importance of having strong intellectual property policies and making sure innovators are collaborating with regulators early in the therapeutics or technology development process as important elements of building trust. She added that using more thoughtful metrics – key performance indicators, or KPIs – is also a key part of measuring the health of an ecosystem.

“Bean counting is not the way to go. We need to measure how organizations collaborate, whether these relationships last over time, and what comes out of them.”

Aligning towards a common goal

Beate Sander

Beate Sander, a scientist and the director of population health economics research for the Toronto Health Economics and Technology Assessment Collaborative (THETA), pointed to how the speed of vaccine development during the pandemic showed us how the seemingly impossible could be possible.

“The pandemic has shown that we cannot separate health and the economy,” said Sander, who is also an associate professor at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health.

“[In the pandemic] everyone is rallying around similar goals. So everything aligned in a time of very high pressure, very high uncertainty. How do we move what we have now to post-pandemic times when all that pressure is gone, and everyone will be inclined to go back to what we’ve done previously?”

Sander is an expert in health technology assessment, a multi-disciplinary process that looks at the value of a technology from a wide range of perspectives – not just technical properties, but also many other factors including economic considerations, social and legal impacts and patient perspectives.

Where normally innovations would move through a linear process of approvals, Sander said things were very different during the pandemic, when many of the phases moved in tandem with each other instead of sequentially. Introducing health technology assessment earlier into the process of innovation would also help speed up the adoption of new technologies, Sander said.

At the pre-clinical stage, Sander said, provinces and territories were already planning vaccine rollouts. Health Canada accepted vaccine data on a rolling basis and data was shared with relevant parties much earlier than it normally would be.

“I hope that some of those characteristics will be maintained – [for instance] parallel review and not having to wait until each step is finished.”

Beaudry said COVID-19 demonstrated the importance of the government playing an active role in the innovation ecosystem.

“We need to de-silo the economy because innovation very often is a combination of knowledge from multiple disciplines and multiple sectors. With COVID the government has been forced to do that really quickly. We need to draw the lessons in terms of cross-sector cross agency collaboration.”

Support for new companies and access to risk capital play a large role

Michael May

For smaller companies to thrive in the bioinnovation ecosystem, collaboration is an important element, said Michael May, president and chief executive officer at CCRM (formerly the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine).

“It’s about alignment of interests. Bringing groups together and understanding the common goal and focusing on that common goal. And it’s a recognition that multiple partners are required for success,” said May. “It’s amazing how much translation and commercialization get stopped by innovators feeling like they have to do it all on their own.”

Aside from collaborations, May said, financial resources play a large role. May contrasted the Canadian ecosystem with the ecosystem in Boston, which is well known for its biotechnology sector and has more access to capital.

“We get bogged down without the financial resources to bring people together … and we’re trying to fill gaps without those resources. [The CCRM model] was built on the premise that we needed to leverage small successes and infrastructure and investments over time to enable access to capital.”

Walt, who has founded or co-founded several life sciences start-ups including multi-billion dollar biotech ventures Illumina, Inc. and Quanterix Corp., agreed that support for small companies is crucial.

“The small companies are at the core of innovation,” he said. “That’s where invention happens; that’s where all the creativity starts.”

Walt added that Boston and Canadian hubs like Toronto have many similarities. The biotech ecosystem in Boston started because there was a recognition that there was invention and innovation at the universities.

“[In Canada], there are great hubs where there’s concentrations of universities. That’s where most of these ecosystems start. They start with the intellectual capital, then they attract the venture capital, and then they attract more, and it just becomes a self-fulfilling enterprise.”

Health system needs to plan now for adoption of regenerative medicine therapies: U of T researchers

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 17 Aug 2020 16:41:12 +0000

Health system needs to plan now for adoption of regenerative medicine therapies: U of T researchers

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 08/17/2020 - 12:41

Cutline

A new paper, drawing on a workshop hosted by U of T's Medicine by Design and others, says work needs to be done now to ensure regenerative medicine therapies are safe, effective, affordable and available to patients who need them (photo by Kenneth Chou)

Ann Perry

Topic

Faculty of Medicine

Global

University Health Network

Regenerative medicine holds the potential to revolutionize health care, but critical work needs to be done now to ensure the new therapies will be safe, effective, affordable and widely available to patients who need them.

