Ontario Institute for Cancer Research Announces Three New Equity Investments
Innovative Technologies Focused on Advancing Personalized Medicine for Cancer
TORONTO, April 26 /PRNewswire/ -- The Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR) today announced that OICR has made equity investments in three Ontario technologies to accelerate the path to commercialization. Included among these are a novel cancer immunotherapy that can be tailored to the patient and two informative diagnostic tools aimed at enhancing cancer screening and treatment.
"These technologies hold exceptional promise in the advancement of personalized cancer medicine," said Frank Stonebanks, Vice-President, Commercialization and Chief Commercial Officer of OICR. "These investments will help close the gap between seed funding and clinical proof of concept, moving these programs closer to the commercial arena."
"The OICR has quickly established itself as a global leader in research commercialization," said John Milloy, Ontario Minister of Research and Innovation. "The Ontario government continues to support OICR as it invests in health technologies and strengthens Ontario as an innovation-based economy and society."
After careful assessment by OICR, these technologies were chosen for funding in part because they advance OICR's commitment to the prevention, early detection, diagnosis and treatment of cancer. They include the following:
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| OICR and the University Health Network created a spin-off company to complete preclinical requirements to test a proprietary UHN technology for immunotherapeutic treatment of cancer. The technology involves the growth of a specific minor population of the patient's own cancer-killing T cells in the laboratory, with subsequent reinfusion into the patient to fight their disease. Developed by Dr. Li Zhang, Senior Scientist in the Division of Cellular and Molecular Biology at the University Health Network's Toronto General Research Institute, it has undergone extensive pre-clinical testing and has been shown to kill human leukemia cells in an animal model. The next step is a phase I clinical trial in AML patients. |
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| DVS Sciences Inc., a spin-off company from the University of Toronto, will use OICR's investment to support further engineering and product development of its revolutionary instrument for highly multiplexed biomarker analysis for scientific research, clinical trials and personalized medicine. The machine is similar to a flow cytometer, but instead of fluorescent tags, which limit the multiplex capacity due to spectral overlap, the DVS system uses stable isotope tags to identify up to 100 biomarkers at a time with very high resolution and dynamic range. It has been demonstrated to analyze 30 biomarkers simultaneously in single human leukemia cells at a rate of 1,000 cells per second with absolute signal quantification. Several prototypes have been sold to top laboratories in the U.S.A. and Canada. |
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| A low-cost liquid bead array for gene analysis with multiplex capability in the hundreds of thousands is also under development by DVS. |
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| Dr. Shana Kelley, Director of the Division of Biomolecular Sciences in the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Toronto and Dr. Ted Sargent, Professor in the Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto, and Canada Research Chair in Nanotechnology received OICR support for their microchip-based system for validation of clinically accepted leukemia biomarkers. Plans are being made for the technology developed to be spun-off into a start-up company that will receive seed funding from OICR and other groups. It uses no enzymatic amplification steps and provides electronic detection of biomolecules (DNA, RNA or protein) in approximately five minutes with high specificity and at concentrations as low as 100 molecules per sample. |
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| OICR's investment will facilitate testing and refinement of the sensitive electronic chip and hand-held device for direct and rapid detection of clinically relevant biomolecules in patient samples. The single-use detector chips feature simple, inexpensive silicon-based integrated circuit technology, multiplex and multiple sample type capability, and integrated sample pre-processing. |
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OICR had previously invested in these three projects through its Intellectual Property Development and Commercialization Program, which provides seed funding for late stage academic projects that meet specific market-oriented criteria.
For inquiries concerning licensing these technologies, please contact OICR via email at: [email protected].
About OICR
OICR, based in Ontario, Canada, is a new, innovative cancer research & development institute dedicated to prevention, early detection, diagnosis and treatment of cancer. The Institute is an independent, not-for-profit corporation funded by the Government of Ontario through the Ministry of Research and Innovation. OICR supports 500 scientific staff and trainees (located at its headquarters and in research institutes and academia across the Province of Ontario) and an $85 million annual operating budget. It has key research efforts underway in small molecules, biologics, cancer stem cells, imaging, genomics, informatics and bio-computing, from early stage research to Phase I clinical trials.
For more information, please visit the website at www.oicr.on.ca/commercialization.
SOURCE The Ontario Institute for Cancer Research
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