Commercialization

The University of Toronto plans to work with the Ontario government to measure the impact of its top-ranked scholarship and research, as well as innovation infrastructure, following a budget that links university operating grants to outcomes.

In its first budget, delivered today, Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government announced changes to the strategic mandate agreements with 45 publicly funded colleges and universities that more closely tie provincial funding to performance-oriented outcomes.

The new measures, to be implemented when the current agreements expire in 2020, would tie 25 per cent of funding to performance outcomes in their first year, and then increase over three years to 60 per cent in 2024-2025.

There are also plans to reduce the number of metrics – like graduation rates and ability to attract research funding – that the agreements rely on to measure outcomes for universities.

“As an innovation and research powerhouse and a global top ten public university, U of T is delivering results for Ontario and driving social and economic development,” said U of T President Meric Gertler.

“We welcome the opportunity to work with the government to identify the appropriate way to capture these results.”

Ontario’s budget also included plans to create an expert panel tasked with developing an action plan on intellectual property and maximizing commercialization opportunities at colleges and universities. It would potentially include representatives from the post-secondary sector, industry and the finance and legal sectors, among others.

It also announced there would be consultations with colleges and universities about how to best achieve faculty renewal objectives.

Overall, the Ontario government pledged to balance the books by 2023-2024, which is beyond its mandate, and pegged the current deficit at $11.7 billion.

"We have developed a reasonable path to balance," Finance Minister Vic Fedeli said. "Our path to balance in five years is a thoughtful and a measured approach to take ... Our entire premise is to protect what matters most."

The Ontario government also said it will invest $3.8 billion for mental health, addictions and housing supports over 10 years.

President Gertler, who recently announced a four-point action plan to address issues around student mental health, lauded the province for moving forward on a health issue that impacts people across the province, including post-secondary students.

“The success and well-being of our students is the university’s highest priority,” he said. “Investments from the government to address the acute increase in the need for mental health services is a positive step.

“We look forward to hearing more about how this funding will be distributed and are hopeful that students in the university sector will benefit.”

The changes in the budget aimed at Ontario’s colleges and universities come on the heels of other cost-saving measures announced earlier this year.

In January, Merrilee Fullerton, the province’s minister of training, colleges and universities, announced plans to cut tuition by 10 per cent for domestic undergraduate students and then freeze tuition at those levels in 2020-2021. Fullerton also revealed changes to the Ontario Student Assistance Program, or OSAP, that will result in fewer students receiving non-repayable grants through the program – effectively undoing changes made by the previous government that were aimed at ensuring low-income students could attend college or university for free.

At the same time, the Ontario government introduced a plan that would allow students to opt out of paying some non-tuition fees.

In its most recent budget, U of T said it will take in $88 million less than it previously forecast in the upcoming academic year as a result of the tuition changes. The university relies on tuition and other fees to make up about 63 per cent of its total funding. Another 24 per cent comes from provincial operating grants, while about 13 per cent comes from income related to investments or U of T’s endowment, as well as other sources.

Stem cell conference at U of T to focus on entrepreneurship

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 11 Jul 2017 19:35:17 +0000

Stem cell conference at U of T to focus on entrepreneurship

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 07/11/2017 - 15:35

Cutline

The December announcement of BlueRock Therapeutics at the MaRS Discovery District is viewed by many as a landmark event for the commercialization of stem cell research in Toronto (Photo by Johnny Guatto)

Chris Sorensen

Author legacy

Chris Sorensen

Topic

Our Community

Rotman School of Management

In the world of regenerative medicine, the recent US$225 million investment by drug giant Bayer and health-care investment firm Versant Ventures continues to loom large.

The seven-month old deal to create BlueRock Therapeutics, which involves key University of Toronto researchers and will focus on cardiac and Parkinson’s treatments, is viewed by many as a validation of Canada’s efforts to commercialize its leadership position in stem cell research.

It’s also expected to be a hot topic among the 150 scientists, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who are expected to attend next week’s The Business of Regenerative Medicine: Leadership, Innovation & Entrepreneurship conference at U of T’s Rotman School of Management.

“This is really visible in this community and it’s playing in two absolutely huge medical spaces,” says Will Mitchell, a professor of strategic management at Rotman.

He added the conference will include a case study of BlueRock’s formation, which involved one of the largest-ever financings in the biotechnology space.

“The question is: ‘How on Earth did someone pull this off, and can we do it again, whether here in Toronto or elsewhere?’” says Mitchell.

BlueRock, co-located in Boston, New York and Toronto, is a calculated gamble by Big Pharma that stem cell researchers can soon turn stem cell science into real-world treatments – or even cures – for a wide range of diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, blindness and neurodegenerative disorders.

