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We don’t know for sure,” said Dr. John Evans, chair of the board of directors at MARS (Medical and Related Sciences) Discovery District in Toronto, and vicechair of Mississauga, Ont.-based NPSAllelix Biopharmaceuticals, one of the pioneers of biotech in Canada. “But we believe that if you could ‘type’ the patient processes of how he/she handles a drug, you could peel off those people who would be particularly sensitive to a drug. Then you could find a sub-population where the drug is safe and highly effective.” Evans used the arthritis drug Vioxx as an example. It helped millions of people battle painful inflammation, but was pulled from the market recently because of potential cardiac side effects in some people. “If the drug company could have predicted which patients would have complications from Vioxx treatment — through some genetic profiling — then a very powerful and effective drug could have been preserved,” Evans said. His company, NPS-Allelix Bio-pharmaceuticals, has been developing a product since 1989 that will be launched later this year. The drug secretes a parathyroid hormone for treating osteoporosis.

It builds up bone matrix and helps build bone, rather than just delay bone loss as other drugs do.

U of T’s proposed investment in a medical research-business complex will take the school into another orbit. The first of its kind in Canada, the MaRS (Medical and Related Sciences) Discovery District will include facilities for start-up companies created to develop and market research discoveries. U of T will kick in $5 million for the not-for-profit corporation to be located on College Street, east of University Avenue.

This blog is hosted by MaRS, a convergence innovation center located in downtown Toronto. MaRS staffers and guests blog on topics such as emerging science and technology, entrepreneurship and business, and innovation policy. What sets MaRS apart from other blogs is the depth of coverage in each of these categories and well as the demonstrated desire to ask, and address, fundamental questions.

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.

Probably most impressive was The MaRS Centre - an old hospital converted into a non-profit innovation centre connecting science, technology and social entrepreneurs with business skills, networks and capital. The building is undeniably cool. Located in Toronto’s “Discovery District” -- two square kilometres have been designated as the city’s center of innovation. The MaRS Centre is a gateway of sorts to Canada’s largest concentration of scientific research. It’s anchored by major teaching hospitals, the University of Toronto and more than two dozen affiliated research institutes.

MaRS Centre from the outside

MaRS was created in 2000. The founding group raised significant capital (almost $100 million from all three levels of government and both institutional and individual private sector donors and an additional $130 million of debt and credit lease instruments were also secured) to support the development. What’s so clear is that leadership to drive public/private sector collaboration is required to effect real change. Many credit Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty for helping to not only create the MaRS Centre but also invigorate the region as a whole.

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.

Film Italia and the Italian Trade Commission's annual TIFF party took on a  chameleon theme set at the MaRS Discovery Centre.

The lower-key festival event, held at the MaRS Discovery District, attracted more than 400 people and took on a chameleon theme and slogan: "Try on the colours of Italian cinema."

“We try every year to shock people and to be a novelty,” said Italian trade commissioner Paolo Ponti of the party, which he planned in collaboration with Graham. Ponti said MaRS was chosen as a venue this year because of its melding of old and new and its representation of innovation. (The centre is known for leadership in science and business research.)

MaRS, a Toronto-based, not-for-profit incubation center, is leading a delegation of five cleantech ventures at this week’s Cleantech Forum XXIII in Boston. The companies – all clients of MaRS advisory services – will showcase their products for the cleantech CEOs, investors, scientists and policy makers attending the east coast forum. “While cleantech is a relatively new sector for MaRS advisory services, it is fast catching up with our other core strengths in information technologies and life sciences,” said Tom Rand, a cleantech entrepreneur, author and investor who leads MaRS’ cleantech practice. “MaRS is establishing itself as a major deal-flow engine in the cleantech sector, with an emphasis on early-stage companies.”

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GORDON NIXON, ROYAL BANK OF CANADA

chairman of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and chairman of MaRS, a not-for-profit organization that connects science, business and capital

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.

Market research leader IDC Canada has featured MaRS client Mensante as one of its "Ten Canadian Health Companies to Watch" in 2009.

Leading international psychiatrists, family physicians, psychologists, work place mental health experts and mental health economists developed an innovative web-based mental healthcare system called FeelingBetterNow(R).

Dr. Ozersky, Mensante's CEO, was selected by the Canadian Association of Health Informatics as recipient of the 2008 Community Physician Leader and Innovator of the Year Award.

Look who just landed on MaRS

MaRS was known for just that – putting a collective roof over the heads of Canada's out-of-this-universe thinkers. Aside from hosting the unlikely duo of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dalton McGuinty at a funding announcement two years ago, the centre seems enveloped in galactic silence.

corner of College and University

Gordon Keller, a senior stem-cell scientist who works out of Toronto's MaRS centre, also pointed to the potential for studying genetic diseases in a culture dish.

cientists have been working at a rapid pace over the past year to refine a process that allows them to replicate human embryonic stem cells, without the controversial use of a human embryo. It involves genetically reprogramming adult stem cells to an embryonic, or pluripotent, state.

Embryonic cells remain the "gold standard,"

Dubbed Certo-Ex, their simple concept streamlines sampling in these billion-dollar industries, bringing a process that can take 4 to 24 hours for a single sample down to a mere 30 minutes for multiple samples. The brothers have combined Ameer’s scientific expertise and Ahmed’s business savvy and also hope one day to broaden their work to include helping other young and promising inventors.

Part of their TiEQuest winning gave them access to networking with MaRS Discovery District, a Toronto-based, non-profit centre that brings together Canadian science, business and investment capital. Here they met the third member of their team, industrial designer and entrepreneur Lahav Gil, who has been designing and building technology products and medical devices for more than two decades with his company, Kangaroo Design and Product Development. Gil wanted to help the brothers because he liked them.

“They had a very innocent and authentic desire to commercialize their idea,” says Gil. “And that was quite inspiring.”