Innovations & Partnerships Office

Budding entrepreneurs, leading scientists and future business leaders from the University of Toronto community played a leading role at the 2024 Collision tech conference in downtown Toronto.

Running over three days this week, the conference drew some 40,000 attendees from across the spheres of tech, business and media, including more than 1,600 startups and 700 investors.

The rapid development of artificial intelligence technologies and their impact on business and society were key themes for many of the conference’s keynotes and exhibits – so it was no surprise that U of T’s AI luminaries were front and centre.

They included U of T alumnus Aidan Gomez, co-founder of language processing startup Cohere – which has raised hundreds of millions from investors and generated significant industry buzz.

He urged businesses to commit to adopting AI tools to support their workers.

“Making sure that you’re delivering the tools that your employees need to be competitive and effective is crucial,” Gomez said during his talk on Tuesday.

He added that augmentation of workforces with AI co-pilots and assistants is inevitable – including in industries that might not stand out as obvious adopters of the technology. He shared the example of a natural resources insurance firm that built an AI co-pilot – powered by Cohere – to help their actuaries speed up their research, craft more accurate bids and win more contracts.

“I never would have thought a natural resources insurance company would be adopting LLMs [large language models], but they are, and it’s having an impact. It’s actually helping them win more business,” Gomez said. “So I think the technology is completely horizontal.”

Gomez also cited the medical sector – particularly, drug discovery – as another area that’s poised to benefit massively from AI advances.

Aidan Gomez, a U of T alumnus, talked about how AI will be used to augment the workforce (photo by Polina Teif)

University Professor Emeritus Geoffrey Hinton, the influential computer scientist often dubbed the “godfather of AI,” also identified medical care and productivity as two key areas that will see significant improvements thanks to AI. However, much of his discussion, titled "Can We Control AI?", focused on his previously-cited concerns about how AI development could ultimately wrest control from humans given the current race to develop the technology and the absence of sufficient safeguards.

“Even if I’m totally benevolent and I just want to achieve what you asked me to achieve, I’ll realize that if I get more control, it will be easier to do that,” Hinton said of AI agents.

“And actually, if these things are much smarter than us, they’ll realize: Just take the control away from people and it will be much more efficient … and that seems to be like a very slippery path.”

Geoffrey Hinton warned of the existential dangers posed by unchecked AI development (photo by Johnny Guatto)

Gomez, for his part, said he doesn’t believe AI poses a serious threat.

“The notion that the technology is going to start self-improving, that it’s going to start manipulating people, that it’s going to take over, seize power and displace humans: that’s a sci-fi narrative,” he said. “I am empathetic to it – we’ve been writing stories about that exact scenario for decades, since before computers, and so it’s very deeply embedded in our cultural brainstems ... I just don’t think it’s true.”

Earlier at the conference, Raquel Urtasun, founder of self-driving trucking startup Waabi, spoke about generative AI and how Waabi is applying the technology to autonomous trucks. Her keynote took place following the company’s announcement that it raised US$200 million in Series B funding to support the deployment of driverless trucks in 2025.

“Everything will be controlled by generative AI systems inside the vehicle and nothing else. This is a breakthrough for the industry, where such a thing has never happened before,” said Urtasun, a professor in the department of computer science in U of T's Faculty of Arts & Science.

Raquel Urtasun spoke about her self-driving truck startup Waabi (photo by Polina Teif)

The conference also featured demos from other promising U of T startups including Erthos, which has invented sustainable alternatives to plastics and is now using machine learning to accelerate biomaterials discovery.

“Our platform allows us to design effective biomaterials five times faster and with 92 per cent less cost compared to our industry,” said co-founder and CEO Nuha Siddiqui.

Collision’s final year in Toronto was expected to draw some 40,000 attendees (photo by Johnny Guatto)

During the conference, U of T’s booth near the main stage featured exhibits from campus-linked accelerators, institutional strategic initiatives, academic divisions and the Innovations and Partnerships Office. U of T’s Black Founders Network was also at Collision as one of the organizers of the Black Innovation Zone.

Collision 2024 marked the fifth and final edition of the annual conference in Toronto.