Bayer and Versant were drawn to Toronto because it's home to top stem cell researchers like Gordon Keller, a professor in U of T’s department of medical biophysics and the director of the University Health Network’s McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine, and Michael Laflamme, a pioneer of cardiac cell therapy who is a senior scientist at the Toronto General Research Institute and an associate professor at U of T’s department of laboratory medicine and pathobiology.

Another key attraction: the U of T-affiliated Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine (CCRM), which launched in 2011 to speed the commercialization of stem cell research in Canada.

Stacey Johnson, a spokesperson for CCRM, one of the conference’s organizers, says this year’s event will also include a heavy focus on entrepreneurship, including a startup pitch competition. "Canada is very strong when it comes to the science of regenerative medicine," Johnson says. "But where we're lagging behind is turning those discoveries into products and companies. We're hoping this conference will help."

It's the second time Toronto is playing host to the 10-year-old international conference.

In addition to Mitchell, participants from U of T include: Shana Kelley, a professor in the departments of pharmaceutical sciences, chemistry, biochemistry and the Institute for Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, and Ajay Agrawal, who is a Rotman professor and the founder of the Creative Destruction Lab, one of 10 business accelerators at U of T.

The conference will also tackle thorny issues surrounding intellectual property, financing and regulatory approvals.

“If you think about going from [basic] research through research and development, pre-clinical work, clinical trials all the way to large-scale production, marketing and regulatory affairs – it’s a really complex puzzle in this space,” Mitchell says.

Peter Zandstra, CCRM’s chief scientist and the former executive director of U of T’s Medicine by Design initiative, says Canada has painstakingly built a “pipeline” for regenerative medicine that runs all the way from basic research to clinical trials.

“Now is really the time for next steps,” says Zandstra, who was recently appointed the founding director of the University of British Columbia’s School of Biomedical Engineering and will also be a presenter at the conference.

“How do we really consolidate these companies and grow them here?”

Manufacturing capacity could be a key ingredient. “It’s a fairly unique skill,” Zandstra says, noting it can be difficult for regenerative medicine startups to move into clinical trials because of the sheer quantity of stem cells that are needed.

“That’s one of the things that attracted BlueRock. We had solutions to some of the problems they faced in bringing new therapeutics to market.”

What does speech reveal about our health? U of T startup finds 400 subtle neurological health markers

ullahnor — Fri, 24 Mar 2017 17:30:54 +0000

What does speech reveal about our health? U of T startup finds 400 subtle neurological health markers

ullahnor Fri, 03/24/2017 - 13:30

Cutline

From left to right, Katie Fraser, Frank Rudzicz, Maria Yancheva and Liam Kaufman make up WinterLight Labs, which has created a tool to detect early signs of Alzheimer's disease and dementia (photo by Johnny Guatto)

Jennifer Robinson

Author legacy

Jennifer Robinson

Topic

Breaking Research

Commercialization

Creative Destruction Lab

Entrepreneurship

Faculty of Arts & Science

Hidden clues in the way you speak can indicate health problems long before an official diagnosis is made. These include how fast you talk, how long you pause, which words you choose – even tiny wobbles in the vibration of your voice, too subtle for the human ear.

Faculty of Arts & Science PhD student Katie Fraser discovered hundreds of speech and language markers for neurological health. Now, she’s a partner in WinterLight Labs – a new business venture with her colleagues at the department of computer science, Liam Kaufman, Maria Yancheva and Assistant Professor Frank Rudzicz, who is also a rehabilitation scientist at the University Health Network. With combined expertise in linguistics and machine learning, their team has built a tool that pinpoints early signs of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia with very high precision.

Coming to market soon, the tool will help clinicians track patients’ health objectively and start therapy promptly. Eventually, WinterLight plans to extend the technology to tests for depression and anxiety.

“Speech and language are among the most accurate lenses into somebody’s state of mind,” says Rudzicz.

U of T News spoke with the team ahead of Entrepreneurship@UofT Week.

How did research conducted at U of T lead to the creation of WinterLight Labs?

Frank Rudzicz: This research really started primarily with Katie Fraser who was working on aphasia, which is a loss of ability to understand or express speech, which can be caused by brain damage or stroke. She was applying machine-learning methods to analyze words and grammar that might indicate this disorder.

Then we moved into Alzheimer’s disease because of its increasing prevalence worldwide, and the need to assess and monitor individuals who might be at risk of developing it to provide better care.

[Master's student] Maria Yancheva expanded a lot of that work, looking at meanings of words and topics, and how change happens over time for individuals with language disorders.

Then, by extreme coincidence, the stars aligned and Liam Kaufman, who had a lot of experience in computer science and in Alzheimer’s disease joined us. He also had entrepreneurial experience so it was a perfect mix to transfer this research out of the lab at U of T into our startup, WinterLight Labs.

