MaRS client, Kalgene, sees some cash

Kalgene Diagnostics (a division of Kalgene Pharmaceuticals – a MaRS client company and incubator tenant) has just raised $500,ooo from the PARTEQ Venture Fund to develop novel diagnostic tests for cancer.  PARTEQ Venture Fund is a provincially sponsored investment fund set up by PARTEQ Innovations.  See the news release, “Four Kingston startup companies receive $1.6 million vote of confidence”.

According to Dr. Nathan Yoganathan (Kalgene CEO) the company raised a total of $1.5 million in 2009 from private investors – no mean feat in these challenging times.

Kalgene is an oncology company which develops cancer therapeutics and companion diagnostics with the goal of providing personalized treatments for cancer patients.  Kalgene’s lead therapeutic program is for bladder cancer (Phase III in EU).

Solving the mysteries of pet food production

The pet industry is big business. There are over eight million pet cats and dogs in Canada and more than 160 million pets in the US.  Last year, Americans spent over US$45 billion on their pets, including US$18 billion on pet food.

What happens when pet food harms more than it helps?

Some pet foods have been found to be tainted with melamine (commonly used in clear resins and durable plastics) as well other toxins and allergens—some of which may be created during pet food processing.

How can you keep Spot safe?

Enter Larial Proteomics.

Larial, a MaRS Incubator tenant and MaRS client, is one of the few companies in the world that tests food and beverages throughout the production process for changes in proteins. ”We’re a troubleshooting company. We put together the right technologies to solve problems,” says Dr. Jeffrey Charuk, Larial’s chief scientist. And luckily for pets around the world, Larial is setting out to solve some of the mysteries involved in pet food production.

Larial just landed a contract with ECOstyle Animal Care BV, a Netherlands-based pet food and biological products company, to do methods development work for better quality assurance and control of pet food. “There’s more to pet food than just taste,” says Charuk.  ”Forward-thinking companies like ECOstyle Animal Care BV are accessing advanced analytical technologies to evaluate whether changes in the quality or content of proteins in food products occur during the manufacturing process”.

The fact that ECOstyle Animal Care BV chose a Canadian company to test its pet food speaks to Larial’s global reputation for reproducibility, good documentation and results-oriented experiments. “It appears there may be few firms in Europe using advanced analytical technologies to explore the food chemistries that lead to cost-effective tests,” adds Charuk.

How does a Canadian company become the go-to guy in a multi-billion dollar industry?

Visibility.

In 2008, Larial targeted less traditional clients in the food and beverage industry by promoting its bioanalytical services through the purchase of  Google ads.  ”We reconstructed our website so that landing pages were better associated with key words like protein expression, purification and analysis.  This led to a 238% increase in visits to larial.com and several new customers in a variety of industries,” says Charuk. “An unexpected interest in our services came from zoos, which have clinical labs that must contend with a wide diversity of animal health issues.”

Larial also worked with business development partners like TSV Consulting and Alba Biologics to spread the word about the company’s one-of-a-kind offerings. That’s how the contract with ECOstyle Animal Care BV came to be. “We have some specific areas where we’ve developed expertise, so those organizations targeted our promotion to reflect those areas,” says Charuk.

Larial’s business development activities build on the company’s nine years of experience in the separation and analytical sciences areas. Charuk left a faculty position in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto to start Larial Proteomics. “I was frustrated by the limited opportunities in academia to develop new technologies,” he says. “There was never sufficient grant funding to maintain laboratory instrumentation or train young scientists. It occurred to me that industry might be a better way to go.”

Larial offers Charuk and its other staff scientists the chance to present the facts – and just the facts – with data travelling directly from its analytical instruments to the client as it is generated. That’s how clients like ECOstyle Animal Care BV in the Netherlands like to do business and that’s how Larial will help keep pets all over the world healthier and happier.

Nitric oxide, neurotransmission, MaRS!

Nitric oxide (NO), known commonly as a ozone-depleting pollutant, is produced naturally in the human body and fulfills a variety of physiologic functions including acting as a neurotransmitter, vasodilator and anti-infective.  NO has been implicated in a variety of diseases and conditions including pain, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, traumatic brain injury, stroke and inflammatory disease.