U of T pharmacy grad co-founded startup that promises to help detect and treat cancers

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 06 Jun 2019 18:54:47 +0000

U of T pharmacy grad co-founded startup that promises to help detect and treat cancers

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 06/06/2019 - 14:54

Cutline

“Our nanoparticulate system uses manganese and can simultaneously detect cancer using MRI and improve radiation therapy by sensitizing cancer cells,” says Mohammad Ali Amini, the co-founder and CEO of Nanology Labs (photo by Steve Southon)

Topic

Creative Destruction Lab

Entrepreneurship

Global

Health Innovation Hub

Impact Centre

Innovations & Partnerships Office

Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy

Research & Innovation

UTEST

When Mohammad Ali Amini receives his PhD from the University of Toronto this week, he will also be celebrating the successful rise of Nanology Labs, the startup he launched while completing his research at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy.

Based on technologies invented in the lab of Professor Xiao Yu (Shirley) Wu over two decades, Nanology is developing an innovative low-toxicity MRI contrast agent that circumvents the limitations of other MRI contrast agents currently available to detect and treat brain cancer.

“Our nanoparticulate system uses manganese and can simultaneously detect cancer using MRI and improve radiation therapy by sensitizing cancer cells,” says Amini.

Manganese, an element that already exists in the human body, is safer and less toxic than MRI contrast agents made of gadolinium, which comes with a U.S. Food and Drug Administration warning.

In addition to concerns about toxicity, current MRI contrast agents are not sensitive enough to catch cancer early, says Amini. “We lack means for early-stage brain cancer detection in clinics. Roughly 65 per cent of brain cancer patients are diagnosed at later stages and, in North America, roughly 20,000 people a year lose their lives.”

Patients would receive an injection of the agent, which passes the formidable blood-brain barrier. It then illuminates and oxygenates the tumor to improve radiation therapy performance. To date, Amini has seen promising results in various pre-clinical models. The goal is to move the technology toward first-stage clinical trials.

Connecting with U of T’s Innovations & Partnerships Office and several U of T-based accelerators, including the Health Innovation Hub (H2i), UTEST and Impact Centre, helped Amini understand how a technology could be translated into commercialization and patient care. He got advice on how to conduct market research, write a good business plan and effectively explore the feasibility of his idea.

“It’s a very challenging path and it is a huge learning curve for scientists – you have to be persistent and passionate and believe in yourself and the technology,” says Amini, who completed a degree in veterinary medicine in Iran before joining Wu’s lab in 2013.

He also credits Wu, who is both a co-founder of Nanology Labs and his doctoral supervisor, for providing him with the necessary support and opportunities.

During Wu’s 25-year academic career, her lab has invented many delivery technologies with issued or pending patents.

“However,” she says, “there is a huge gap between patenting technologies and developing nanomedicine products to provide benefits to patients. Trainees, like Mohammad, with a strong passion to lead a startup to develop technologies into products, are extremely valuable. I am delighted to see the success that Nanology has achieved at this early stage under his leadership.

“Mohammad has set a role model for other trainees who may explore entrepreneurship as their career path, especially with an aim to commercialize technologies for which they have been involved in the invention.”

Nanology is the first startup to come out of the Wu lab.

While Amini has entertained offers to pursue a post-doctoral degree from other institutions, he has decided to stay the course as CEO and co-founder of Nanology Labs.

Since June 2018, Nanology Labs has picked up significant funding support from several entrepreneurship pitch competitions, including $50,000 from the Ontario Brain Institute's ONtrepreneurs program, $25,000 from MaRS HealthKick Pitch Competition 2019, and the $25,000 first prize at this year’s RBC Prize for Innovation & Entrepreneurship, an annual pitch competition and finale of the True Blue Expo, the capstone event of U of T’s Entrepreneurship Week.

The financing Amini has secured will help the company manufacture the agent formulation and lead to additional pre-clinical studies for safety evaluation. He will also be part of the Creative Destruction Lab’s (CDL) Super Session, an annual showcase of CDL’s graduating early-stage tech companies. The CDL Super Session 2019 is taking place June 12-13 at U of T’s Rotman School of Management.

