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All Science Challenge - a science quiz competition for Grade 6, 7 and 8 students from over 15 schools in the greater Toronto area. Designed by students for students, it's a fun-filled day of competition and camaraderie that's part of a nationwide program to excite and inspire the next generation of scientists.

Tuesday May 19th, 2009.

Toronto ON.

Canada has always had to fight hard to attract talent and investment

MaRS Vital to Toronto's life sciences vision is MaRS (derived from Medical and Related Sciences) a non-profit organisation and business centre located in the heart of the city. Its core function is as a biotech incubator and business park, known as MaRS Discovery District. The venture was first established in 2000 to help foster and accelerate the growth of successful Canadian businesses and, after some uncertain times, it is now gathering momentum. A separate technology transfer office, MaRS Innovation, has also been established that, it is hoped, can be a world beater in its own right (see Turning good ideas into world beaters below). The location of the MaRS building in central Toronto is important, as it is just a stone's throw away from an existing cluster of universities and academic hospitals. MaRS has many links with other research-based organisations, including collaborations with three local universities, 10 academic teaching hospitals and the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research. MaRS occupies the Old Toronto general hospital, where insulin was first discovered by Best and Banting in 1921 and then developed for use in human trials. The 21st Century organisation can build on this heritage in patient-focused discovery and development. Formerly the head of venture capital firm Primaxis, Ilse Treurnicht is chief executive of MaRS Discovery District. She acknowledges the crisis in venture capital funding, and says Canada's sector has always had less access funds through this route than other countries. This is one of the drivers behind the search for a new approach. Treurnicht says the old models of building biotech and life sciences businesses have to be discarded, as they have failed to build companies with critical mass. She says MaRS' new 'Convergence Innovation' strategy of bringing science, capital and business together will pay off.

"We call our strategy 'Convergence Innovation' and what we are trying to do is move away from the old linear model of academics struggling in their spare time to build companies or entrepreneurs doing this in a very incremental way."It takes time and it has many risk points along the way. So using this Convergence centre model to create a much more dynamic organisation which can help accelerate good ideas towards the commercialisation." But she says Canada's geography and demographics are always going to be a challenge. "This is a very large country with a small population. If you think in terms of clusters and hub regions, Canada's business hubs are separated geographically, and there is not much in between in terms of people."That means we can't try to be a little United States, because we just won't show up on the radar. We have to take a different approach. We have to think about collaboration as our potential competitive advantage - that means using networks and associations to solve problems and build businesses."So as new opportunities emerge, we can take them to market faster and hopefully with a higher success rate." The centre currently accommodates numerous start up companies, as well as those providing legal and financial services to them. AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline also have offices on site. In all, MaRS provides mentoring for over 200 different companies across Ontario, and runs courses on entrepreneurship and preparing products for market.

MaRS Innovation and the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute of Mount Sinai Hospital are pleased to announce that they have entered into an agreement to collaboratively initiate commercialization of an umbilical cord stem cell technology for potential treatment in cardiovascular disease, diabetes and neurological disorders.

With the Toronto area identified as a world-leading cluster in stem cell research, we are extremely excited to have identified this technology as our first commercialization opportunity,” said Dr. Rafi Hofstein, President and CEO of MaRS Innovation.

MaRS Innovation, along with the inventors and Mount Sinai, will initially focus on the diabetes application for the technology, as research has demonstrated that these cells uniquely secrete insulin in response to glucose, thereby mimicking the “normal” physiological state.

MaRS Innovation and The University of Toronto (U of T) are pleased to announce that they have entered into an agreement to collaboratively commercialize a novel sustained release formulation of nitric oxide (NO) for applications in wound healing, including diabetic ulcers. 

This wound healing technology is extremely exciting, making it an early commercialization opportunity that MaRS Innovation has identified as being a potential win for some 45 million diabetics globally,” said Dr. Rafi Hofstein, President and CEO of MaRS Innovation. 

disruptive technology that facilitates continued therapeutic release of NO over a two week period has been developed by Dr. Ping Lee, Professor at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy and GlaxoSmithKline Chair in Pharmaceutics and Drug Delivery at U of T.

Ross Wallace, director of strategic partnerships at the MarS Centre, which brings together scientists, entrepreneurs and investors, has seen a lot of P3s at their best.

Wallace was as baffled as everybody else. But he believed a business model could be created that would connect medical discoveries coming out of universities and government labs with the money available from private foundations.A year ago, he won one of six fellowships offered by the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation to young people eager to tackle global problems. His research led in an unexpected – and welcome – direction. It turned out that he didn't have to invent a new business model. One already existed."I found some really exciting collaboration going on," he said. "A new breed of partnerships had emerged that completely transformed the development and delivery of pharmaceuticals for neglected diseases."