Why focus on speech? What does it reveal about our health?

Frank Rudzicz: We view speech and language as one of the most accurate lenses into a person’s state of mind. We’re focusing now mainly on pathologies and dementia, but speech and language are such a rich source of information, that we are excited about the potential to look at mood and other aspects of someone’s well-being.

Can you describe the tool WinterLight has created?

Liam Kaufman: As we’ve been exploring and meeting with clinicians, we’ve realized there is a range of possibilities with this technology. Step 1 is quantifying speech and language. Step 2 is diagnosing, and Step 3 is predicting dementia and Alzheimer’s. We’re breaking up these goals in ways that allow us to do things right now and progressively over time to achieve bigger things.

Right now, the people who are most interested in quantifying speech and language are speech language pathologists. They work with people with speech impairments, someone who’s had a stroke, someone who has aphasia, a traumatic brain injury or concussion.

To understand the nature of their speech or language impairment, they do a number of different assessments. One of them is called a picture-description task. The patient looks at a picture for two minutes and talks about everything they see. Then, the speech language pathologist spends 30 minutes transcribing what the patient has said and scoring it.

With our technology, we can take this task and do it for them. The assessments will be quicker and evidence-based, and therefore more objective. It’ll also enable clinicians to see more patients or help patients avoid the need to make a visit to a tertiary care centre, all together.

So, is the product software?

Liam Kaufman: Yes, it’s a service. The general form of the assessment right now is on a tablet, but it could be on a desktop computer. It could even be over the phone potentially.

Someone just has to ask the patient or subject to describe a picture they’re looking at, which could be on a tablet or computer, or talk in any way spontaneously. It doesn’t work as well if someone is just reading text off of a page.

Right now, we use one picture to conduct the assessments, but it could be any image – even family photographs – to make it an activity a patient wants to do on a regular basis.

We’re piloting [our speech and language quantifying technology] with several senior care homes in Ontario and soon in Nova Scotia, as well. They are interested in using it to monitor the progress of the disease in patients. They want to provide better care. The first phase, which is for clinician use, could be as soon as three months from now. The second phase (diagnosis) may be eight months to a year, and third phase (prediction) will happen when data permits.

How accurate are your tests in diagnosing and predicting dementia and Alzheimer’s?

Liam Kaufman: We’ve achieved 90 per cent accuracy for the diagnosis of dementia. But right now in our first phase, we’re focusing on simply quantifying speech and language.

If someone is very early on in the course of the disease, there are some medications that have a very small impact for some people. Getting medications to those people sooner can be beneficial so they can lead a fuller life for at least those first few years [after early diagnosis].

It also helps [patients and their families] with planning. While they’re still of right mind, they can do things like go on vacations, write a book, do financial planning, or whatever before it’s too late.
Knowing in advance is helpful.

From a business standpoint, pharmaceutical companies are really interested in early detection. In clinical trials, they’ve administered test treatments to people with advanced dementia, [but the drugs had] no impact. Then, they started looking at people with mild dementia – still no impact. And now they’re looking at people with pre-dementia.

Basically, the earlier you administer these medications, the bigger the impact for improving quality-of-life. [Pharmaceutical companies] really want assessments [like ours] that can help find people a year or two or decades in advance so they could start giving these drugs to them as soon as possible.

Frank Rudzicz: Eighty-one per cent is probably our most conservative baseline. . . We’re getting to a point where machine learning [artificial intelligence] is about as accurate as people are in doing this. There’s a bit of variance in how accurate clinicians are in diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease. The number is about 86 per cent of Alzheimer’s diagnoses, I think, are confirmed post-autopsy.

What is it about artificial intelligence/machine learning that makes your technology possible?

Frank Rudzicz: One of the key things is that computers allow for the collection of vast amounts of data. Algorithms allow us to analyze these data in a quantitative way. But increasingly modern machine learning and modern artificial intelligence allow us to combine those two things. That gives us the ability to find patterns in data that humans couldn’t find before.

Even in a couple hundred individual samples, we could pull out that certain aspects of speech and language seem to be indicative of cognitive disorders that no literature had ever really identified before.

What WinterLight does is new to most people. Is the field crowded with competitors?

Liam Kaufman: When we first started [in September 2015], I did a competitor analysis and there was one company. Over the last year and a half, a couple more have popped up.

It’s not just AI that’s hot right now. It’s also speech. You’re probably familiar with Amazon Echo? It’s a little cylinder that listens to you at all times during the day and night. You can talk to it. And there’s Siri on the iPhone, and Google has their own AI chat botish thing. All of these companies are investing heavily in speech and a lot of people are saying this is going to be the next UI [User Interface].