When he began his PhD six years ago, Amini did not envision he would be leading a startup company. His takeaway?

“If you want to be successful, create your own path,” he says. “This is what I’ve learned.”

U of T innovation centre to help form ‘new cornerstone’ of the Canadian economy

noreen.rasbach — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 19:39:34 +0000

U of T innovation centre to help form ‘new cornerstone’ of the Canadian economy

noreen.rasbach Mon, 07/23/2018 - 15:39

Cutline

A rendering of phase one of the new University of Toronto innovation centre at the corner of College Street and University Avenue, as viewed from the west (all renderings courtesy of Weiss/Manfredi Architects)

Chris Sorensen

Topic

City & Culture

Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Innovations & Partnerships Office

Meric Gertler

ThisIsThePlace

Toronto’s burgeoning innovation district – home to hundreds of researchers, entrepreneurs and innovation-minded partners – is poised to undergo a dramatic expansion.

The University of Toronto has confirmed plans to build a new innovation centre at the corner of College Street and University Avenue, directly across the street from the MaRS Discovery District and up the road from several of the country’s top research hospitals.

Part of a longer-term development plan, the first phase of the project will consist of a 14-storey tower that proposes to house U of T Entrepreneurship, the Innovations & Partnerships Office and the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence.

The gently sloping tower, which will replace the western portion of the Banting and Best complex, will also devote half of its 250,000 square feet of floor space to startup companies and established corporate partners who want to be closer to U of T’s cutting-edge research. It’s expected to be completed in 2021.

“The University of Toronto has played a key role in the GTA’s emergence as a global centre for innovation,” said U of T President Meric Gertler.

“In fields ranging from artificial intelligence to regenerative and precision medicine, our world-class researchers and students continue to have a profound impact on innovation and entrepreneurship in the Toronto region.”

A rendering of phase one of the innovation centre, as viewed from the southwest

U of T has emerged as a leader in creating startups in recent years, producing more than 500 companies that have collectively generated more than $1 billion in investment in the past decade. Since 2010, the university has also filed more than 400 patent applications and negotiated over 250 license agreements related to technologies developed by its researchers.

With the new innovation centre, U of T will significantly increase its capacity – and that of Toronto – to play a significant role in shaping the future of Canada’s knowledge economy.

Designed by New York-based Weiss/Manfredi Architects in collaboration with Toronto’s Teeple Architects, the new centre will encourage student entrepreneurs to rub shoulders with industry veterans, using a mix of office and instructional space, shared meeting rooms, lounges and public areas – some of which will be connected vertically between floors.

The lobby of phase one of the innovation centre

Phase two of the project – a second, taller tower connected by a multi-storey podium – will support U of T’s innovation and commercialization activities in the biomedical and regenerative medicine space.

“If you purpose-build a building to support interaction, collaboration and the growth of spin-off companies, you get a much higher success rate,” explained Scott Mabury, U of T’s vice-president of operations.

At the same time, the centre’s soaring atrium and open, inviting street-front design will serve to better connect the public with the university, and those working inside with the people whose future they are working to transform – yet another example of how U of T is very much a part of the city in which it is located.

A rendering of a lounge area in phase one of the project

The new development comes at a time when the physical structures housing much of U of T’s commercialization apparatus are bursting at the seams. The Banting and Best buildings, built in 1930 and 1954 respectively, house an array of startups, accelerators and programs. There are over 50 U of T-affiliated startups in the Banting and Best buildings now – with a waiting list. Banting is also home to U of T’s ONRamp co-working space, which was created in partnership with RBC and is open to entrepreneurs from U of T and partner universities in southern Ontario.

“There is huge support and need for this type of building – it’s the right space in the right location,” said Mabury, adding that planning for the facility first began about eight years ago.

Mabury said the new centre will amplify the innovation and commercialization activities already underway elsewhere at U of T, MaRS and downtown Toronto’s proliferating array of research institutes, incubators and accelerators – an expanding hub that’s already winning praise for its open, urban-centric approach to encouraging innovation.

