What are your touch points with MaRS as an organization?

Many. BioDiscovery Toronto now has its main operations office in the new MaRS facility on College Street. – The MaRS facility is Toronto’s first centre for convergent sciences - the first meeting place, if you will - for scientists and business leaders who are going to be responsible in large measure for Canada’s progress in the knowledge economy.  Previously, Toronto institutions had their own meeting places but now we have this terrific centre, named the MARS Discovery District which is an ultra-modern world class facility dedicated to advanced research, business development and company collaborations.

MaRS and BioDiscovery Toronto share core values and are cooperating on several levels. MaRS, for instance is represented on BioDiscovery’s Board of Directors. BioDiscovery serves on MaRS committees and project teams.  All of us are working closely together along with the Federal, Provincial, Regional and Municipal governments to try to overcome gaps in the environment for technology transfer for commercialization. Both MaRS and BioDiscovery have close links with the Ontario Ministry of Research and Commercialization – The Hon. Dalton McGuinty, Premier of Ontario leads this Ministry.

MaRS and BioDiscovery Toronto believe that bringing together the right expertise, leaders, and teams will produce tremendous results. This is of course something that Rimon Therapeutics understands very, very well. Under the leadership of CEO, Dr. Michael May, Rimon has demonstrated that teamwork is necessary to bring new products to the marketplace. Leadership and teamwork must come together at the correct right time with the correct resources to establish a new idea or a new product.

What are you most passionate about?

I’m most excited about working with industry in new ways. What we are trying to do is to fill some of the gaps. For instance it is very difficult right now in Canada for the biotechnology sector to find early-stage financing for new discoveries coming out of universities and hospital research institutes.

Industry is interested in these new discoveries but doesn’t want to invest before discoveries are proven: what we call “proof of principle.” In therapeutics that means there should be some evidence of critical use - that the innovation has been tested in clinical trials or convincing data is available relating to both safety and efficacy. Proof is required to show the science really can work and it is practical.  This means that if you are a university researcher with a development project, you really have to get further down the commercial development pathway.

How are you developing new sources of funding?

BioDiscovery and MaRS are working to fill that translational proof-of-principle gap by raising resources and delivering funding for critical development steps. The MRI is providing critical funding under its Ontario Research Commercialization and Investment Accelerator programs. In filling this obvious gap, we are doing our best to make sure the expertise and financial resources are available to our investigators, technology offices, and broadly throughout the innovation system.

BioDiscovery also achieved significant federal funding through the Intellectual Property Mobilization Program of the NSERC and CIHR for support of technology-transfer. Our intent also is to work with MaRS, OCE (Ontario Centre of Excellence), HTX (Healthcare Data Exchange) and IRAP (NRC Industrial Research Assistance Program) - to work cooperatively so we can obtain the resources necessary to bridge the commercialization gap. We are also seeking private support from industry partners and from appropriately targeted venture capital funds.