MaRS and NeurAxon Inc. are presenting an international symposium on this exciting field with 20 world-leading researchers, including 1998 Nobel Laureate Dr. Ferid Murad of the University of Texas, at MaRS on May 27-28, 2010. Why is the next Future of Medicine™ conference, “International Symposium on Nitric Oxide and Other Gaseous Neurotransmitters” important?

In 1998, Robert Furchgott (SUNY), Louis Ignarro (UCLA) and Ferid Murad (UT Houston) shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine for their discoveries relating to the role of NO as a signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system. NO is able to regulate blood pressure and control blood flow to various organs.  Readers may be interested to know that the popular ED drug Viagra(r) works via an NO-related mechanism.

In the nervous system, NO is unlike typical neurotransmitters in that it is synthesized and released only when needed – it is not stored for future use.  Various tissue forms of the enzyme nitric oxide synthase (NOS) control the generation of NO and this is where the majority of the R&D activity is focused.

Being a small molecule, NO rapidly diffuses across cell membranes without active receptor uptake.  These properties combined with rapid decay help make NO one of the most fastest acting signaling molecules across cell boundaries.  Consequently, any imbalance in NO production can quickly affect cell and tissue behaviour.

Our conference will bring the leading pharmaceutical and academic experts in the NO field to Toronto.  Other emerging gaseous neurotransmitters such as CO and HS will also be discussed.

If you need to NO, MaRS is the place!

Watch MaRS Future of Medicine™ TV

Announcing the MaRS Future of Medicine™ online video channel highlighting outstanding presentations from the inaugural MaRS Future of Medicine™ Conference held in Toronto on November 12, 2009.

The mission of MaRS Future of Medicine™ is to showcase Ontario’s leading life sciences innovations, share best practices for commercial development and help facilitate industry partnership and investment. If you missed the sessions or just want a refresh, tune in now!

This conference focused on Ontario’s breakthroughs in stem cell science and oncology — two areas in which our province has incredible strength and depth.

Tune in to the conference channel now!

The online resource features such topics as:

• Optimized derivation of iPS cells
• iPS cells as resources to identify novel drug targets
• An unlimited blood supply from stem cell technology
• High resolution imaging in cancer
• Rapid one-step diagnostics using rare biomarkers
• Novel therapeutic approaches for prostate cancer and liver cancer

Another feature is the panel discussion on the most effective means for advancing novel medical technologies: should we follow the proprietary or open access route?  The participating organizations in this forum included DRI Capital, MaRS Innovation, Structured Genomics Consortium and King & Spalding LLP.

Finally, our video channel features engaging interviews with leading scientists, entrepreneurs and patent lawyers engaged in creating the future of medicine.

Our next conference in this event series will be the MaRS Future of Medicine™ International Symposium on Nitric Oxide and other Gaseous Neurotransmitters Symposium on May 26-27, 2010.

Stay tuned for more from the front lines of medical innovation with MaRS Future of Medicine™!

Michael McCain: The "Lived-It" lecture

As a child in small town Florenceville, New Brunswick, MaRS Board member Michael McCain sat at the kitchen table listening to two of Canada’s greatest entrepreneurs, Wallace and Harrison McCain, discuss the family business. In last week’s CIBC Presents Entrepreneurship 101 we heard him tell not only their story of the international food giant McCain, but his own story of acquiring the near-demise Maple Leaf Foods in the mid-nineties and turning it around.

The thread linking the two stories was the importance of entrepreneurial professionalism: for a small family business to think big and for a big public company to think small to ensure their future success. In each case, there were challenges to managing these seeming opposites: staying entrepreneurial and innovative while managing professionally.

Entrepreneurs need to be professional

What does entrepreneurial professionalism look like from the vantage point of an entrepreneur? According to Michael, entrepreneurs need to focus on the long term and avoid hitting the proverbial glass ceiling of entrepreneurship and failing because they couldn’t professionally manage a rapidly growing organization. Wallace and Harrison knew what they didn’t know and were dedicated to filling in the gaps they had with great people. From the very beginning they had systems and discipline in place such as budgetary controls, monthly reports, organizational reviews and so forth.    To them, bringing in great people didn’t mean delegating, it meant working together.  They remained incredibly detail-oriented as owners and managers of the family business.  Michael remembers his father Wallace bringing home piles of invoices and purchase orders to review at night.