“Our aspiration is to help build a new cornerstone for the Canadian economy.”

A rendering of U of T's new innovation centre (white buildings, at left) on the corner of College Street and University Avenue, once both phases are complete

Beyond the lab: U of T creates new guidebooks for researchers seeking to commercialize their work

noreen.rasbach — Tue, 15 May 2018 14:07:44 +0000

Beyond the lab: U of T creates new guidebooks for researchers seeking to commercialize their work

noreen.rasbach Tue, 05/15/2018 - 10:07

Cutline

Jennifer Fraser, U of T’s director, innovations, stands in a boardroom decorated with framed copies of the university’s patents (photo by Chris Sorensen)

Chris Sorensen

Topic

Our Community

Computer Science

Innovations & Partnerships Office

Molecular Genetics

Research & Innovation

Philip Kim is an expert in cancer-related protein interactions, but he had a lot to learn when it came to commercializing his potentially life-saving research.

The associate professor of computer science and molecular genetics at the University of Toronto first filed an invention disclosure in 2014 based on a lab process related to cancer inhibitors, but ultimately decided not to push for a patent application because he sensed a lack of interest – a decision he now considers a miscalculation.

Two years later, he found himself in the opposite situation.

“We had already published something – a method to predict targets for antibodies – and a company approached me about licensing it. So, basically, we filed an invention disclosure after we had already published, which is not the way it’s supposed to go.”

Kim’s initial missteps aren’t exactly unusual – even at U of T. Put simply: Researchers are busy, focused on their work, and can’t always be expected to know the mechanics of technology transfer.

So, to help educate and improve awareness, U of T’s Innovations & Partnerships Office, or IPO, spent the past year developing two step-by-step guides to commercialization at the university.

Read the technology transfer guide

Read the startup guide

The first guide explains how U of T’s technology transfer process works, from the patent process to negotiating license agreements. It also details U of T’s “inventor’s choice” policy, which allows researchers to either commercialize an invention themselves or offer it to the university.

The second guide, meantime, aims to demystify the process of launching a startup company based on intellectual property developed at the university.

Philip Kim, an expert in cancer-related protein interactions, filed an invention disclosure last year related to mirror-image molecules that can help make drugs longer-lasting (photo by Jovana Drinjakovic)

“We were getting a lot of one-off questions from our inventors and the same themes kept coming up,” explains Jennifer Fraser, U of T’s director, innovations.

“We felt there must be a better way to introduce people to what it means to be an inventor at U of T, who we are and how we can help.”

Fraser says the three most common questions the office receives from U of T researchers are when, why and how to file an invention disclosure, with the “when” query causing the most consternation. She adds that many of the 209 invention disclosures her office received last year – three-quarters of which were submitted by teams that include both a faculty member and student, and half of which were submitted by women – pertain to technologies unlikely to be deemed “business-ready.”

To help researchers better gauge timing, the technology transfer guide spells out nine steps of technology readiness, from observing and reporting basic principles in the lab to successfully proving the technology in an operational environment.

Researchers considering making an invention disclosure are also encouraged to reach out to IPO as early as possible for guidance. The office has considerable expertise. Since 2010, U of T has filed more that 400 patent applications and negotiated over 250 license agreements. When it comes to determining which elements of an investigator’s research hold the most commercial promise, or are most suitable for a patent application, having industry perspective is useful.

There may also be opportunities to strategize around timing.

“Let’s say they’re waiting to find out about a grant needed to complete a pilot study, which will provide some great data to support a particular invention,” says Marilee Krinsky, the office’s commercialization manager for life sciences. “We might say: ‘Let’s wait. If you get that data, it’s going to be a much better quality submission.’”

Fraser ultimately hopes the guides build knowledge about commercialization opportunities at U of T and help researchers feel more comfortable about participating in the process.

“I hope it facilitates a more constructive conversation and brings forward new ideas – really just generate more interest,” she says, adding that, in addition to making money for inventors, commercialization can help speed the adoption of new technologies and pay for future research.

