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Five cleantech companies receive support at the Cleantech Forum in Boston from Canadian incubation and innovation center MaRS.

Alternative Fuels was just one of a lineup of early-stage startups being supported by MaRS, a nonprofit innovation center in Toronto’s downtown Discovery District that connects entrepreneurs with business skills, networks and capital to stimulate innovation and grow Canadian companies.

This week’s forum marked the organization’s first foray into the cleantech sector, said MaRS Venture Group Associate Kevin Downing. Downing said he wanted to connect cleantech-related companies in the MaRS portfolio that were “investment ready” with the forum’s audience. “I don’t have a motive to push any one client over any other because they’re not paying me,” Downing said. Of the 1,300 MaRS portfolio companies, he said the cleantech sector has been its fastest growing segment and an expanding sector in country as well (see Canadian cleantech looks to the future and IPO drought? Cleantech companies flood Canadian markets). Since 2006, cleantech and environmental technology companies have made up 9 percent of MaRS' portfolio. MaRS currently has 350 active clients. The center isn’t government funded, but does receive some government support, he said. It has been funded through donations from the public and private sector. MaRS has the ability to provide some funding, around $40,000, to startups on a competitive basis. Other companies showcased at the forum through MaRS included NIMtech, Real Tech, Vicicog and Skymeter.

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 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.”

New Biology Ventures is a life-sciences focused venture capital incubator.   We invest in early stage opportunities through the creation and maturation of start-up companies that focus on the development and commercialization of therapeutic biopharmaceuticals. We change the economics of drug development through our unique combination of expertise in finance and structuring companies along with the capability to efficiently and effectively commercialize drugs.  

At the corner of College St. and University Ave. sits a growing monument to this kind of original thinking. MaRS – short for Medical and Related Sciences – is all about a building becoming much more than the sum of its users and programming. Already, MaRS has become a global leader in biotech research; it has certainly become a city builder, creating jobs and spawning companies; and, of course, it does all this by being a creative cauldron – just like the film festival.

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.

I attended the Wisdom Exchange today at the Mars Discovery District in Toronto, an annual gathering of leading growth firms sponsored by the Ontario government. Ontario’s ministry of small business recognizes that a tiny minority of SMEs, the export-oriented gazelles, account for a disproportionate share of job creation, and it does a great job of encouraging, motivating and supporting the CEOs of such companies through educational opportunities such as the Wisdom Exchange.

Jayson Myers, the respected economist who now heads up Canada's largest industry association, Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters.

Myers offered a fair bit of bad news to the group – he warned that the recession “will be deeper and last longer than consensus forecasts,” and that total Canadian merchandise exports have actually been falling for six years.