Experience Mars in a whole new way
If you could travel to Mars, would you? Even we at MaRS are interested.
Space jokes and anecdotes about the planet Mars are in circulation here, being our home planet and all. But this is pretty cool. The Science Centre is opening “Facing Mars,” a hands-on, interactive exhibition, on June 9th.
Medicine 2.0 Map
In part one of our Medicine 2.0 series, we talked about what Medicine 2.0 means. In this interview, Dr. Gunther Eysenbach, Senior Scientist at the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation, talks about why Medicine 2.0 is so important and what factors make it relevant and pertinent to scientists, researchers and entrepreneurs.
Read on for the second in the Medicine 2.0 series of interviews with Dr. Eysenbach. Read the rest of this entry »
Inky with the latest CIX Award
Some very interesting companies could be found among the presenters at the Canadian Innovation Exchange event this week. It was great to see a range of companies hitting the stage. They included brand new players such as Sandy Ward, founder of local search startup Homezilla and the always colourful, angel investor and company builder Mark Dowd of Brainpark. Mark is building a peer to peer collaboration platform to tackle the very big and lucrative problem of managing knowledge within the enterprise. CIX also had a share of more established, venture-backed players such as Butch Langlois who presented the online travel site PlanetEye and Ron McKenzie, CEO of the online collaboration platform Octopz, a MaRS tenant.
Among many solid and “entertaining” presentations at CIX, Ron McKenzie and the Octopz team stood out as the choice of attendees when the votes were tabulated. They took home top honours for the best presenting company at the event. This win follows on the heels of the amazing debut of Octopz’s latest software at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco last week where over 10000 attendees packed the Moscone Centre to see the latest stuff. Read the rest of this entry »
Prestigious award funds innovation
On Tuesday evening, the research and innovation community came to the MaRS Centre to celebrate the 2008 Premier’s Innovation Awards — three prestigious awards programs that support and promote ideas and discoveries that build on Ontario’s innovation strengths. The Premier’s Innovation Awards include the Premier’s Catalyst, Discovery and Summit Awards. The Premier’s Summit Award program is administered by MaRS on behalf of the Province.
Premier Dalton McGuinty and Minister of Research and Innovation John Wilkinson joined MaRS Board Chair John Evans and our CEO, Ilse Treurnicht to celebrate some of the best and brightest minds in Ontario’s research and innovation community.
Blindness
In the world’s first clinical trial of the treatment, gene therapy restored sight within six months to people affected by a severe, inherited form of blindness which begins at birth and has no effective treatment.
Teams in the US and Britain were able to restore vision to four young people with Leber’s congenital amaurosis, a group of recessively inherited forms of blindness that gradually destroys the retina and leaves patients completely blind by their late 20’s. Caused by the mutation by several genes, including RPE65, surgeons from University College London (UCL) and Moorfields Eye Hospital injected a harmless virus containing a healthy copy of the RPE65 gene under each patient’s retina. The virus then ferried the healthy gene into nearby cells, which then began working normally.
Medicine 2.0 conference
Technology in the health care system is constantly evolving, creating more opportunities for development and, increasingly, technology is being used to involve patients in their own care. When I heard that the MaRS Centre was playing host to the Medicine 2.0 Conference in September (papers for this conference are due next week), I wanted to find out more about this model.
I caught up with the Dr. Gunther Eysenbach, Senior Scientist at the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation, to talk about Medicine 2.0, how and why it is important and how it is relevant to scientists, entrepreneurs and the rest of us.
Read on for the first in the series of interviews about Medicine 2.0 with Dr. Eysenbach. Read the rest of this entry »
Regenerative medicine applications
Following my recent blog about the regenerative medicine industry and how the US, Canada, UK, Japan, South Korea and China are leading the global race, it’s time to show you how this industry can impact our lives with some very cool videos.
These videos show some of the possible implications and applications of this technology: growing stem cells, regrowing finger tips, pulsing heart valves for transplantation, bioengineered hearts, and you’ll see the actual transplantation of a bioengineered bladder.
Tenant invests in cancer research
That fundamental question from patients in his neurosurgery clinic at The Hospital for Sick Children underlines the most sinister aspect of cancer, says neurosurgeon Dr. Peter Dirks, and it drives his work as a scientist investigating cancer stem cells.
Yesterday, Dirks was among the representatives of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR), outlining the broad vision for a combined $60 million full-court press on cancer at a news conference with the Minister of Research and Innovation John Wilkinson.
Reform hope for neglected patients
The Globe ran an excellent, high profile (Page A3!) story today on the need for improvements in orphan drug policy (to treat orphan, or rare, diseases) in this country. The articles focuses on a patient with a rather unfortunate condition who cannot afford the current treatment. While that story has been written before, the new twist comes from a private member’s bill in Federal Parliament that was introduced Monday that would define rare disorders and create a fund to improve access to rare-disease treatments and research in these areas.
Toronto Centre for Brain Fitness
Monday, April 7, 2008 was a day of celebration for a group of “brainiaks” from MaRS and our Baycrest colleagues as they announced:
“Ontario government invests $10 million into the New Centre for Brain Fitness at Baycrest.”
The funding will provide much needed fuel for the development and commercialization of solutions aimed at assessment and maintenance of cognitive abilities.
Veronika Litinski coordinates the MaRS venture services programs delivered to entrepreneurs, investors and high-growth companies. She also provides advisory services to entrepreneurs and high growth companies, with a special focus on life sciences markets, specializing in corporate finance and business development.