I think we’re going to be at a point sometime in the future where people are talking to computers to interact with them much more than we are now. It seems natural to use that information for other things – like diagnosing and detecting. If someone is talking to their Amazon Echo, and they were able to be diagnosed [with dementia or Alzheimer’s] 20 years in advance that could be incredibly useful.

What’s it been like to see your research transform into a startup? Did you ever think you would be in business?

Katie Fraser: Absolutely not! This was totally unexpected for me. When I first started my PhD, I thought I wanted to be a pure academic and just stay in the lab and do my research.

Once I saw the potential for this kind of research and the impact it could have, it took a little bit of convincing [to start a business] because it was very unfamiliar to me. But it was one of the best decisions I think that I’ve ever made. It’s been incredibly fulfilling and motivating to actually see the work translate into something that real people are using now.

Maria Yancheva: I’m just really excited about the possibilities in the future. There is no treatment for Alzheimer’s right now, but I think the path towards finding a treatment is to collect a lot more data, to detect it early on and then learn more in the earlier stages.

What drives your desire to help patients and their families?

Liam Kaufman: My grandfather had a stroke when he was in his early 90s. It was a pretty massive stroke. For the first 24 hours, he couldn’t speak at all.

He had a speech language pathologist that visited him once a week for five years, and he made massive gains, especially in the first few months. [That progress helped give him] the confidence to go out to the store or make phone calls. This may sound trivial to people who can talk normally, but to someone who has great difficulty coming up with words, it’s actually incredible that he could do this.

What interests me, especially in WinterLight’s current work, is that we as family members couldn’t necessarily tell he was better from one month to the next, but the speech-language pathologist could because she was trained. Having technology that can really quantify those improvements over time can be really helpful for the person receiving therapy and motivate them to keep going. It’s also helpful for the family to understand better why this person is going through therapy for so long.

What kind of help did U of T provide in getting the startup off the ground?

Frank Rudzicz: I’ve done a lot of work over the years with the IPO [U of T’s Innovations and Partnerships Office], and they helped me with a previous startup company and this one. They provided a lot of support in terms of getting intellectual property sorted out and transferred to the company, as well as connections to business people at MaRS, primarily through a program called UTEST.

We were a part of a couple of incubators or accelerators here, too, including H2i out of the Faculty of Medicine, UTEST and DCSIL, the department of computer science’s innovation lab. I think Rotman’s Creative Destruction Lab really propelled us – like a quantum leap — from where we were. We were just researchers.

It was a wonderful experience, talking with a lot of people about our technology, refining our business model, and that took us to a place where we’ve become a legitimate and strong business. It’s all because of the U of T community.

Do you have any advice for other researchers who are considering taking the plunge and commercializing their work?

Liam Kaufman: My advice would be make sure you have a concrete problem that you’re solving.

Frank Rudzicz: I think the size, the breadth, and the reach of the University of Toronto is one of its main strengths. There is a massive community of people that can help develop your business, from the accelerators we’ve mentioned to the research expertise in a variety of areas.

When I started my first company four or five years ago, things were just kind of getting started [in research startup culture]. There is so much more energy [now] and money, and people doing business development. Now is a perfect time, and it seems to only be getting better!

WinterLight Labs is one of more than 150 research-based startups launched in the last five years at U of T. Learn more at utoronto.ca

Read about Entrepreneurial Startup Kepler Communications

Read about Entrepreneurial Startup NuraLogix

Could your face be a window to your health? U of T startup gathers vital signs from video

ullahnor — Fri, 24 Mar 2017 16:32:29 +0000

Could your face be a window to your health? U of T startup gathers vital signs from video

ullahnor Fri, 03/24/2017 - 12:32

Cutline

U of T professor Kang Lee's NuraLogix will allow doctors to use regular webcams to remotely monitor patients' heart rate, blood pressure, stress and pain

Katherine Fernandez-Blance

Author legacy

Katherine Fernandez-Blance

Topic

Breaking Research

OISE

Artificial Intelligence

Kang Lee has invented an astonishing new technology. By analyzing video of a person’s face, his artificial intelligence-based system detects blood flow in facial tissue and uses it to measure vital signs and emotions.

A U of T professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Lee co-founded NuraLogix to commercialize his research breakthrough. Their first product will allow doctors to use regular webcams to monitor the heart rate, blood pressure, stress and pain of their patients remotely, helping to reduce costly and unnecessary visits to the emergency room. We will soon be able to measure our loved ones’ vital signs with just a video app, whether they are in the room or on the other side of the world.

Lee also envisions his technology as “an emotion engine,” empowering smartphones, cars, laptops and even social robots to help calm people in stressful situations and to better attune machines to our needs.

U of T News spoke with Lee ahead of Entrepreneurship@UofT Week.

