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039 | MaRS West Tower turnaround, CQDM and Brain Canada team up, and more
On this weeks show, and amazing turnaround in the fortunes of the MaRS West Tower, CQDM and Brain Canada team up once again, and a significant step in the fight against cancer.
We have all this and more on this week’s Biotechnology Focus Radio Show Podcast.
Welcome to another episode of Biotechnology Focus Podcast. I’m your host Shawn Lawrence, here to give you a rundown of this week’s top stories on the Canadian biotech scene,
Story
CQDM and Brain Canada are join forces again in the funding of two new research projects to address unmet needs in brain research. Together, the two organizations are awarding a total of $3 million to the projects which will oversee the development cutting-edge tools, technologies and platforms designed to accelerate the discovery of new drugs for brain and nervous system disorders. The two distinguished research teams will unite nine researchers from seven public and private organizations across Canada. The first project is led by Edward Fon at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital (MNI) joined by multi-provincial collaborators from McGill University, Université Laval and University of British Columbia. The second project led by Jean-Martin Beaulieu at University of Toronto is a public-private collaboration with the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre and ImStar Therapeutics in Vancouver. Additionally, these researchers will benefit from CQDM’s unique mentoring program. They will have the opportunity to collaborate with influential senior scientists from the pharmaceutical industry who bring expertise and support to the projects, to help better align research with the needs of industry and patients. The Brain Canada funds are provided through a partnership with Health Canada, known as the Canada Brain Research Fund.
Story
Princess Margaret Cancer Centre scientists have discovered a distinct cell population in tumours that inhibits the body’s immune response to fight cancer. According to principal investigator Pamela Ohashi, director, Tumour Immunotherapy Program at the cancer centre, University Health Network. Dr. Ohashi holds a Canada Research chair in Autoimmunity and Tumour Immunity, the findings, published online in Nature Medicine, are critical to understanding more about why patients will or will not respond to immune therapies. Specifically, Dr. Ohashi and her team uncovered a potential new approach to modulate the immune response to cancer. She adds that by looking at tumour biology from this different perspective, researchers will have a better understanding of the barriers that prevent a strong immune response. This can help advance drug development to target these barriers.
Dr. Ohashi discusses her team’s discovery of a new population of cells that regulate immune response in the following audio clip.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-vbE-DRTdY
Dr. Ohashi’s research team along with international collaborators analyzed more than 100 patient samples from ovarian and other cancer types to discover a distinct population of cells found in some tumours. This population of cells suppresses the growth of cancer-fighting immune cells, thereby limiting the ability of the immune system to fight off cancer. For patients, down the road Dr. Ohashi envisions a new era of combined therapies to simultaneously target and kill these suppressive cells while augmenting the immune response against cancer. The team’s next avenue of research will be focused on identifying a “biomarker” that can identify this distinct suppressive cell elsewhere in the body – for example, in blood or other samples – as a potential predictive clinical tool to determine when these cells are present in patients, which currently cannot be done.
Dr. Ohashi’s research was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and The Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation.
Story
Aequus Pharmaceuticals has landed $100,000 in federal funding through the National Research Council’s Industrial Research Assistance Program. The company plans to use funds towards an ongoing proof-of-concept clinical study for its lead product candidate, AQS1301, a once-weekly transdermal aripiprazole patch. Aripiprazole is an atypical antipsychotic and the active ingredient in Abilify®, a leading medication in the U.S. used for the treatment of a number of psychiatric disorders including bipolar I disorder, schizophrenia, major depressive disorder and irritability associated with autistic disorder. Aripiprazole is currently available in once-daily oral tablets and a once-monthly injectable form, however, medication adherence continues to be a significant challenge for patients. Offering the medication in a patch form potentially could make it more convenient to use, and improve patient adherence says Anne Stevens, COO and director of Aequus Pharmaceuticals . The product is currently in clinical development, butAequus expects to confirm its regulatory development plan in a pre-Investigational New Drug (pre-IND) meeting with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the second half of 2017. Aequus anticipates results of the current repeat dose, 28-day study in the first quarter of 2017. The results will be used to inform the final design of the patch to be advanced into the regulatory phase of its clinical trials.