That is one of the key conclusions of a paper published recently in Cell & Gene Therapy Insights that outlines the recommendations of an international workshop hosted by Medicine by Design at the University of Toronto in collaboration with CCRM, the Toronto Health Economics and Technology Assessment Collaborative (THETA) at University Health Network (UHN), and Loughborough University in the U.K.

“As more regenerative medicine therapies move closer to the clinic, now is the time to engage policy-makers, governments, health-care providers and other stakeholders in these important conversations,” said Murray Krahn, the paper’s corresponding author and director of THETA.

“Laying this groundwork early will ensure our health-care system can adopt and implement regenerative medicine therapies efficiently and effectively, and in ways that align with the social values of Canadians,” added Krahn, who is also an attending physician at UHN and a professor at U of T’s Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy and the Faculty of Medicine.

Funded by a $114-million grant from the federal government’s Canada First Research Excellence Fund, Medicine by Design brings together more than 130 researchers from across U of T and its affiliated hospitals to advance and accelerate regenerative medicine discoveries. As part of its mandate, it convened the June 2019 workshop that led to the paper, bringing together 37 researchers, clinicians, ethicists, policy-makers and industry leaders from Canada and the U.K. to discuss challenges in the adoption of regenerative medicine therapies.

The challenges include how to generate robust data when the number of patients enrolled in clinical studies may be small and how to determine if these therapies will be effective over the long-term.

Other key questions are how much these therapies should cost, who should pay for them and whether the often hefty price tag of novel therapies justifies the clinical benefit compared with existing treatments. These considerations are particularly important in countries with publicly funded health-care systems, such as Canada, where resources are limited. Ethical and social issues such as accessibility and patient experience also formed part of the workshop discussions.

Workshop participants discussed lessons learned from recent regulatory approval and implementation of a handful of CAR T-cell therapies, which re-engineer the patient’s immune system to fight certain types of cancer, and how they might be applied to regenerative medicine therapies.

“The pivotal next steps for future working groups to tackle revolve chiefly around addressing the evidence generation issues, relevant stakeholder engagement, targeted policy-maker engagement and understanding future payment system mechanisms,” the paper concludes. Its co-authors are: Maya Chaddah, a freelance science communicator; Allison Brown, director, strategy and translation at Medicine by Design; Siofradh McMahon, senior manager, clinical translation and regulatory affairs at CCRM; James Kusena, a PhD candidate at the Centre for Biological Engineering and Wolfson School of Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering at Loughborough University in the U.K. and an alumnus of Medicine by Design’s Summer by Design program; Karen Bremner, a research associate at THETA; and Ann Perry, associate director, administration, at Medicine by Design.

Krahn has convened a working group, made up of some of the workshop participants and others, to continue working on some of these issues. Early conversations have focused on creating a database for all regenerative medicine projects that will allow researchers to study their economic and clinical benefits compared with current therapies. As well, the group will explore the use of early health technology assessment methods.

Medicine by Design is also actively driving policy discussions. Affordability and accessibility form one of six topics Medicine by Design has invited researchers to address through its Grand Questions Program. Launched in July, the program is investing $3 million in bold ideas and developing transformative solutions that will be of critical importance to regenerative medicine over the next 20 years.

“If regenerative medicine therapies are to become the new standard of treatment for many diseases, we need to examine critically how they will intersect with regulators, policy-makers, payers and patients,” said Michael Sefton, executive director of Medicine by Design and a U of T University Professor in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering and the department of chemical engineering and applied chemistry in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. “Through this paper and our Grand Questions Program, Medicine by Design and our partners are leading this conversation.”