Can you describe your research-based startup NuraLogix?

What we’re doing is we’re using a very new technology to reveal the invisible emotions underneath our face.

The mission of the company is really to put our technology – as an emotion engine – in all the technological devices we have now or in the future, such as an iPhone, car, laptop or a social robot.

The idea is to make these devices emotionally aware so that when you’re looking at your electronic devices such an iPhone your device actually knows your emotional state. Then the phone may say, “Hey, it looks like you’re feeling anxious, can I play soothing music for you?”

Or, if you’re driving, your car can detect if you’re angry at the driver in front of you and remind you, “You may want to calm down and take a deep breath.”

The social robot right now is very popular and many companies are producing it. In the future, it will be widely used in such areas as health care, child care and elder care. If you have a social robot that is able to detect the invisible emotions we are experiencing then the robot can really help us a lot.

Our technology’s application for health monitoring and telehealth is one area we are focusing on right now. The other one is marketing research – for example, finding out whether people like or dislike a product such as a car or a designer handbag.

How does this technology work? How does it use artificial intelligence/deep learning?

The technology can find out the blood flow on your face instantaneously, and it works in most natural lighting situations with any kind of digital video cameras.

This is how the technology works: first, we take the video images from a video camera. Then, using our transdermal optical imaging software, we strip away the facial skin to see the blood flow changes underneath the facial skin.

Blood flow changes are associated with physiological and emotional changes we are experiencing. Using data we have collected with people experiencing various emotions, we can build emotional models based on different patterns of facial blood flow change and use these models to detect whether you’re happy, you’re sad, if you’re experiencing fear, surprise and so on.

In order to get the blood flow out of your face, we need machine learning. So we used data – what we called ground truth data to help us extract blood flow. We use ground truth to separate the noise from the data that actually corresponds to happy/not happy. Once you have that, then you do deep learning – you build two models. One is the happy model, one is the sad model. Now you have these two computational models. They are basically like equations with weights.

For example, we discovered that when you tell lies, the facial blood flow on the cheek actually goes down, but the facial blood flow on the nose goes up, which we call the “Pinocchio Effect.”

Why is it important to detect people’s true and invisible emotions?

Currently, people are mainly using facial expressions to detect your emotions. But it turns out that’s not good enough. The reason is that a former student of mine did a study, and she found that 90 per cent of the time, our facial expressions are neutral. However, during the 90 per cent of the time period, people are not emotionless but experiencing various inner emotions that are invisible.

If your technology relies solely on facial expressions, you’re not going to do well because you only can detect less than 10 per cent of the time how someone really feels. On top of that, we can fake our emotions, and the system can be defeated.

But invisible emotion is controlled by the autonomous nerve system, which is beyond our conscious control and because of that you can really reveal people’s real emotions, not just expressed emotions or faked emotions with the use of our technology.

Are there any ethical issues?

Oh yes!

You can do this without the target’s consent or knowledge that their emotions are being monitored. That’s why we believe there has to be some kind of legal or ethical guidelines to go along with the use of this technology.

What made you realize that your research could be commercialized?

I wasn’t thinking about commercializing it, but the University of Toronto had this contract with MaRS. The MaRS people came over, and said, “You can commercialize this research and make it work even beyond lie detection.”

This motivated me to have our technology commercialized. We are now hiring almost one person every month. We just hired someone today at noon! We have 22 employees now.

Read about Entrepreneurial Startup WinterLight Labs

Read about Entrepreneurial Startup Kepler Communications

The next blockbuster? U of T startup Protagenic Therapeutics goes public on U.S. stock market

ullahnor — Fri, 10 Mar 2017 19:38:53 +0000

The next blockbuster? U of T startup Protagenic Therapeutics goes public on U.S. stock market

ullahnor Fri, 03/10/2017 - 14:38

Cutline

Protagenic Therapeutics comes from research done at David Lovejoy's lab. From left to right, Dr. David Hogg, Professor David Lovejoy, master's students Mia Husic and Ola Michalec and PhD researcher Andrea D'Aquila (photo by Johnny Guatto)

Jennifer Robinson

Author legacy

Jennifer Robinson

Topic

Breaking Research

Health

Prozac

Protagenic Therapeutics

Innovations & Partnerships Office

Subheadline

Company fuelled by ongoing discoveries at U of T

The fortuitous discovery of an ancient gene, which made the leap from bacteria to animals hundreds of millions of years ago, could be the next billion-dollar breakthrough in the antidepressant market.

Bigger than Prozac? Maybe.

A game-changer in the industry if approved? Absolutely, says David Lovejoy, a U of T neuroendocrinology professor.

