1. Can you explain your current role at Rimon?

Gary is the Director of R&D at Rimon. He is responsible for all R&D functions at Rimon, supervising laboratory activities and managing the two scientists that work with him. His work encompasses new product development, prototype development, clinical trials, and Intellectual Property (IP) design, application and management. For the Intellectual Property (IP) work to gain legal protection for Rimon’s materials, he interacts with the company’s IP lawyers to generate new submissions, be they provisional or formal applications.  He also responds to examiners.

2. How many people are in your department? As a group, what is unique about them?

There are two fulltime biomaterial scientists working in the Lab - Allison Brown and Caroline Hamer. Another person, Rebecca Ho, splits her time between the lab and clinical/regulatory work. This team is highly trained, flexible, and very motivated. They are quick to rise to new challenges and accept extra responsibilities.

3. Rimon is commercializing Theramers™ - therapeutic polymers. Can you

speak to the promise of the technology?

The interesting thing is that Theramers™ are medical polymers or plastics that have a therapeutic activity. Typically, medical polymers have been used for their physical or mechanical properties.  Now they can be exploited to additionally possess a drug-like activity to promote a healing response. Theramers™ allow patients to avoid the use of soluble drugs that can cause side-effects when they are administered systemically and distributed throughout the body. Additionally, the materials are less costly to produce compared to pharmaceutical therapeutics. Rimon's key products benefit from the shorter timelines, and therefore reduced developmental costs, compared to those of pharmaceutical products.

5. Where do new ideas come from and how are they developed?

Ideas come from a variety of places: scanning the literature, attending conferences, interacting with colleagues within Rimon and the broader community. They come upon biological themes from the literature and ask themselves how they can affect these processes. 

Mike May and Gary work closely together to brainstorm and screen ideas – generating new ideas and sifting them down to the ones they want to pursue given the time lines and resources they have available.

There are two levels to the product development process at Rimon. One, taking the materials they do have and expanding them into additional applications. With existing Theramers™, they continually scan the literature to see where there can be effective applications to additional disease states or disorders. Simply put, they have the materials and look for ways to exploit them. Subsequently, they do proof of concept testing and proceed ultimately to clinical development.

The other level is a ground-up material design, almost like a jet engine development-type program. They scan for opportunities for materials for applications, processes that they would like to impact, answering the question: “How would you make a material that would do that?”

6. Can you describe the network of collaborators you have?

They have an extensive network in Toronto. Their lab is at the University of Toronto. One of their co-founders is Dr. Michael Sefton, a professor at The University of Toronto. They set up collaborative projects with his doctoral and post-doctoral students. They do testing and evaluation of new materials at the University. They have facilities there to test what they make and how they make it. They also collaborate with several physicians in the downtown hospitals – St Michael’s, Mount Sinai and Sunnybrook. They do research with large medical device companies.

Their network starts at home in Toronto and stretches out across the continent and to Europe as well.   

7. How are MMPs important in wound care and applications?

Generally speaking, with non-healing and persistent wounds, it has been recognized that there are high concentration of MMPs. The premise they work with is that MMPs are enzymes that chop up connective tissue in the skin faster than it can be regenerated by the natural healing process. The result is a stalled state that cannot progress towards healing.  By inhibiting these MMPs locally in the wound environment, you reduce tissue degradation. This allows the normal healing response to take hold, leading to new tissue generation and ultimately to closure of the wound. Their preliminary clinical data is showing the pro-healing effects of MMP inhibition.

8. How did you come to work for Rimon?

Gary met Dr. Mike May as a graduate student when he was working for their other co-founder Dr. Michael Sefton. Mike had graduated two years before Gary did and was establishing the company at that time. The two spoke about the company informally over a period of a year or two. When Gary was finishing his training, Mike asked if he would like to work for the company. Gary was actually the first employee he hired.

9. How did you come to be interested in engineering?

Gary had an early aptitude and interest in math and science and liked the idea of applying that knowledge practically. His father, who was an engineer, inspired him to follow that inclination. .

