MaRS

Here’s the round-up of the week in the newsfeeds. Below I highlight my favourite articles of the week from each category.

Today’s Top Pick – “3M unveils $500 Bluetooth-enabled stethoscope”. Find out more under Health care.

Time to burn those medical books

With three major publishing scandals and counting, 2009 is going down as a tough year for medical literature.

Let’s review:

Roll up, roll up! The 2009 edition of the MaRS Regenerative Medicine Industry Briefing is now available.

New content in the 2009 edition includes:

• Breakthough iPS cell discovery by Andras Nagy (Toronto) and colleagues (read the blog)
• Updated market stats
• Use of stem cells as drug screening tools
• Overview of deal-making in the stem cell sector
• Industry-academia collaborations
• International, national and provincial research stats
• List of five major advances made by Ontario researchers since 2008

Faster than a speeding inventor

This month we have left the “golden umbrella” of the Biodesign fellowship here at Stanford University (a team of two physicians and two engineers designing medical devices) to step into industry as interns. I am taking my internship with an inventor who is making a name for himself in this industry. Though I have been working for less than a week, the differences I have noticed between the two are stark. Industry is fast: honesty and simplicity are critical.

Saving the eyes of the next generation

Next time you head to the eye doctor, you might be sticking out your tongue.

MaRS incubator tenant Arctic Dx Inc. just announced a saliva-based genetic test — now available from your eye-care professional — that’s designed to determine your inherited risk for age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of blindness in the western world.