MaRS

The MaRS Transition team is taking to the park paths in the Diabetes Walk for Hope. We’re walking to help the Diabetes Hope Foundation encourage youth to pursue their academic dreams and other fulfilling activities. With your support, our team will help ensure future scientific and social innovators receive encouragement from the Diabetes Hope Foundation to handle the responsibility of living with diabetes and continue to reach for the stars.

For Transition, diabetes is a subject that is close to our hearts. The company has been pursuing disease modifying therapies for diabetes since 2002. This commitment to diabetes is as strong as ever as Transition and its development partner, Eli Lilly are performing phase 2 clinical development with its lead diabetes product, TT-223.

Has alchemy cured diabetes?

The stem cell community has generated incredible news flow and controversy over the past decade (see here), but new data published in Nature by Doug Melton’s group (Harvard) is the most surprising find so far.

Melton’s group altered cells within the body and changed their appearance and function to a completely different cell type. Most importantly, the cells acquired the ability to produce insulin. Consequently, this work heralds the possibility of a new and unexpected approach for treating diabetes.

If you missed Social Tech Training (STT), presented by MaRS and Web of Change, you still have a chance to catch Ricken Patel’s keynote speech. STT brought together the best and brightest in the social media sector to address the important issues about creating social change through the web.

In this podcast of his keynote, Ricken Patel discusses Avaaz.org, an online social advocacy group. Patel notes the increasing importance of “people power” in democracy. There are a vast number of people who would like to be involved in making the world a better place, yet this resource is often neglected. Listen to the podcast to find out how, ultimately, ordinary people can help close the gap between the world we have and the world we want.

Catch Jon Warnow’s keynote

If you missed Social Tech Training (STT), presented by MaRS and Web of Change, you still have a chance to view Jon Warnow’s keynote speech. STT brought together the best and brightest in the social media sector, who addressed the important issues about creating social change through the web.

Jon Warnow discussed Step It Up in his keynote presentation, a movement intended to help prevent global climate change. Warnow, and others formerly part of a campus group fighting climate change, wanted to convey a simple message through Step It Up: the reduction of carbon emissions by 80% by 2050. Find out in the video how they harnessed the power of social media to give this message form and meaning.

Cape Farewell’s expedition to our vulnerable Arctic

Cape Farewell is an inspirational international project about climate change. Envisioned by British artist David Buckland, it brings together scientists, artists, educators and high school students from around the world on an Arctic voyage of discovery.

On September 28 young voyagers from Canada and six other countries will board a research vessel in Reykjavik, Iceland, to sail around the southern tip of Greenland to Iqaluit on Canada’s Baffin Island. As ambassadors of their schools and communities, they will observe and interpret the effects of climate change in the Arctic. What they see and experience will inspire them and those they touch to seek social and technological solutions to this huge global problem.