Medicine by Design builds on decades of made-in-Canada excellence in regenerative medicine dating back to the discovery of stem cells in the early 1960s by Toronto researchers James Till and Ernest McCulloch. Regenerative medicine uses stem cells to replace diseased tissues and organs, creating therapies in which cells are the biological product. It can also mean triggering stem cells that are already present in the human body to repair damaged tissues or to modulate immune responses. Increasingly, regenerative medicine researchers are using a stem cell lens to identify critical interactions or defects that prepare the ground for disease, paving the way for new approaches to preventing disease before it starts.

'Summer camp for researchers' aims to accelerate regenerative medicine discoveries into new therapies

noreen.rasbach — Tue, 25 Sep 2018 19:12:56 +0000

'Summer camp for researchers' aims to accelerate regenerative medicine discoveries into new therapies

noreen.rasbach Tue, 09/25/2018 - 15:12

Cutline

Some of the 26 participants in Summer by Design, which one PhD candidate said "opened my eyes to how many potential jobs there are for us as scientists, from policy-making to intellectual property law" (photo by Jackie Denholm)

Topic

Rotman School of Management

Technology

How can regenerative medicine researchers move innovative discoveries out of the lab efficiently and effectively to benefit patients sooner?

That’s a key question a group of high-performing PhD candidates and post-doctoral and clinical researchers from across Canada and around the world tackled in July at Summer by Design.

The workshop, hosted by the University of Toronto’s Medicine by Design initiative in partnership with the Rotman School of Management and CCRM, offered 26 participants an opportunity to learn from experts in clinical translation and commercialization and explore the city’s dynamic life sciences ecosystem.

“It really makes you see that the research you are doing could have an impact in the future,” said Emily McGaugh, a PhD candidate in U of T’s department of physiology who is working on regenerative medicine approaches to Type 1 diabetes in the laboratory of Cristina Nostro at University Health Network (UHN).

“It’s these collaborations and this networking that can really move regenerative medicine forward.”

Will Mitchell, the Anthony S. Fell Chair in New Technologies and Commercialization and a professor of strategic management at Rotman, led sessions on negotiations, marketing, leadership and global strategy. Staff at CCRM, MaRS Excite, UHN and Torys LLP offered insights into economic reimbursement, regulatory affairs, clinical trials, technology and market assessment, and manufacturing and scale-up.

“Summer by Design opened my eyes to how many potential jobs there are for us as scientists, from policy-making to intellectual property law,” said Alisa Molotova, a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge.

Workshop participants also studied BlueRock Therapeutics and met with executives to learn more about the company, based partly in Toronto, and the Cell+Gene platform it is pioneering. One of BlueRock’s therapeutic applications relies on technology developed by Medicine by Design-funded researchers and BlueRock founding scientists Gordon Keller and Michael Laflamme at UHN, and aims to develop, manufacture and deliver native heart muscle cells with engineered functionality to restore function in patients who have had heart attacks or are suffering from chronic heart failure.

Summer by Design also allowed the group – composed of emerging researchers from the University of Toronto and its affiliated hospitals, the University of British Columbia, and universities in the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, France and Australia – to make connections with participants from around the world.

“This is like summer camp for researchers,” said Michael May, chief executive officer of CCRM. “They’re bonding, they’re learning from each other and they will stay connected forever. We want to see our alumni driving the industry for years to come.”

Researchers at U of T's Medicine by Design scale up stem cell production

ullahnor — Thu, 07 Jun 2018 20:41:13 +0000

Researchers at U of T's Medicine by Design scale up stem cell production

ullahnor Thu, 06/07/2018 - 16:41

Cutline

Medicine by Design researchers scaled up the production of human stem cells by growing them in large volumes of liquid, in suspension bioreactors (photo by James Poremba)

Topic

Stem Cells

Yonatan Lipsitz became a biomedical engineer because he wanted to “see patients cured by new stem cell therapies.”

“That’s a real motivating factor for me,” says Lipsitz, a recent University of Toronto graduate whose PhD focused on growing stem cells in the lab on a much larger scale.