As for Kim, he filed his latest invention disclosure – mirror-image molecules that can be used to make drugs longer-lasting and more effective – early last year, and followed it up with a provisional patent application.

He is now working on commercializing the technology with several biotech partners.

With his research increasingly taking on an applied bent, Kim now considers himself something of a commercialization veteran. “I’m very deep into it – I’m talking to companies all the time and I have a sponsored research agreement,” he says.

“The research we do ended up being very useful for a lot of things.”

Changing tack: How U of T startup Nymi found an unexpected, but lucrative niche

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 23 Feb 2018 14:56:58 +0000

Changing tack: How U of T startup Nymi found an unexpected, but lucrative niche

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 02/23/2018 - 09:56

Cutline

Founded by U of T researchers in 2011, Nymi uses people's heartbeats as biometric identifiers to log them into iPhones, iPads – and now industrial equipment (photo courtesy of Nymi)

Chris Sorensen

Topic

Our Community

Alumni

Creative Destruction Lab

Entrepreneurship

Innovations & Partnerships Office

Research & Innovation

Rotman School of Management

Startup

ThisIsThePlace

UTEST

Subheadline

“You have to build something people want to use – not something that’s imposed on them”

Nymi, a University of Toronto startup, made a big splash five years ago when it first unveiled a wristband that uses people's heartbeats to wirelessly log them into iPhones, iPads and other devices – no passwords needed.

There was just one problem.

“For a person to not just buy it, but wear it all day, it would have to – out of the box – work immediately with everything they owned,” says Karl Martin, a U of T alumnus who is Nymi’s CEO and co-founder.

While that might be possible for a consumer electronics giant like Apple, selling everything from watches to computers, Martin and his team soon realized it was a significant hill to climb for their startup. So they turned their attention to business customers and soon stumbled upon a potentially vast market as unexpected as it was underserved: Big Pharma – and regulated industrial environments, more broadly.

Martin says pharmaceutical manufacturers need to track what their employees are doing on the production line at all times. It’s not so much an issue of security, he says, as it is a need to create an audit trail for regulators in case something goes wrong.

“You have workers who are entering passwords 100 times per shift,” Martin says. “A worker on a production line literally gets a pop-up every few minutes and has to enter a password.”

This Is The Place: Read more stories about entrepreneurship at U of T

Not surprisingly, such frequent interruptions make it difficult to get much work done, translating into lost profits. Hence, Nymi’s revamped sales pitch for the Nymi Band positions it as a way to boost productivity without compromising security.

It’s a message that seems to be resonating. Martin says Nymi has spent the past couple years conducting pilot projects with most of the world’s top 20 pharmaceutical companies, spanning Europe, North America and Asia. Armed with $15 million in additional financing raised last spring, the company is now getting ready to roll out its updated wristband solution.

“We’re going full deployment this year,” Martin says.

It’s been a long road for Martin and his team. He initially incorporated the company in 2011 with co-founder and fellow U of T researcher Foteini Agrafioti, who is now the chief science officer at Royal Bank. Then called Bionym, the original goal was simply to license technology that used people’s unique heartbeat signatures as an always-on biometric identifier.

But a trip through U of T’s Creative Destruction Lab accelerator, affiliated with U of T’s Rotman School of Management, convinced Martin and Agrafioti to think bigger by developing their own hardware. The Nymi Band was born.

Was it a mistake to launch the Nymi Band as a consumer product? Far from it, Martin says. Rather, focusing on consumers allowed Nymi to establish a “friendly, positive relationship with the product” – important for something you expect people, be it consumers or employees, to wear in place of jewelry or a wristwatch.

“You have to build something people want to use – not something that’s imposed on them.”

Martin’s search for the right business model isn’t unusual for entrepreneurs seeking to capitalize on a novel research innovation. Many are breaking new ground and don’t have the luxury of simply building on an idea that’s already been tested by a competitor.

The upside, Martin says, is that when you finally get a hit, you tend to hit big.

“People think you came out of nowhere,” he says, “and there’s barriers for others following because the approach you took was non-obvious – so now you’re way ahead of the game.”