Story
Genome British Columbia is making an investment into Augurex Life Sciences through its Industry Innovation (I²) funding program. The company was founded on an invention shared between the University of Alberta and the University of British Columbia in 2006. The funding is repayable and is allocated to promising technologies (products, processes or services) at the early stages of commercial development, and aims to provide risk capital that is concurrently matched by other public or private funding sources. The investment will go towards helping the company launch several blood test products from its pipeline and advance its overall therapeutic program. With a focus on autoimmune diseases affecting joints such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA), Augurex has already developed its first blood test, called JOINTstat™, which measures the 14-3-3η(eta) protein in blood for early RA diagnosis, joint damage risk monitoring, and also predicts RA development in people with joint pain. Since this is a very early contributor to disease and correlates with joint damage prognosis, it facilitates the identification of patients for early RA intervention and tighter control of treatment so that clinical and remission targets can be reached; the highest priorities in rheumatology care. Additionally, a portfolio of 14-3-3η-centric biomarkers has emerged from Augurex’s work, with demonstrated applications in multiple autoimmune diseases with joint involvement. As an aside, JOINTstat has since been studied in over 4,000 patients, and is Health Canada approved. It was launched in Canada by LifeLabs and has been in clinical use since late 2013 in the U.S. Recently, the test was also CE marked and TGA approved making it certified for clinical use in Europe and Australia.
Story
California Capital Equity, LLC, has increased its equity position in Laval, QC’s ProMetic Life Sciences, exercising 44,791,488 share purchase warrants at a price of $0.47 per share for total proceeds of $21,051,999.36. The venture capital firm based in LosAngeles, CA, specializes in providing growth and development capital to start-up through mezzanine stages. The firm’s equity and debt investments are typically in small and medium sized companies. It first invested in ProMetic in 2008. Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, CEO of California Capital Equity cited the company’s robust proprietary therapeutic platforms and promising growth potential as key factors behind the firm’s latest investment.
Story
Our final story this week, In an amazing turnaround for what once was a struggling center for innovation and entrepreneurship, that once upon a time event required the government of Ontario to step in and offer bridge financing to keep it afloat, MaRS Discovery District now reports that it has completed a significant private financing of its West Tower, with proceeds of this transaction to be used to repay most of the Ontario government's interest-bearing loans to MaRS. The caveat, is the repayment comes almost three years ahead of schedule. Taking part in the private financing are Manulife, Sun Life Financial and iA Financial Group, who together led the $290-million transaction by investing in 19-year bonds issued by Phase II Investment Trust.
According to Ilse Treurnicht, CEO of MaRS, the West Tower is now fully leased, and could soon generate the operating income required to be entirely self-sustaining, putting MaRS on stable footing. Last year we featured two of the more noteworthy tenants at the building, Johnson & Johnson’s JLABS @ Toronto, and the Bridge@CCRM in our June/July issue of Biotechnology Focus. And now, offering over 1.5 million square feet of state-of-the-art lab and office space in the heart of Toronto's Discovery District, the MaRS Centre is now home to more than 140 research labs and companies spanning the entire innovation ecosystem, including Multinational medical firms such as Johnson & Johnson's JLABS @ Toronto, which itself houses over 40 biotech and health startups, Merck, growing life science firms such as Synaptive Medical, Deep Genomics, Interface Biologics, Highland Therapeutics, and Triphase Accelerator; and life science incubators like Blueline Bioscience. Leading research groups from the University of Toronto (which owns a 20% stake in the West Tower), University Health Network (including Princess Margaret Cancer Centre), Ryerson University and the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research also call the West tower home. The facility has even attracted other major tenants like Autodesk, Facebook, Merck, PayPal, Etsy, Airbnb, IBM, CIBC and RBC.
In all, ventures within the MaRS network raised $2.6 billion in capital and generated $1.3 billion in revenue between 2008 and 2015, and today employs more than 5,200 people.
Well that wraps up another episode of the Biotechnology Focus Podcast. We hope you enjoyed it. Be sure to let us know what you think, and we’re also always looking for story ideas and suggestions for future shows, and of course we’d love to hear from you as well, simply reach out to us via twitter @biotechfocus, or by email at the following email address [email protected]. And remember, you can also listen to past episodes online via our podcast portal at www.biotechnologyfocus.ca .
For all of us here at Biotechnology Focus, thanks for listening.