So Wallace redefined his task. He would look for ways to bolster these fledgling P3s.They have a very short history. The first grew out of a program launched by the World Bank in 1999 to pull together money and talent for research on tropical diseases. But it remained buried within the global bureaucracy.

This is Toronto's research district, a maze of concrete and glass where the finest minds collaborate, turning the city into a global centre of biomedical discovery.

Nine research institutes employing 5,000 university faculty members, 2,000 graduate students and 1,100 postdoctoral and clinical fellows lie within a 20-minute walk of each other. This biomedical cluster at the heart of Toronto is one of the largest on the continent, and is one of the 10 largest in the world.

Tom Hudson from Montreal; cell biologist Ben Neel from Boston; and stem-cell biologist Gordon Keller, who came to Toronto in 2006, just months after New York magazine named him one of the scientists that city could not afford to lose. Toronto is also home to Tak Mak, who discovered the "key to the immune system" T-cell receptor, and John Dick, who discovered the first cancer stem cell in 1994 and last year grew a human cancer in a lab mouse for the first time.

Ontario is providing

$1 million in seed money to back one of last year's most exciting medical breakthroughs, turning simple skin cells into stem cells.

A lab run by the Hospital for Sick Children and the University of Toronto in the MaRS (Medical and Related Sciences) complex on College St. has developed the expertise to grow the cells in quantity and is ready to roll.

My Charity Connects is part of Net Change Week – a week long city wide event put on by Mars Discovery District designed to dissolve the divide between digital professionals and social change-makers. Information about other exciting Net Change Week events can be found at http://netchangeweek.ca

the Chief of Research at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, collaboration is the key to the future.

That's why Dr. Janet Rossant is so enthusiastic about the work being done in the MaRS Discovery District - a unique zone in the city where innovations in science and technology are commercialized through partnerships between researchers and private enterprise.

"The MaRS Centre and biomedical community have seen tremendous growth over the past few years," says Dr. Janet Rossant. "And it continues to grow." "This growth is attracting the world's best scientists to come work here, which is very exciting."

MaRS Innovation is honoured to announce its permanent Board of Directors, who brings together a remarkable and broad set of experiences and networks to support the development of this dynamic partnership of Toronto research institutions.  Designed to enhance the commercial output of Toronto’s world-leading research cluster, MaRS Innovation is positioned to make a significant contribution to Canada’s innovation economy and the quality of life for Canadians and others around the world.

upported by the Government of Canada through the Centres of Excellence in Research and Commercialization (CECR) program, and its member institutions, MaRS Innovation is focused on converting important discoveries into a new generation of products, services and high value jobs. The newly appointed Board of Directors, which includes academic and business leaders from across Canada and the United States, has the targeted expertise to guide MaRS Innovation to deliver on this critical mission.   MaRS Innovation represents a unique collaborative model, which aggregates the exceptional discovery pipeline of 14 leading Toronto academic institutions to build a diversified portfolio of assets, and harness the economic and job creation potential of the best opportunities for Toronto, Ontario and Canada.

“MaRS Innovation is privileged to announce a Board of Directors of this caliber and breadth of skill,” said Mary Jo Haddad, Chair of the MaRS Innovation Board and President and CEO of The Hospital for Sick Children. “The collective experience and guidance of these individuals will be critical to developing a collaborative, integrated and agile approach to this transformational organization that will move Canada into its next phase of economic development.”

MobileMonday Toronto and MaRS are delighted to announce a partnership to develop and host a range of dynamic events for the city’s mobile industry professionals. MobileMonday at MaRS will offer thought leadership and critical industry perspectives – most recently from a senior manager at Research in Motion – while connecting top-tier professionals and boosting the profile of one of the fastest-growing sectors of communications technology.

“MaRS is a fantastic environment for sharing ideas and industry knowledge, two key building blocks of the MobileMonday community,” said Jim Brown and Alexander S. Bosika, co-founders of the MobileMonday Toronto chapter. “MaRS and its network of business advisors and capital providers are also of great benefit to many of our members who are developing business plans and seeking capital.”

For MaRS, the partnership is a natural fit with great potential to benefit the hundreds of start-up clients from across Ontario who are working hard to turn their innovative concepts into viable, thriving businesses, and come to MaRS for advice and connections to potential customers and investors. 

April 6, 7 & 8 at the MaRS Centre in Toronto, mesh is the place to be for exciting discussions about the ever-changing online world.