Martin says the direction he received from CDL, then in its first year of operation, was invaluable to Nymi’s development. The startup also received guidance from Kurtis Scissons, the entrepreneurship manager at U of T’s innovations and partnership office and a co-director of the UTEST accelerator.

Martin also credits the startup’s decision to remain in Toronto for its continued success, citing an abundance of talent and a growing network of incubators and accelerators to help startups succeed.

“In the old days, the saying was go to [Silicon] Valley to get the capital, but now investors come here,” he says.

“If you’re checking the pulse the last few years, there’s real a buzz – there’s serious companies being built here and serial entrepreneurs who are investing back into the ecosystem.

“I can’t think of a better place.”

Learn more about U of T Entrepreneurship

Innovation machine: How one U of T researcher is having an outsized impact on the health startup space

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 16:25:17 +0000

Innovation machine: How one U of T researcher is having an outsized impact on the health startup space

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 12/07/2017 - 11:25

Cutline

Professor Paul Santerre (centre) has filed for more than 60 patents, sits on the boards of three startups that have emerged from his lab and is advising 41 others though U of T's Health Innovation Hub accelerator (photo by Chris Sorensen)

Topic

Health Innovation Hub

Innovations & Partnerships Office

Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering

Research & Innovation

ThisIsThePlace

Paul Santerre recently flew to Boston to help launch a cerebral catheter that incorporates an anti-clotting polymer additive created by Interface Biologics, the company he co-founded nearly two decades ago based on his University of Toronto lab work.

It was the sort of business trip that should be routine for the U of T biomaterials professor, given that Interface, by his count, has previously made five such announcements.

But that didn’t dampen the enthusiasm of one of the university’s most prolific entrepreneurs.

“For Interface Biologics to be entering the neural area is big,” says Santerre, who has appointments in U of T’s Faculty of Dentistry and the Institute for Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering. “A lot of imaging tools are starting to rely on catheter technologies to peer into spots where they can’t get the resolution they need with an MRI.

“This is an innovative product in an area that’s going to be a game-changer. It sets the stage for the next phase of growth for this local company of ours.”

The extra-ventricular catheter drain in question is designed by Knoxville, Tenn.-based startup Arkis Biosciences. Called CerebroFlo, the catheter will employ Interface’s Endexo technology, which a press release states “has been proven to be highly effective for reducing catheter occlusions and thrombosis,” including in a recent study of 656 patients at the Ottawa Hospital.

Endexo grew out of Santerre’s lab research in the 1990s. It’s a polymer additive that essentially tricks the body to ignoring its presence, preventing the formation of blood clots that can break off and lodge in blood vessels. It’s already being used in everything from flexible PICC catheters to dialysis machine membranes – basically anywhere that patients’ blood and medical instruments come into contact for extended periods.

The technology also helps reduce the chance of infection, since blood clots tend to be a breeding ground for bacteria – a feature Santerre says is critical for neurological applications.

“You can imagine what happens if you get a bug crawling up those catheter lines into the brain,” he says. “It’s over, very fast.”

The continued success of Interface is a testament both to Santerre’s research prowess and his relentless drive to move such discoveries out of the lab into the commercial realm where they can achieve maximum impact.

Santerre, who recently won an Ontario Professional Engineers Award for entrepreneurship and a Governor General’s Innovation Award, sits on the board of three different startups that grew out of his lab. In addition to Interface, they include Polumiros, which makes a polymer filler that can be used to cosmetically repair patients’ breasts following a lumpectomy, and an emerging startup built around a ceramic-based “bone tape” that could change the way facial fractures are repaired.

He’s also working on a biodegradable cardiac patch that coaxes damaged cardiac tissues to regenerate themselves.

Other research interests include devising new restorative dental materials, drug delivery platforms and biomaterials for tissue engineering.

In all, U of T’s Innovations and Partnerships Office says Santerre has filed for 57 patents over the years, although it cautions its records aren’t exhaustive. Santerre, for his part, says he lost count somewhere after his 60^th patent filing.