View all episodes
By Biotechnology FocusOn this weeks show, and amazing turnaround in the fortunes of the MaRS West Tower, CQDM and Brain Canada team up once again, and a significant step in the fight against cancer.
We have all this and more on this week’s Biotechnology Focus Radio Show Podcast.
Welcome to another episode of Biotechnology Focus Podcast. I’m your host Shawn Lawrence, here to give you a rundown of this week’s top stories on the Canadian biotech scene,
Story
CQDM and Brain Canada are join forces again in the funding of two new research projects to address unmet needs in brain research. Together, the two organizations are awarding a total of $3 million to the projects which will oversee the development cutting-edge tools, technologies and platforms designed to accelerate the discovery of new drugs for brain and nervous system disorders. The two distinguished research teams will unite nine researchers from seven public and private organizations across Canada. The first project is led by Edward Fon at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital (MNI) joined by multi-provincial collaborators from McGill University, Université Laval and University of British Columbia. The second project led by Jean-Martin Beaulieu at University of Toronto is a public-private collaboration with the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre and ImStar Therapeutics in Vancouver. Additionally, these researchers will benefit from CQDM’s unique mentoring program. They will have the opportunity to collaborate with influential senior scientists from the pharmaceutical industry who bring expertise and support to the projects, to help better align research with the needs of industry and patients. The Brain Canada funds are provided through a partnership with Health Canada, known as the Canada Brain Research Fund.
Story
Princess Margaret Cancer Centre scientists have discovered a distinct cell population in tumours that inhibits the body’s immune response to fight cancer. According to principal investigator Pamela Ohashi, director, Tumour Immunotherapy Program at the cancer centre, University Health Network. Dr. Ohashi holds a Canada Research chair in Autoimmunity and Tumour Immunity, the findings, published online in Nature Medicine, are critical to understanding more about why patients will or will not respond to immune therapies. Specifically, Dr. Ohashi and her team uncovered a potential new approach to modulate the immune response to cancer. She adds that by looking at tumour biology from this different perspective, researchers will have a better understanding of the barriers that prevent a strong immune response. This can help advance drug development to target these barriers.
Dr. Ohashi discusses her team’s discovery of a new population of cells that regulate immune response in the following audio clip.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-vbE-DRTdY
Dr. Ohashi’s research team along with international collaborators analyzed more than 100 patient samples from ovarian and other cancer types to discover a distinct population of cells found in some tumours. This population of cells suppresses the growth of cancer-fighting immune cells, thereby limiting the ability of the immune system to fight off cancer. For patients, down the road Dr. Ohashi envisions a new era of combined therapies to simultaneously target and kill these suppressive cells while augmenting the immune response against cancer. The team’s next avenue of research will be focused on identifying a “biomarker” that can identify this distinct suppressive cell elsewhere in the body – for example, in blood or other samples – as a potential predictive clinical tool to determine when these cells are present in patients, which currently cannot be done.
Dr. Ohashi’s research was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and The Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation.
Story
Aequus Pharmaceuticals has landed $100,000 in federal funding through the National Research Council’s Industrial Research Assistance Program. The company plans to use funds towards an ongoing proof-of-concept clinical study for its lead product candidate, AQS1301, a once-weekly transdermal aripiprazole patch. Aripiprazole is an atypical antipsychotic and the active ingredient in Abilify®, a leading medication in the U.S. used for the treatment of a number of psychiatric disorders including bipolar I disorder, schizophrenia, major depressive disorder and irritability associated with autistic disorder. Aripiprazole is currently available in once-daily oral tablets and a once-monthly injectable form, however, medication adherence continues to be a significant challenge for patients. Offering the medication in a patch form potentially could make it more convenient to use, and improve patient adherence says Anne Stevens, COO and director of Aequus Pharmaceuticals . The product is currently in clinical development, butAequus expects to confirm its regulatory development plan in a pre-Investigational New Drug (pre-IND) meeting with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the second half of 2017. Aequus anticipates results of the current repeat dose, 28-day study in the first quarter of 2017. The results will be used to inform the final design of the patch to be advanced into the regulatory phase of its clinical trials.