Published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Lipsitz’s findings are part of a wave of efforts funded by U of T’s Medicine by Design initiative to accelerate regenerative medicine discoveries and translate them into new treatments.

Thanks to their ability to self-renew and turn into any cell type in the body – a characteristic known as pluripotency – stem cells hold promise as a potentially unlimited source of cells from which replacement tissue can be grown to treat disease and injury.

For more than half a century, transplants of bone marrow tissue, rich in stem cells that create blood, have been saving the lives of patients with leukemia and other blood disorders. In recent years, a new generation of experimental therapies using lab-grown pluripotent stem cells have shown promise in treating a wide range of diseases, including blindness, Parkinson’s disease and diabetes.

But growing small quantities of cells in plastic dishes as is typically done in labs around the world is one thing. Scaling this process up in a cost-effective manner to obtain the billions of cells needed to treat each patient is far more challenging.

“When you try to scale up from growing cells in plastic dishes to growing them on an industrial scale, you run into problems,” says Lipsitz, who completed his PhD in 2017 at U of T’s Institute of Biomaterials & Biomedical Engineering in the lab of University Professor Peter Zandstra, located in the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research.

Lipsitz has been working to expand human stem cells by growing them in large volumes of liquid in so-called suspension bioreactors, as opposed to attached on the surface of the laboratory dish. In the bioreactors, cell growth can be scaled up for industrialized manufacturing. But “as soon as the cells are placed into suspension they have reduced survival and proliferation,” Lipsitz says.

Studying mouse stem cells, which can be readily expanded in suspension unlike the human cells, offered clues for bolstering cell growth. Cells from the two species have very different growth rates, as well as other manufacturing properties.

“We set out to find a cocktail of molecules and growth factors that could convert human stem cells into an alternative, high-growth state,” says Lipsitz. The trick was to boost the suspension survival and growth of stem cells without affecting their pluripotency.

After testing many different molecular formulations, the researchers identified a new combination of factors that allowed them to obtain yields of human stem cells in suspension more than five-fold greater than previously possible.

“This paper represents a step forward in our ultimate goal to enable robust suspension growth of pluripotent stem cells for cellular therapeutic production,” says Zandstra, who was Medicine by Design’s inaugural executive director and is now director of the Michael Smith Laboratories and the School of Biomedical Engineering at the University of British Columbia, where he also has a research lab. Zandstra is also chief scientific officer of the U of T-affiliated Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine (CCRM), which is helping the team commercialize its technology.

Lipsitz, who now works as a scientist at a Boston biotechnology startup developing cell therapies, credits the “unique environment” in Zandstra’s lab for his research accomplishments.

“Peter’s lab combines fundamental understanding of stem cell biology with advanced technical engineering approaches, making it one of the most cutting-edge research environments in the stem cell field,” Lipsitz says, adding that his new job in Boston directly builds on the cell manufacturing skills he developed as a graduate student.

“I’m excited about bringing cell therapies to patients by solving manufacturing challenges for these complex therapies.”

Medicine by Design, made possible thanks to a $114-million grant from the federal government’s Canada First Research Excellence Fund, brings together more than 110 scientists, engineers and clinicians from across U of T and its affiliated hospitals to conceive, create and test strategies to address critical problems in regenerative medicine. Researchers from various disciplines generate and use emerging methods such as genome editing, computational modelling and synthetic biology to deepen understanding of core biological concepts and devise new therapeutic approaches.

Stem cell conference at U of T to focus on entrepreneurship

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 11 Jul 2017 19:35:17 +0000

Stem cell conference at U of T to focus on entrepreneurship

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 07/11/2017 - 15:35

Cutline

The December announcement of BlueRock Therapeutics at the MaRS Discovery District is viewed by many as a landmark event for the commercialization of stem cell research in Toronto (Photo by Johnny Guatto)

Chris Sorensen

Author legacy

Chris Sorensen

Topic

Rotman School of Management

In the world of regenerative medicine, the recent US$225 million investment by drug giant Bayer and health-care investment firm Versant Ventures continues to loom large.