The company, Protagenic Therapeutics, founded on research conducted in Lovejoy's lab at the Ramsay Wright building, took a leap forward by getting listed on the New York-based OTCQB stock exchange, considered a stepping stone to the NASDAQ.

“This is an entirely new gene, a new process and a paradigm shift in terms of how we look at drugs to relate to stress-associated pathology like depression, anxiety, addictions, post-traumatic stress disorder and even some of the more psychotic conditions like bipolar and schizophrenia,” Lovejoy explains.

“This could lead to an entirely novel approach to treat addiction.”

And, he says U of T was the source of all the research behind the hormonal drugs tied to this gene.

Thirteen years ago, Lovejoy and his team of student researchers were looking for a family of four genes tied to the stress response in animals when they identified a novel but related gene that was “special.”

“As soon as we had the gene, I went to the University of Toronto Innovations Office [now Innovations & Partnership Office (IPO)] . . . and they got very excited,” says Lovejoy of the Faculty of Arts & Science. As the son of an engineer and businessman, early on he was instilled with the importance of ensuring his research had a practical outlook.

U of T encouraged and supported him in the creation of a company, which eventually located its headquarters in New York City with “a very enthusiastic investor.” A Canadian subsidiary is located in Toronto.

“They were absolutely fantastic,” Lovejoy says of IPO. “They got us involved with a number of people and introduced us to business development officers . . . Had I not received that support, we would have never gone forward.”

So how does an ancient gene impact our emotional states in this fast-paced modern world?

During the process of evolution, Lovejoy’s “special” gene became important for the normal function of brain cells in humans. Protagenic’s natural hormone drugs are based on a small protein encoded by this gene, located on the X chromosome.

When stressed, cells are starved for nutrients. He describes the response as similar to when we have bills piling up and not enough money in our bank accounts to pay.

“If someone hands you a cheque for a $100,000, you don’t have that stress. That’s what this hormone does,” he says. “It protects the cells and turns on their ability to utilize nutrients against neurodegeneration and stressors, but it’s completely natural . . .

“This hormone is so important in humans there are virtually four identical copies of it. It’s the only hormone that is that well conserved. It’s that important. It predates insulin, and yet it does a lot of the same things that insulin does.”

At this time, Protagenic Therapeutics is well into its preclinical work and is expected to start phase 1 clinical trials later this year or early next year for use in treating depression, anxiety and addiction, Lovejoy says. If deemed safe and approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration, their product could be on the market in as little as six years.

Going public will help fund these trials, which can take tens of millions of dollars and years to complete. But he says his company has two important advantages: they have a drug that is different, i.e. not in competition with previously approved offerings, and the drug comes from natural hormones “that the body is already prepared to deal with.”

The experience of creating a startup and launching the company publicly has been an exciting ride, Lovejoy says, adding he’s open to talking to fellow academics about taking the plunge.

It’s an idea with growing interest on campus. In the years since he created his company, the number of faculty research-based startups and inventions has skyrocketed at the University of Toronto.

From 2011-2015, IPO reported 837 inventions, 244 patent applications and 89 research-based startups. Those with licensing agreements with U of T — like Protagenic Therapeutics — have generated $49 million in revenue.

“The interaction of Protagenic Therapeutics, the University of Toronto, our department of Cell and Systems Biology and our IP people has been instrumental in our success,” he says. “My grad students and a number of my undergrad students are gaining training in understanding the commercialization process. Indeed, some of them are named as co-inventors on patents.

“I think we’ve achieved a seamless transition between academia, patent protection and commercialization.”

Andrea D’Aquila, a PhD student in Prof. Lovejoy’s lab, agrees.

“Few academic laboratories provide experiences with both academia and industry,” she said. “I have been able to publish in academic journals, as well as being named as a co-inventor on patent applications. As a scientist-in-training, it’s one of the best experiences to understand both sides of the coin in discovery and development.”

Jennifer Fraser, IPO’s current director, adds that the university is proud to have been a part of the project.

“ We knew it would be several years before a product would make it to market, but we were able to identify a unique investor,” Fraser says. “Dr. Lovejoy’s passion came through in our discussions with them. That made all the difference.”

Federal government backs three U of T startups and their clean tech innovations

sgupta — Wed, 09 Mar 2016 10:39:31 +0000

Federal government backs three U of T startups and their clean tech innovations sgupta Wed, 03/09/2016 - 05:39

Cutline

Nanoleaf founder and U of T grad Gimmy Chu (photo above by Johnny Guatto/photos below courtesy Nanoleaf))

Olivia Tomic

Author legacy

Olivia Tomic

Three U of T startups are among 36 projects from across the country receiving funding from the federal government in support of their clean technology innovations.

Nanoleaf, QD Solar and ARDA Power Inc. received a total of almost $6 million from Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC), a governmental foundation which helps clean tech entrepreneurs commercialize their products by removing the funding barrier that hinders so many high potential startups.