Joseph Ferenbok is the director of U of T's translational research program and co-director of the H2i accelerator (photo by Chris Sorensen)

Santerre’s zeal for commercializing innovation goes beyond his own lab. He’s also a driving force behind U of T’s Health Innovation Hub (H2i) incubator, one of several entrepreneurship hubs spread across U of T’s three Toronto-area campuses.

“His goal is to get 100 companies started that are successful in their own right to help with our ecosystem,” says Joseph Ferenbok, who is the director of U of T’s translational research program in the Faculty of Medicine and co-directs H2i with Santerre.

“He wants to help students, trainees and researchers avoid some of the pitfalls that he experienced.”

To that end, Santerre is currently acting as an adviser to no fewer than 41 different H2i startups.

Some of those budding entrepreneurs participated in a recent H2i pitch event. Their ideas ranged from an expandable trocar (the access tunnels used to insert minimal invasive surgical tools) to better-fitting radiation shields for physicians.

Other startups that have worked with H2i include: Trexo Robotics, which makes a child-sized exoskeleton for children who are unable to walk; WinterLight Labs, which uses AI to track cognitive impairment through speech; and SensOR, which has developed a force-sensing technology to aid surgeons using minimally invasive techniques.

Paul Santerre, far right, and Richard Hegele, the Faculty of Medicine's vice-dean of research and innovation (centre), with the winners of a recent H2i pitch competition (photo by Chris Sorensen)

While medical innovations are usually thought of in terms of improving patient outcomes, Santerre says a big opportunity exists for entrepreneurs who can find ways to deliver care more efficiently in an age of ballooning health costs.

He points, as an example, to Interface’s work with Fresenius Medical Care, the world’s largest provider of dialysis products and services. Santerre says each dialysis procedure currently requires patients to be administered expensive anticoagulant drugs – a cost that could be significantly reduced with addition of Endexo.

“There are millions of patients that undergo regular dialysis daily in North America and around the world,” he notes, adding that all those dosages of anticoagulants quickly add up to hundreds of millions of dollars.

“You can see why they’re very excited about this technology in terms of cost to health care.”

Santerre credits his training as an engineer for developing his nose for efficiency. While many of his research counterparts in the 1990s were focused on costly biological anti-clotting agents that suffered from stability and shelf-life issues, Santerre says he gravitated to the potential of comparatively cheap and stable polymers.

Then, seemingly overnight, spiralling health costs became a front-page story, particularly in the United States. “That was the a-ha moment that very few people were paying attention to – I mean, to be honest, I wasn’t paying attention to it either in 1990 when I started,” Santerre says.

Maybe not, but Santerre was better prepared than most to take advantage of the coming shift in priorities – and he jumped at the opportunity. “I was thinking, ‘Oh my gosh. This is going to be significant,’ because the need to drive health-care costs down is an imperative to saving the system,” he says.

“I always say, ‘Luck is being ready when the right time happens.’ And we were ready when the right time happened.”

Learn more about U of T Entrepreneurship

The next blockbuster? U of T startup Protagenic Therapeutics goes public on U.S. stock market

ullahnor — Fri, 10 Mar 2017 19:38:53 +0000

The next blockbuster? U of T startup Protagenic Therapeutics goes public on U.S. stock market

ullahnor Fri, 03/10/2017 - 14:38

Cutline

Protagenic Therapeutics comes from research done at David Lovejoy's lab. From left to right, Dr. David Hogg, Professor David Lovejoy, master's students Mia Husic and Ola Michalec and PhD researcher Andrea D'Aquila (photo by Johnny Guatto)

Jennifer Robinson

Author legacy

Jennifer Robinson

Topic

Breaking Research

Health

Prozac

Protagenic Therapeutics

Innovations & Partnerships Office

Subheadline

Company fuelled by ongoing discoveries at U of T

The fortuitous discovery of an ancient gene, which made the leap from bacteria to animals hundreds of millions of years ago, could be the next billion-dollar breakthrough in the antidepressant market.

Bigger than Prozac? Maybe.

A game-changer in the industry if approved? Absolutely, says David Lovejoy, a U of T neuroendocrinology professor.