The seven-month old deal to create BlueRock Therapeutics, which involves key University of Toronto researchers and will focus on cardiac and Parkinson’s treatments, is viewed by many as a validation of Canada’s efforts to commercialize its leadership position in stem cell research.

It’s also expected to be a hot topic among the 150 scientists, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who are expected to attend next week’s The Business of Regenerative Medicine: Leadership, Innovation & Entrepreneurship conference at U of T’s Rotman School of Management.

“This is really visible in this community and it’s playing in two absolutely huge medical spaces,” says Will Mitchell, a professor of strategic management at Rotman.

He added the conference will include a case study of BlueRock’s formation, which involved one of the largest-ever financings in the biotechnology space.

“The question is: ‘How on Earth did someone pull this off, and can we do it again, whether here in Toronto or elsewhere?’” says Mitchell.

BlueRock, co-located in Boston, New York and Toronto, is a calculated gamble by Big Pharma that stem cell researchers can soon turn stem cell science into real-world treatments – or even cures – for a wide range of diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, blindness and neurodegenerative disorders.

Bayer and Versant were drawn to Toronto because it's home to top stem cell researchers like Gordon Keller, a professor in U of T’s department of medical biophysics and the director of the University Health Network’s McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine, and Michael Laflamme, a pioneer of cardiac cell therapy who is a senior scientist at the Toronto General Research Institute and an associate professor at U of T’s department of laboratory medicine and pathobiology.

Another key attraction: the U of T-affiliated Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine (CCRM), which launched in 2011 to speed the commercialization of stem cell research in Canada.

Stacey Johnson, a spokesperson for CCRM, one of the conference’s organizers, says this year’s event will also include a heavy focus on entrepreneurship, including a startup pitch competition. "Canada is very strong when it comes to the science of regenerative medicine," Johnson says. "But where we're lagging behind is turning those discoveries into products and companies. We're hoping this conference will help."

It's the second time Toronto is playing host to the 10-year-old international conference.

In addition to Mitchell, participants from U of T include: Shana Kelley, a professor in the departments of pharmaceutical sciences, chemistry, biochemistry and the Institute for Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, and Ajay Agrawal, who is a Rotman professor and the founder of the Creative Destruction Lab, one of 10 business accelerators at U of T.

The conference will also tackle thorny issues surrounding intellectual property, financing and regulatory approvals.

“If you think about going from [basic] research through research and development, pre-clinical work, clinical trials all the way to large-scale production, marketing and regulatory affairs – it’s a really complex puzzle in this space,” Mitchell says.

Peter Zandstra, CCRM’s chief scientist and the former executive director of U of T’s Medicine by Design initiative, says Canada has painstakingly built a “pipeline” for regenerative medicine that runs all the way from basic research to clinical trials.

“Now is really the time for next steps,” says Zandstra, who was recently appointed the founding director of the University of British Columbia’s School of Biomedical Engineering and will also be a presenter at the conference.

“How do we really consolidate these companies and grow them here?”

Manufacturing capacity could be a key ingredient. “It’s a fairly unique skill,” Zandstra says, noting it can be difficult for regenerative medicine startups to move into clinical trials because of the sheer quantity of stem cells that are needed.

“That’s one of the things that attracted BlueRock. We had solutions to some of the problems they faced in bringing new therapeutics to market.”

MBA and PhD students at U of T come together to map regenerative medicine ecosystem

ullahnor — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 21:34:21 +0000

MBA and PhD students at U of T come together to map regenerative medicine ecosystem

ullahnor Thu, 02/02/2017 - 16:34

Cutline

Yonatan Lipsitz (centre), a PhD candidate at U of T's Institute of Biomaterials & Biomedical Engineering, discusses regenerative medicine commercialization at a team meeting as Anna Kobb (left) and Arif Aziz (right) look on (photo courtesy of Rotman)

Ann Perry

Author legacy

Ann Perry

Topic

Breaking Research

IBBME

Rotman School of Management

When Arif Aziz learned last fall about a new independent study project that was bringing together MBA candidates and PhD students in health sciences and engineering to map the global market for stem cell therapies, he jumped at the opportunity.