“Nanoleaf is creating truly innovative products right here in Canada, but it’s difficult to get access to the capital needed to compete globally,” said U of T engineering alumnus Gimmy Chu, co-founder and CEO of Nanoleaf. (Visit the Nanoleaf site.)

“With this support from the Government of Canada, we can sustain our already impressive pace of product development and continue to make a truly positive impact for the planet and the people living on it.”

With an infusion of more than $2.8 million from SDTC, Chu said Nanoleaf will continue to develop their low-cost and highly intelligent “Smarter Kit” (pictured at right), adding to their collection of the world’s most energy-efficient LED light bulbs which are already on the market.

Interested in startups and entrepreneurship? Visit the BBCIE

“Researchers at U of T are regularly turning their discoveries into marketable inventions,” said Vivek Goel, vice-president of research and innovation. “I’m very pleased to see the support that these three companies are receiving from the government to continue the important work they’re doing in sustainable development.”

(Image below: Aurora lighting system by Nanoleaf)

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Professor (and TED speaker) Kang Lee: his new startup will change how we detect emotion

sgupta — Thu, 18 Feb 2016 09:57:40 +0000

Professor (and TED speaker) Kang Lee: his new startup will change how we detect emotion sgupta Thu, 02/18/2016 - 04:57

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(image by Bigstock)

Elizabeth Monier-Williams

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Elizabeth Monier-Williams

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Breaking Research

Visit Nuraglogix.com

“I truly believe this company will usher in a new era in man-machine interaction,” says Pozzuoli, now CEO of NuraLogix. “In the very near future, our technology will enable machines to understand how humans are feeling more accurately than any human being can today.”

MaRS Innovation and U of T staff also helped Lee to secure a $115,000 NSERC I2I grant to hire a developer and adapt his existing lab configuration for the technology – which was bulky and required an expensive camera, outside lighting and headset – to a more user-friendly laptop version. Doing so has increased the technology’s processing speed 90 per cent and reduced the time required for data analysis by a factor of three.

NuraLogix has also completed two pilot studies in the food and beverages industry with an Ontario-based company that revealed complementary EQ intelligence to the traditional pen and paper questionnaire. In particular, the studies found inconsistencies in subject feedback and expressed opinions about such qualities as after tastes as compared to the data captured by Lee’s technology.

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JLABS startup incubator selects University of Toronto, MaRS for first international expansion

sgupta — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 10:36:58 +0000

JLABS startup incubator selects University of Toronto, MaRS for first international expansion sgupta Tue, 09/08/2015 - 06:36

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(image courtesy JLABS)

Arthur Kaptainis

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Arthur Kaptainis

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Breaking Research

This startup combines genomics with one of technology's hottest fields: deep learning

sgupta — Wed, 22 Jul 2015 06:24:49 +0000

This startup combines genomics with one of technology's hottest fields: deep learning sgupta Wed, 07/22/2015 - 02:24

Marit Mitchell

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Marit Mitchell

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To learn more about entrepreneurship and startups at U of T, visit its Banting & Best Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Until now, geneticists have spent decades experimentally identifying and examining mutations within specific genes that can be clearly connected to disease, such as the BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 genes for breast cancer. However, the number of mutations that could lead to disease is vast and most have not been observed before, let alone studied.

These mystery mutations pose an enormous challenge for current genomic diagnosis. Labs send the mutations they’ve collected to Deep Genomics, and the company uses their proprietary deep learning system, which includes SPIDEX, to ‘read’ the genome and assess how likely the mutation is to cause a problem. It can also connect the dots between a variant of unknown significance and a variant that has been linked to disease.

“Faced with a new mutation that’s never been seen before, our system can determine whether it impacts cellular biochemistry in the same way as some other highly dangerous mutation,” said Frey.

Deep Genomics is committed to supporting publicly funded efforts to improve human health. “Soon after our Science paper was published, medical researchers, diagnosticians and genome biologists asked us to create a database to support academic research,” says Frey. “The first thing we’re doing with the company is releasing this database—that’s very important to us.”

“Soon, you’ll be able to have your genome sequenced cheaply and easily with a device that plugs into your laptop. The technology already exists,” Frey said. “When genomic data is easily accessible to everyone, the big questions are going to be about interpreting the data and providing people with smart options. That’s where we come in.”

Deep Genomics envisions a future where computers are trusted to predict the outcome of experiments and treatments, long before anyone picks up a test tube. To realize that vision, the company plans to grow its team of data scientists and computational biologists. Deep Genomics will continue to invent new deep learning technologies and work with diagnosticians and biologists to understand the many complex ways that cells interpret DNA, from transcription and splicing to polyadenylation and translation. Building a thorough understanding of these processes has massive implications for genetic testing, pharmaceutical research and development, personalized medicine and improving human longevity.