10. I understand you worked under Dr. Woodhouse. Is that correct?

He did his PhD in Chemical Engineering with Dr. Woodhouse. He was also her first graduate student. Because he was her first student, there was a lot of freedom which was useful training for his role here at Rimon. She was starting up a brand new lab, and was open to innovative and creative ideas in terms of his research, how he wanted to define his project in a broad sense and in a more detailed sense. She was a valuable source of training.

While working with Dr. Woodhouse, he did polymer development - polymer chemistry, polymer synthesis, and polymer characterization. He had the opportunity to develop a new family of degradable polyurethanes which were patented.

11. What are the exciting things that are going to go on with Rimon over the next six months?

The biggest thing is getting the clinical trial finished and telling the world about the positive results obtained in the clinic. The next steps will of course involve getting the material out into the market place. Seeing the final product on the market helping patients will be the most exciting thing.

Note Gary Skarja's presentation at BioFinance 2006 below. 

It seems that your role is to be the facilitator and champion.

Yes. We have built a powerful network – our members are involved in managing Intellectual Property arising from university and hospital research. They include Hospital for Sick Children, University Health Network, Mount Sinai Hospital, Sunnybrook Hospital, Toronto Rehab, St Michael’s Hospital, Centre for addiction and Mental Health and Ryerson University.  This network will be expanded in 2007 with the addition of 2 or 3 new members.

We aim to contribute what is needed for success.  We can tailor the recipe to selectively contribute financial resources, expertise, management techniques, and skills along the way, where and when it is needed. Being the facilitator and champion, and having the knowledge to do work in the biomedical field, we have to make sure we can bring the critical resources to overcome the main challenges of technology transfer and commercialization.

There are close ties between BioDiscovery Toronto and Rimon Therapeutics. Can you speak about the relationship?

Rimon President Michael May has been on the board of directors almost since BioDiscovery started. He is also a member of the Executive Committee. He represents a voice of experience from industry, providing guidance on how we should deploy our own resources. As you know, the challenge is really to make your time, your money, and your people’s efforts all count. Michael is a great leader in this respect, and has been immensely helpful to BioDiscovery in its formative stages. He is on the front line with Rimon Therapeutics, a company with very, very promising wound-healing technology and a unique way of getting these technologies to market. I know his scientific, managerial, and entrepreneurial methods will stand the test of time.

Rimon Therapeutics, as you alluded to, is commercializing Theramers™, which are therapeutic polymers. Can you speak to the promise of that technology, the team and company overall?

Rimon’s products are based on a very solid knowledge of the cascade of biochemical and physical events that occur in a chronic wound site. Rimon’s Theramers™ can accelerate the process of wound healing, reduce infection, and at the same time reduce one’s stay in the hospital for serious injury. Also the Theramer™ approach is being shown to be effective for chronic wounds that otherwise would fester. This is just tremendous. Wounds take a lot of effort for hospital staff to prevent infection, to change dressings for patients etc. Any improvement is good for the patient and good for the system overall. Rimon’s Theramers™ have great potential.

Michael May is supported by the scientific leadership of Dr. Michael Sefton and other highly talented people.  Theramers™ are unique and differentiated in the marketplace.

It’s a new approach for the old problem of healing chronic wounds – an area where innovation is badly needed.

How do you see BioDiscovery Toronto and Rimon collaborating in the future?

We would like to see them work with other investigators, or other companies in Toronto or world wide. We can assist Rimon to make connections with other investigators that have related technology to create offshoot products - to pursue other ways of using Rimon’s base of commercial intellectual property and knowledge. So this has two dimensions: We can hopefully find ways to help Rimon- and Rimon through its leadership - can find ways to help us. 

These kinds of relationships are long-lasting. They continue over long periods of time because the core value proposition is fundamental: “How can we help each other to achieve health-related objectives in our society?”