“I couldn’t believe it when I saw the posting,” said Aziz, an MBA candidate at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. “I thought to myself, ‘This is what I want to do.’”

The for-credit project – part of a unique collaboration launched in fall 2016 between Rotman and U of T’s Medicine by Design initiative — offered Aziz a chance to combine his business training with his expertise in regenerative medicine.

He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Sprott Centre for Stem Cell Research at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute before making the leap to industry to work as a consultant in the bioscience sector and pursue his MBA.

“We have all this cool science,” said Aziz, part of the five-member team, which also included three PhD candidates from the laboratories of Medicine by Design-funded researchers and another student from Rotman’s MBA program. “So how can we commercialize it? How can we translate it into something that impacts society?”

Arif Aziz (left) and Anton Neschadim (centre), both of Rotman's MBA program, and Jessica Yu (right), a PhD candidate in the Institute of Biomaterials & Biomedical Engineering, discuss issues in regenerative medicine commercialization at a team meeting (photo courtesy of Rotman)

These are key questions that researchers, doctors, life sciences companies and investors are grappling with in the global race to harness stem cells to improve treatments for conditions such as stroke, diabetes and liver disease. U of T has long been at the forefront of regenerative medicine research, starting in the early 1960s with the identification of blood stem cells by biophysicist James Till and hematologist Ernest McCulloch.

Medicine by Design is building on this legacy of excellence by bringing together more than 100 researchers from across U of T and its affiliated hospitals, along with hundreds of postdoctoral fellows and graduate students in collaborative teams to accelerate breakthroughs in regenerative medicine.

With its commercialization partner, the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine (CCRM), the initiative is also driving Toronto’s regenerative medicine ecosystem and propelling new therapies to market – and ultimately to patients – more quickly.

Toronto has seen significant clinical translation and commercialization activity in regenerative medicine in recent months.

In December, bioscience giant Bayer AG and venture capital firm Versant Ventures announced a $225 million (U.S.) investment – one of the largest Series A launches the bioscience sector has ever seen – to create Toronto-based BlueRock Therapeutics.

Bayer, Versant back commercialization of stem cell therapies in Toronto: "We go where the science is best"

ullahnor — Mon, 12 Dec 2016 18:52:24 +0000

Bayer, Versant back commercialization of stem cell therapies in Toronto: "We go where the science is best"

ullahnor Mon, 12/12/2016 - 13:52

Cutline

Professor Gordon Keller, director of the University Health Network's McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine and a world authority on stem cells, speaks at the announcement today at MaRS Discover District (all photos by Johnny Guatto)

Heidi Singer

Author legacy

Heidi Singer

Topic

Breaking Research

Stem Cell

University Health Network

Alan Christie with files from Tyler Irving

At US$225 million, it’s one of the largest investments the biotech world has ever seen – and it positions Toronto as a world leader in the development of regenerative medicine therapy, experts say.

Pharmaceutical giant Bayer AG and venture capital firm Versant Ventures today announced the creation of a company that will turn stem cell science into real-world treatments. BlueRock Therapeutics will be based in Toronto’s MaRS Discovery District, as well as in New York and Boston. The company will first work on developing new treatments for the heart and for degenerative brain disease.

“Why Canada? Why Toronto? The answer is simple,” said Jerel Davis, a managing director at Versant Ventures. “We go where the science is best.”

The four-year financial commitment is the second-largest initial investment in a startup in the history of the biotechnology industry, according to officials of Versant Ventures. The U.S.-based funders said they chose Toronto for the new firm because of the city’s strength in regenerative medicine research.

“We all know Canadian scientists are world renowned in how stem cells can be used to repair damaged tissue,” said Navdeep Bains, federal Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development. “The considerable investment being made now is validating that expertise.”