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Supergreen: turning renewable natural gas waste into fertilizer with U of T startup, CHAR Technologies

sgupta — Fri, 03 Jul 2015 11:35:13 +0000

Supergreen: turning renewable natural gas waste into fertilizer with U of T startup, CHAR Technologies sgupta Fri, 07/03/2015 - 07:35

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Professor Don Kirk and U of T alumnus Andrew White (photo courtesy Ontario Centres of Excellence)

Brianna Goldberg

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Brianna Goldberg

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Company wins $750,000 in first investment from Sustainable Development Technology Canada’s Natural Gas Fund

The problem with ‘green energy’ solutions is that some of them aren’t so much ‘green’ as they are ‘green-ish’ or ‘green-er’ than alternatives.

Take renewable natural gas. It’s seen as a clean and carbon-neutral alternative to fossil fuels. But as a form of energy rising from decomposing organic materials in landfills, natural gas starts out quite dirty.

A process called scrubbing can turn toxic and corrosive gas into useable energy. But cleaning it results in a lot of chemical waste – and when natural gas makes up more than 30 per cent of Canada’s energy use, according to statistics from Sustainable Development Technology Canada, that’s a lot of waste from a so-called green energy solution.

Enter alumnus Andrew White and his U of T research spinoff, CHAR Technologies. It’s a unique entry into a growing market where innovations that can make production of renewable natural gas more affordable, sustainable and streamlined have much ground to gain. (Read more about CHAR Technologies.)

“We developed a cost-effective, convenient and zero-waste cleaning solution,” the chemical engineering grad says.

The idea sparked when White toured a renewable natural gas plant in 2009 and was astonished by the waste generated in the filtering process. White finished his master’s work in 2010 and began commercializing a research innovation that transforms corrosive chemical trash into agricultural treasure in the form of sulfur-rich fertilizer. He launched the resulting company, CHAR Technologies, in 2011.

(Interested in entrepreneurship at the University of Toronto? Visit the Banting & Best Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship.)

White says its product, SulfaCHAR, is “the only product effectively converting hydrogen sulfide into a fertilizer supplement rather than another waste requiring disposal.”

In other words, it taps into the existing market need for renewable natural gas filtering but also offers an extra-green benefit by turning that waste into a useful fertilizer material. Leaders in Canada’s energy landscape say the economic potential of CHAR Technologies could have an impact on a national scale, and Sustainable Development Technology Canada has injected $750,000 into the company.

“We are proud to invest in the SulfaCHAR project, which will create jobs in Cambridge and continue to place Canada at the forefront of the clean tech industry,” said Gary Goodyear, Canada’s minister of state (Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario) and MP for Cambridge.

White says he was taught to avoid creating ‘end-of-pipe’ problems – the very challenge SulfaCHAR solves – through his engineering education at U of T.

“Professors Bryan Karney and Donald Kirk both inspired me to look at the life cycle of all projects and ensure that any wastes were preferably eliminated or, better still, converted into something useful,” White said. “Looking at the life cycle ensures we’re making the absolute best solution. And they both approach academia with an entrepreneurial mindset, which helped push me towards my entrepreneurial journey.”

Karney, chair of the division of environmental engineering & energy systems at the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, served as White’s undergraduate supervisor.

“I love the idea of turning a care for the world into a business, in an entrepreneurial way,” he says. “It’s fantastic to think about making a living and making the world better at the same time.”

White’s startup received mentorship and funding from the Research, Innovation, Commercialization (RIC) Centre’s VentureStart program, tailored specifically for entrepreneurs coming from a science, technology, engineering or math background.

Now he’s working with U of T’s Banting & Best Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship as he shares lessons learned through the startup process with aspiring entrepreneurs through lectures and mentorship.

And he says Sustainable Development Technology Canada’s funding will mean CHAR Technologies can focus on scaling-up and moving from pre-commercial to a commercial stage.

Helping to support the renewable natural gas industry will allow it to grow – which will in turn help convert even more wastes into resources,” White said.

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Interested in startups and entrepreneurship? Visit the BBCIE

Professor (and TED speaker) Kang Lee: his new startup will change how we detect emotion

Visit Nuraglogix.com

JLABS startup incubator selects University of Toronto, MaRS for first international expansion

This startup combines genomics with one of technology's hottest fields: deep learning

To learn more about entrepreneurship and startups at U of T, visit its Banting & Best Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Supergreen: turning renewable natural gas waste into fertilizer with U of T startup, CHAR Technologies

(Interested in entrepreneurship at the University of Toronto? Visit the Banting & Best Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship.)