Bringing in professional elements to an enterprise early can only complement other necessary entrepreneurial characteristics such as hard work and determination. The McCain family’s dogged determination is exemplified by their entry into the market in France – after three dismal failures, they finally cracked the French market on the fourth.

Large organizations need to be entrepreneurial

The challenge of the food industry is that the margins are slim and the competition is stiff. So professional management and controls are an absolute necessity. For Maple Leaf Foods, however, maintaining a culture of entrepreneurship was also a priority, especially as 30 acquisitions necessitated weaving common DNA throughout the organization.

What does entrepreneurial professionalism look like in a large organization? Michael talked about instituting a personal sense of ownership and accountability among employees, encouraging decisiveness and agility throughout the organization and allowing ideas to flow freely.  He also spoke about truly living the values that they set out for their organization and how following those values guided them to do the right thing in times of crisis such as the listeriosis outbreak of 2008.  After the crisis, employee engagement survey scores reached an all-time high as employees supported the leadership’s direction in dealing with such a tragedy.

Would you like to hear more of Michael McCain’s insights and experiences? Check out the slide presentation below. And watch for  the video link, coming soon.

Interested in learning more about the challenges entrepreneurs face managing a growing enterprise?  Check out:

• “Why Entrepreneurs Don’t Scale” by John Hamm, Harvard Business Review, Dec 2002.  In this article, John Hamm identifies why founders flounder via four management tendencies that work well for small company entrepreneurs but which can become Achilles’ heels as those individuals try to run larger organizations.
• “The Founder’s Dilemma” by Noam Wasserman, Harvard Business Review, Feb 2008.  This article examines the choice entrepreneurs must make between money and power and discusses how superior returns can come from replacing the founder with a professional CEO more experienced with dealing with the needs of a growing company.

Downloads and resources

Weren’t able to attend the class? Need some notes or want to look something up? Click below for all of the goodies from the lecture. Watch the video and the slide presentation below.

• Class Summary: Lived-It Lecture featuring Michael McCain
• Video: Lived-It Lecture featuring Michael McCain
• Slideshare presentation: “Entrepreneurial professionalism“
• Join the Facebook Group: CIBC Presents Entrepreneurship 101
• Register to get the weekly email updates

CIBC presents Entrepreneurship 101 2009/10 – Week 13 – Lived it Lecture featuring Michael H. McCain from MaRS Discovery District on Vimeo.

Another year of shifting innovative entrepreneurship

At just over three years old, the MaRS Blog is already topping some “best blogs” lists (see “You’re reading a top 5 biotech blog” and “Top 150 Blogs for Entrepreneurs“).

For those who are just joining the fray and want to know what we’re talking about — and for those who read every day and were just curious! — here’s the list of the most popular blog posts of 2009.

1. Rooftop solar system anyone?
2. Ontario’s emerging tech companies get a boost
3. The 75%-5% Plan: Lessons from building North America’s greenest hotel
4. Social venture financing: A scan of the landscape
5. Genius in a dorm room?: The myth of the young entrepreneur
6. The Michael Jackson Phenomenon: Tracking the social media
7. Beyond Politics: Social networks and commerce
8. Got tech? It’s time to take your product on the road
9. Brain fitness: Casual gaming or preventative medicine?
10. Fonolo named on Time.com’s “50 Best Websites 2009″

Here’s to another year of insight on innovation and entrepreneurship!

Me in Suzhou's SND, China: High-tech powerhouse

More globetrotting…

Hot on the heels of the BIO Japan 2009 conference I flew over to Shanghai and made the 150 km trip west to Suzhou – an ancient city mainly known in the past for silk production and UNESCO heritage sites, but now a powerhouse for high-tech manufacturing and biotechnology .