The investors said they were attracted to Toronto because of the regenerative medicine “dream team” of Gordon Keller and Michael Laflamme. Keller, director of the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine at the University Health Network and a professor of medical biophysics at the University of Toronto, is a world authority on stem cells. He is perhaps best known for turning embryonic stem cells into heart cells – a crucial first step in the quest to use stem cells to repair heart muscle in patients who have had heart attacks. Laflamme, a senior scientist at the Toronto General Research Institute and an associate professor in U of T's department of laboratory medicine and pathobiology, is at the forefront of developing pioneering techniques to transplant these cells safely and successfully.

“This tremendous news confirms again that the world is taking notice of the remarkable research and talent base here in Toronto, anchored by the University of Toronto and its partner hospitals, and nurtured by key institutions such as MaRS," said U of T President Meric Gertler. "And it builds on the landmark $114-million grant through the Canada First Research Excellence Fund for our Medicine by Design project, which demonstrates the federal government’s strategic approach to supporting research clusters of truly world renown.”

Premier Kathleen Wynne and federal Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Navdeep Bains were part of the announcement for the US $225 million investment in stem cell therapies for heart and degenerative brain diseases

Bains praised the initiative as a model for the kind of investment Canada wants to attract. He was joined during the announcement at the MaRS Discovery District by Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne.

“This new venture has the potential to impact the lives of people affected by heart disease around the world,” Wynne said “I am pleased that Bayer and Versant selected Ontario to conduct this important research. It will create good jobs and economic growth, and illustrates the confidence global companies have in Ontario’s business environment and capacity for innovation.”

As one of its first priorities, the new company will work with CCRM – a Toronto-based not-for-profit that advances regenerative medicine – to create cells to rebuild muscle damaged by heart attacks and chronic heart failure. That effort will draw on Keller’s expertise creating heart muscle cells derived from stem cells.

“We have closely tracked the field of regenerative medicine for the past five years and believe the time is right to invest in stem cell therapies given recent breakthroughs in cell differentiation, manufacturing and engineering,” said Versant’s Davis.

U of T's Medicine by Design is headed by Professor Peter Zandstra (pictured at centre)

Toronto has been a centre for stem cell research starting with the 1960 identification of blood stem cells by biophysicist James Till and hematologist Ernest McCulloch, both of U of T and the Ontario Cancer Institute/Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. This discovery was instrumental in the use of blood stem cell transplants to treat diseases such as leukemia.

In the decades since the Till and McCulloch discovery, stem cells have come to be seen by scientists as potentially offering ways to treat – and perhaps cure – a host of devastating and costly illnesses such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, blindness and neurodegenerative disorders.

In 2015, the federal government gave the University of Toronto the largest single research award in its history – $114 million – to support Medicine by Design, an ambitious initiative led by Professor Peter Zandstra, and including cross-disciplinary researchers such as Professor Molly Shoichet to advance the design of cells, materials and therapeutics to reach this goal.

It harnesses the exceptional expertise at U of T and its affiliated hospitals and fosters unique multidisciplinary collaborations to generate new discoveries in regenerative medicine. Through strategic investments and partnerships, it is also creating a pipeline from research to commercialization that will enable Canada to realize the full value of its research advances and bring them to the world.

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sgupta — Wed, 13 Jan 2016 14:30:39 +0000

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau backs commercialization of stem cell research by U of T and partners sgupta Wed, 01/13/2016 - 09:30

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Professor Peter Zandstra, seen here with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, U of T President Meric Gertler and Minister of International Trade Chrystia Freeland, is the new executive director of Medicine By Design (all photos by Johnny Guatto)

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Alan Christie, with files from Tyler Irving

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Regenerative medicine conference puts spotlight on Toronto

sgupta — Fri, 30 Oct 2015 17:07:51 +0000

Regenerative medicine conference puts spotlight on Toronto sgupta Fri, 10/30/2015 - 13:07

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Professor Peter Zandstra and University Professor Emeritus James Till were among the world-leading researchers who gathered in Toronto for the Till & McCulloch Meetings (photo by James Poremba)

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Stacey Johnson