Story
Genome British Columbia is making an investment into Augurex Life Sciences through its Industry Innovation (I²) funding program. The company was founded on an invention shared between the University of Alberta and the University of British Columbia in 2006. The funding is repayable and is allocated to promising technologies (products, processes or services) at the early stages of commercial development, and aims to provide risk capital that is concurrently matched by other public or private funding sources. The investment will go towards helping the company launch several blood test products from its pipeline and advance its overall therapeutic program. With a focus on autoimmune diseases affecting joints such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA), Augurex has already developed its first blood test, called JOINTstat™, which measures the 14-3-3η(eta) protein in blood for early RA diagnosis, joint damage risk monitoring, and also predicts RA development in people with joint pain. Since this is a very early contributor to disease and correlates with joint damage prognosis, it facilitates the identification of patients for early RA intervention and tighter control of treatment so that clinical and remission targets can be reached; the highest priorities in rheumatology care. Additionally, a portfolio of 14-3-3η-centric biomarkers has emerged from Augurex’s work, with demonstrated applications in multiple autoimmune diseases with joint involvement. As an aside, JOINTstat has since been studied in over 4,000 patients, and is Health Canada approved. It was launched in Canada by LifeLabs and has been in clinical use since late 2013 in the U.S. Recently, the test was also CE marked and TGA approved making it certified for clinical use in Europe and Australia.
Story
California Capital Equity, LLC, has increased its equity position in Laval, QC’s ProMetic Life Sciences, exercising 44,791,488 share purchase warrants at a price of $0.47 per share for total proceeds of $21,051,999.36. The venture capital firm based in LosAngeles, CA, specializes in providing growth and development capital to start-up through mezzanine stages. The firm’s equity and debt investments are typically in small and medium sized companies. It first invested in ProMetic in 2008. Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, CEO of California Capital Equity cited the company’s robust proprietary therapeutic platforms and promising growth potential as key factors behind the firm’s latest investment.
Story
Our final story this week, In an amazing turnaround for what once was a struggling center for innovation and entrepreneurship, that once upon a time event required the government of Ontario to step in and offer bridge financing to keep it afloat, MaRS Discovery District now reports that it has completed a significant private financing of its West Tower, with proceeds of this transaction to be used to repay most of the Ontario government's interest-bearing loans to MaRS. The caveat, is the repayment comes almost three years ahead of schedule. Taking part in the private financing are Manulife, Sun Life Financial and iA Financial Group, who together led the $290-million transaction by investing in 19-year bonds issued by Phase II Investment Trust.
According to Ilse Treurnicht, CEO of MaRS, the West Tower is now fully leased, and could soon generate the operating income required to be entirely self-sustaining, putting MaRS on stable footing. Last year we featured two of the more noteworthy tenants at the building, Johnson & Johnson’s JLABS @ Toronto, and the Bridge@CCRM in our June/July issue of Biotechnology Focus. And now, offering over 1.5 million square feet of state-of-the-art lab and office space in the heart of Toronto's Discovery District, the MaRS Centre is now home to more than 140 research labs and companies spanning the entire innovation ecosystem, including Multinational medical firms such as Johnson & Johnson's JLABS @ Toronto, which itself houses over 40 biotech and health startups, Merck, growing life science firms such as Synaptive Medical, Deep Genomics, Interface Biologics, Highland Therapeutics, and Triphase Accelerator; and life science incubators like Blueline Bioscience. Leading research groups from the University of Toronto (which owns a 20% stake in the West Tower), University Health Network (including Princess Margaret Cancer Centre), Ryerson University and the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research also call the West tower home. The facility has even attracted other major tenants like Autodesk, Facebook, Merck, PayPal, Etsy, Airbnb, IBM, CIBC and RBC.
In all, ventures within the MaRS network raised $2.6 billion in capital and generated $1.3 billion in revenue between 2008 and 2015, and today employs more than 5,200 people.
Well that wraps up another episode of the Biotechnology Focus Podcast. We hope you enjoyed it. Be sure to let us know what you think, and we’re also always looking for story ideas and suggestions for future shows, and of course we’d love to hear from you as well, simply reach out to us via twitter @biotechfocus, or by email at the following email address [email protected]. And remember, you can also listen to past episodes online via our podcast portal at www.biotechnologyfocus.ca .
For all of us here at Biotechnology Focus, thanks for listening.