Suzhou has two major biotechnology sites: Bio-Bay (joint venture with Singapore) and Suzhou New District (SND).  My visit was to the SND region.

First impressions – lots of people, huge manufacturing plants, glowing neon city centre and many European and Asian (Korean, Japanese) business people in place.

My itinerary included visits to two major facilities – China Suzhou Innovation Park (CSZIP – the “MaRS” of Suzhou) and the China Suzhou Bio-medicine Centre (CSZBC).

CSZIP is a large modern central facility (hub) with three new 25 story towers nearing completion.  The new buildings will be dedicated to:

1. Finance, including venture capital
2. Bio-medicine incubator
3. Returning Chinese scholars institute

One point of note, the NASDAQ-listed solar power company Canadian Solar was incubated in the CSZIP facility.

The CSZBC (bio-medicine incubator) is a smaller facility hosting 98 life sciences client companies.  Each of the four floors has tenant companies located around the periphery with shared laboratories operated by SND in the centre.  All tenant companies had access to the central lab and could advance their work expeditiously without incurring major equipment and staff costs.

More generally, it was readily apparent that Suzhou and Shanghai are undergoing enormous development right now.  New developments equivalent in size to the Toronto financial core were a common sight.  When flying out of Shanghai it was also remarkable to see the huge armada of container ships gathered just offshore.

With the US paying a fortune in interest on the $800 billion of federal debt held by China, the Chinese push towards developing a knowledge-based economy appears sustainable for the foreseeable future.

Canadian start-up companies with products that fit the Chinese market may wish to seriously consider setting up wholly-owned subsidiaries in Suzhou, especially if this will help the Canadian-based parent achieve valuation milestones more quickly and cheaply.

With FDA-certified clinical research organizations in place and an abundance of financial incentives, China is rapidly becoming an attractive development partner in the life sciences.

Paul Martin speaks at Impact Investing

What happens when you put a former Liberal Prime Minister, a former Conservative Party Leader and a leading social impact investor in a room? Fireworks? Pouting and disagreement? Or one of the most electric and optimistic events I’ve been to this year.

On November 6, the Rt. Hon. Paul Martin and Social Capital Partners (SCP), Bill Young came to MaRS for an event called, “Impact Investing: Building Prosperity Outside the Mainstream,” moderated by John Tory and Ilse Treurnicht. The discussion focused on how market forces can be used effectively to solve social challenges in Canada.

Both Paul Martin and Bill Young agreed that greater access to investment capital is a huge priority in supporting social entrepreneurship. “Social entrepreneurs who provide jobs and stimulate growth received none of the stimulus money provided by governments during this recession,” said Paul Martin. He was emphatic that there be no difference in the rules and roads to capital for traditional and social entrepreneurs. It must be a level playing field.

Bill Young, who started SCP in 2001, spoke about the opportunities available to move people into sustainable employment by changing the human resource policies of businesses that have substantial numbers of entry level positions. “Our vision is that 10 years from now, every Fortune 500 company will have a social living program integrated into every HR practice.” This will mean thousands of people currently facing employment barriers will be able to access jobs provided by companies with the right strategy to see them develop.

Martin, Tory and Young also discussed regulatory changes that would enable greater development of the social enterprise space. Tax incentives must be made available to encourage investment. Changes at the federal finance level can be slow, but Martin says it can be done. “The Finance Department will constantly oppose anything they think will bleed money away. It’s up to the Minister to overrule them.” A champion in government is needed and we need to provide them with a very simple message – a message they can’t say no to.

John Tory asked about the development of blended-value investment funds run by the banking sector, as a way to incentivize growth. Bill Young responded by offering, “The U.S. Community Investment Act forced banks to invest 1% of their assets (in a fund) because they were accused of not investing in economically challenged areas. (We) could do a similar thing here. I think a more interesting way to do it is a Social Investment Bank or Social Investment Management Group.”

Finally, all agreed on the need for more enabling institutions like MaRS, that provide the guidance, support and advocacy that many social ventures need to move their enterprise forward. The value of MaRS was raised many times throughout the event and as the CEO, Ilse Treurnicht said, MaRS has also formerly recognized the value of social innovation in its mission. “This event is at the complex intersection of our world.” MaRS does exist to grow enterprises in science and technology, “But we do want to ensure we do this in a sustainable way.”

