Posted by John McCulloch @ MaRS, March 17th, 2010
More money for clients
Receptor Therapeutics Inc. – a MaRS client and tenant – has raised $500,000 from the OICR’s IPDC Program via its OncoTek Drug Delivery Inc. subsidiary.
The funds will be used to drive the preclinical development of the company’s PoLi-PTX technology – a drug delivery system for intraperitoneal ovarian cancer. PoLi-PTX is intended to permit effective localized cancer therapy without the associated side-effects of traditional chemotherapy.
Read the news release here (PDF).
Congratulations!
Posted by John McCulloch @ MaRS, March 11th, 2010
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”.
Posted by Vanessa @ MaRS, March 4th, 2010
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.
Posted by John McCulloch @ MaRS, February 26th, 2010
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?
Posted by John McCulloch @ MaRS, February 24th, 2010
"Tennis for yes, drive down the DVP for no"
British and Belgian scientists have developed a fascinating way to communicate with patients with severe brain injury as reported in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine.
Martin Monti and colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to visualize real-time brain activity in response to questions in a group of patients in either vegetative or minimally conscious states.
The ingenious feature in this work is that the patients were asked to respond to questions by thinking about either a motor activity (playing tennis) or a spatial activity (driving around a familiar location). Since these mental activities “light up” different parts of the brain they can be used to signal a “yes” or “no” in response to questions.
