From Science City to Entrepreneur City
Toronto: Science City
What’s the best-kept secret in the research district?
That Toronto is becoming the 21st century Medici Court of biomedical research, with an incredible talent pool, according to neurosurgeon and spinal cord injury researcher Dr. Michael Fehlings in last weekend’s Globe and Mail.
Fehlings was one of 12 researchers profiled as part of a five-page spread headlined Science City, which dominated the Toronto section. Five pages is serious acreage in newspaperland, where vast tracts of real estate are most often dedicated to election coverage, budgets and other assorted dissections of the body politic. Rarely do physicists, immunologists and developmental biologists get such treatment (complete with charming outside-the-lab photography, unfortunately not available for viewing on the web).
For Globe reporter Tenille Bonoguore, the project was an eye-opener, having compiled and then culled the list of potential profiles from more than 200 suggestions.
“The real surprise was how much amazing work is being done here. I really don’t think we knew what we were getting into,” Bonoguore said in an email exchange after publication. “This is just one cross-section of Toronto’s effort and it’s fascinating. It boggles the mind to think of all the work that is being done citywide.”
What the Globe series (understandably) didn’t examine – five pages would expand to 10 – is what happens next to capture the value of those research findings and translate the most promising among them into clinically relevant and commercially viable products and processes.
Toronto’s scientists are undoubtedly successful in the stiff competition for research funding. Technology transfer offices at the city’s universities and research hospitals, in turn, generate a healthy proportion of Canadian invention disclosures, the first step on the road to patenting. However, when it comes to revenues generated from discoveries, the district does not yet fully realize the economic potential of its outstanding research engine.
With a mandate that aims to close the gap between research and commercialization as well as accelerate the creation and growth of successful enterprises, MaRS and its Venture Group — in its first two years since the doors opened at the MaRS Centre — have provided hands-on advisory services to more than 250 emerging companies across a range of science and technology disciplines. These include not only medical therapeutic and device companies but also a growing contingent of cleantech, wireless and digital media enterprises that is now expanding to include social entrepreneurs, those aiming to achieve a double bottom line.
And there is much more to come as MaRS Phase II begins to take shape, adding another 750,000 sq. ft. of state-of-the-art lab and office space, in alliance with Alexandria Real Estate Entities, North America’s pre-eminent science property developer.
Globe editors, stay on this file. Suggested headline for your next research series: “Entrepreneur City”.
Check out the photo gallery with links to each story and longer Q&A’s >>
Linda Quattrin worked as a long-time newspaper reporter and editor before applying her interest in science as a medical research communicator. A member of the Canadian Science Writers Association, she is responsible for media relations and corporate communications at MaRS.