The greatest takeaway from this dynamic two-hour discussion was the array of opportunities and entry points that all sectors can collaborate on that will have a positive and lasting impact on social entrepreneurship in Canada. Not only do the options sound attainable, a full realization of their potential will address critical challenges faced by vulnerable communities and our environment.

Watch the full presentation here or click play below.

If you have questions about social entrepreneurship or social finance that were not answered in the video, please post them here.

Minato Mirai, Yokohama, BIO Japan 2009

In October I was in Yokohama to attend BIO Japan 2009 – a major Japanese life sciences partnering event.  This was my second visit to BIO Japan.

The event attracted 15,000 visitors over three days, drawn mostly from major Japanese pharma companies and biotechs and also a sizeable contingent from Western and Asian small-to-medium sized companies and institutions.

Japanese companies are, correctly or incorrectly, perceived as rather conservative when it comes to dealmaking with Western firms, but this year there was a tangible sense of urgency to find new products and technologies and gain a competitive edge. Indeed, there has been a wave of mergers between Japanese pharma in recent years and more recently they have been acquiring Western companies and products (e.g. Dainippon Sumitomo’s acquisition of Sepracor, Takeda’s co-development deal for Amylin’s obesity drugs).

The event afforded the opportunity to have one-on-one meetings with top tier Japanese pharma companies and present the most attractive life sciences technologies and products arising from MaRS client companies.  What was surprising was the high level of interest in our rather early stage technologies.  Already two of the Japanese companies have made follow-up visits to MaRS to learn more.

One other important highlight of the event was a joint session with Dr. Shinya Yamanaka – the Kyoto University physician-researcher who created the iPS cell method (generation of pluripotent stem cells from adult skin).  Dr. Yamanaka was “pre-awarded” his Gairdner Prize for scientific excellence in a packed session with Dr. Janet Rossant (Sick Kids) and Dr. John Dirks (Gairdner Foundation).  In his acceptance remarks, Dr. Yamanaka took pains to emphasize the strengths of Ontario in the stem cell field.  This was significant since Dr. Yamanaka has “rock star” status in Japan and the crowded hall of Japanese bio-pharma executives were left with little doubt about Ontario’s capabilities in this burgeoning field.

Lesson: if you are developing bio-pharmaceutical products you cannot ignore Japan.  The nation is open to partnering and has the resources to speed development.  Given the current funding crisis for life sciences we need to seriously consider international alliances to maintain growth.

I would like to thank Robert Ulmer and Hiromi Sawaki of the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo for their tireless efforts to ensure a smooth and productive trip.

Cal Stiller

Physician. Scientist. Entrepreneur. Policy innovator. In baseball parlance, Dr. Cal Stiller, a founding member of the MaRS Board, may be the only Canadian to continue to hit the cycle.

And he’s being inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame in the spring.

As a basic scientist, he helped define Type I diabetes as an autoimmune disease. As a clinician-scientist, he organized North America’s first multi-centre clinical trial for the anti-rejection drug Cyclosporine in kidney transplantation, creating the foundation for subsequent studies that put Canada on the world stage.

As a medical entrepreneur, he established the Canadian Medical Discoveries Fund, which, for years, led venture capital in the life sciences. And as a public policy champion he has been instrumental in founding a number of institutions: Robarts Research Institute in London, the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research and MaRS.

“Wherever you see creative institutions in medical research and innovation in Canada during the past decade you will find the guiding hand and explosive energy of Cal Stiller,” said Dr. John Evans, MaRS founder and Chair Emeritus.

From 1984 to 1996, Dr. Stiller established and led the Multi-Organ Transplant Service (MOTS) at The University of Western Ontario’s University Hospital, the first of its kind in Canada and one of the first in the world. During this time, he had a remarkable run as a crusader for organ donation and the organ donor card, and popularized, if not coined, the term “Gift of Life”.

Read more here about the indefatigable Dr. Stiller and the other physicians who will be inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame in April 2010.