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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 appoints president and CEO

A research commercialization leader from Israel, Dr. Raphael Hofstein, has been named president and CEO of the new MaRS Innovation initiative.

MI was created as a single, market-facing commercialization storefront for Toronto's university and health research institutions. Located in the MaRS Discovery District complex, with business development and administrative support from MaRS, MI will advance commercialization through industry partnerships, licensing and company creation. MaRS Innovation (MI) was founded in 2008 with $14.95 million in funding from the Government of Canada's Centres of Excellence for Commercialization and Research (CECR) Programme, matched by $10 million from the research partners. The MI partnership includes U of T, the 10 partner hospitals and health research institutes affiliated with the university, Ryerson University, the Ontario College of Art & Design, BioDisocovery Toronto, the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research and MaRS. Hofstein joins MaRS Innovation from his previous position as president and CEO of Hadasit Ltd., the technology transfer company of the Hadassah Medical Organization in Jerusalem.

Canada has the research expertise to develop drugs and vaccines to address pressing medical needs, but delivering on the promise will require new models of collaboration between scientists, biotechnology, the pharmaceutical industry, business and policy makers according to speakers at an upcoming symposium hosted by The Gairdner Foundation and York University. The symposium, Entrepreneurship & Commercialization in Biomedical Science, on Thursday, May 14, marks the 50th anniversary of both York University and The Gairdner Foundation.

The Gairdner Foundation recognizes the world's leading medical research scientists through its prestigious annual awards program for biomedical science. The symposium, which is hosted by York’s Faculty of Science & Engineering and Schulich School of Business, will bring together scientist entrepreneurs, Canadian venture capital firms, the biomedical industry and policy-makers.

He will be followed by Smith, founder and former president & CEO of RBC Ventures and a member of the board of Toronto's MaRS innovation centre. Smith will speak about how Canada has made strong progress in positioning itself as a potential leader in biotech and medical research and in its commercialization efforts but faces two clear threats – the global financial calamity together with the lack of clear federal government support for research.

A 2006 study (see http://tinyurl.com/bv8xk6) concluded that if the university disappeared, 77,000 local jobs and a net value in the region of £21 billion (US$29.5 billion) would go with it.

universities in the United States have similarly become important generators of local and national economic growth.

Canada's economy is outperforming the rest of the developed world

willingness to embrace a strong role for public investment in innovation,

Another example of public, private and university collaboration is the MaRS discovery district, a nonprofit innovation center that brings together biotech researchers, VCs, and social entrepreneurs in the same part of downtown Toronto with several research hospitals. 

What is this creative economy? It is an economic system that relies most on ideas to serve as its major capital, instead of services or physical capital. Take Google for example. In an economy based on ideas, the potentialfor breakaway successes like Google is far greater.

According to Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class: And How it’s Transforming Work, Leisure,Community and Everyday Life, members of the creative class are very different from those who are employed in the manufacturing, service or agriculture industries. They contribute to our economy primarily by producing the new forms and ideas exploited by our various industries and decision-makers.   What Florida terms the “super creative core” of this new class includes “scientists and engineers, university professors, poets and novelists, artists, entertainers, actors, designersand architects, as well as the ‘thought leadership’ of modern society: non-fiction writers, editors, cultural figures, think-tank researchers, analysts and other opinion-makers.”

What sets a creative city apart from a non-creative city? Florida proposes that it is the “three Ts of economic development”: technology, talent and tolerance.

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

The Premier’s Summit Award builds Ontario’s research prowess by recognizing exceptional medical researchers and helping them expand their programs. These winners are internationally recognized leaders whose work is transformative in their fields. Each winner will receive up to $5 million over a five-year period: a $2.5 million contribution from the award program matched by $2.5 million from their sponsoring institution. As the following profiles demonstrate, the Premier’s Summit Award supports researchers who have made a substantial contribution and show promise to do even more.

Dr. Benjamin Neel The Campbell Family Cancer Research Institute at the Princess Margaret Hospital, University Health Network Toronto

Dr. John Wallace McMaster University Farncombe Family Digestive Health Research Institute Hamilton

The event will mark the official opening of the new WORLDiscoveries office at MaRS.   WORLDiscoveries is a joint business development consortium formed between Western, Robarts and Lawson Health Research Institute to bridge local inventions and global industry.  

The MaRS Discovery District is a non-profit innovation centre that connects science, technology and entrepreneurs with business skills, networks and capital to stimulate innovation and accelerate the growth of successful Canadian enterprise

Ground-breaking research by three Grade 12 students from St. Elizabeth Catholic High School has earned the first place prize in the 2009 Sanofi-Aventis BioTalent Challenge (SABC) in the Greater Toronto region.

Regional competition sponsors: - University of Toronto, - York University, - Ryerson University, - Seneca College, - The Biotechnology Initiative - MaRS

The Osgoode Hall Law School has set up a superb program on expert forensic evidence in criminal proceedings and wrongful convictions to run in Toronto on Saturday May 9, 2009;

Location - MaRS Centre, 101 College Street, Toronto, Ontario