The company, Protagenic Therapeutics, founded on research conducted in Lovejoy's lab at the Ramsay Wright building, took a leap forward by getting listed on the New York-based OTCQB stock exchange, considered a stepping stone to the NASDAQ.

“This is an entirely new gene, a new process and a paradigm shift in terms of how we look at drugs to relate to stress-associated pathology like depression, anxiety, addictions, post-traumatic stress disorder and even some of the more psychotic conditions like bipolar and schizophrenia,” Lovejoy explains.

“This could lead to an entirely novel approach to treat addiction.”

And, he says U of T was the source of all the research behind the hormonal drugs tied to this gene.

Thirteen years ago, Lovejoy and his team of student researchers were looking for a family of four genes tied to the stress response in animals when they identified a novel but related gene that was “special.”

“As soon as we had the gene, I went to the University of Toronto Innovations Office [now Innovations & Partnership Office (IPO)] . . . and they got very excited,” says Lovejoy of the Faculty of Arts & Science. As the son of an engineer and businessman, early on he was instilled with the importance of ensuring his research had a practical outlook.

U of T encouraged and supported him in the creation of a company, which eventually located its headquarters in New York City with “a very enthusiastic investor.” A Canadian subsidiary is located in Toronto.

“They were absolutely fantastic,” Lovejoy says of IPO. “They got us involved with a number of people and introduced us to business development officers . . . Had I not received that support, we would have never gone forward.”

So how does an ancient gene impact our emotional states in this fast-paced modern world?

During the process of evolution, Lovejoy’s “special” gene became important for the normal function of brain cells in humans. Protagenic’s natural hormone drugs are based on a small protein encoded by this gene, located on the X chromosome.

When stressed, cells are starved for nutrients. He describes the response as similar to when we have bills piling up and not enough money in our bank accounts to pay.

“If someone hands you a cheque for a $100,000, you don’t have that stress. That’s what this hormone does,” he says. “It protects the cells and turns on their ability to utilize nutrients against neurodegeneration and stressors, but it’s completely natural . . .

“This hormone is so important in humans there are virtually four identical copies of it. It’s the only hormone that is that well conserved. It’s that important. It predates insulin, and yet it does a lot of the same things that insulin does.”

At this time, Protagenic Therapeutics is well into its preclinical work and is expected to start phase 1 clinical trials later this year or early next year for use in treating depression, anxiety and addiction, Lovejoy says. If deemed safe and approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration, their product could be on the market in as little as six years.

Going public will help fund these trials, which can take tens of millions of dollars and years to complete. But he says his company has two important advantages: they have a drug that is different, i.e. not in competition with previously approved offerings, and the drug comes from natural hormones “that the body is already prepared to deal with.”

The experience of creating a startup and launching the company publicly has been an exciting ride, Lovejoy says, adding he’s open to talking to fellow academics about taking the plunge.

It’s an idea with growing interest on campus. In the years since he created his company, the number of faculty research-based startups and inventions has skyrocketed at the University of Toronto.

From 2011-2015, IPO reported 837 inventions, 244 patent applications and 89 research-based startups. Those with licensing agreements with U of T — like Protagenic Therapeutics — have generated $49 million in revenue.

“The interaction of Protagenic Therapeutics, the University of Toronto, our department of Cell and Systems Biology and our IP people has been instrumental in our success,” he says. “My grad students and a number of my undergrad students are gaining training in understanding the commercialization process. Indeed, some of them are named as co-inventors on patents.

“I think we’ve achieved a seamless transition between academia, patent protection and commercialization.”

Andrea D’Aquila, a PhD student in Prof. Lovejoy’s lab, agrees.

“Few academic laboratories provide experiences with both academia and industry,” she said. “I have been able to publish in academic journals, as well as being named as a co-inventor on patent applications. As a scientist-in-training, it’s one of the best experiences to understand both sides of the coin in discovery and development.”

Jennifer Fraser, IPO’s current director, adds that the university is proud to have been a part of the project.

“ We knew it would be several years before a product would make it to market, but we were able to identify a unique investor,” Fraser says. “Dr. Lovejoy’s passion came through in our discussions with them. That made all the difference.”