JLabs

A University of Toronto startup that uses artificial intelligence to develop treatments for genetic diseases has forged a partnership with a U.S. biotechnology firm.

Deep Genomics, spun out of research done by Professor Brendan Frey in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, said this week it will be working with Cambridge, Mass.-based, Wave Life Sciences to identify novel therapies for neuromuscular disorders – a category of illness that includes diseases like Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

Frey, Deep Genomics’ co-founder and CEO, said Wave’s neuromuscular research is tailor-made for the startup’s machine learning technology and targets a group of disorders for which treatments are badly needed.

“Neuromuscular diseases are a tragic category of diseases for children that impacts them at a very young age, and impacts their lives severely and can be fatal,” he said, adding Deep Genomics and Wave have yet to disclose the particular neuromuscular diseases they intend to focus on.

“But there’s a significant portion of these disorders that have a clear genetic basis, meaning there are mutations in their DNA that they’ve inherited at birth that cause something to go wrong.

“That makes it a perfect match for our platform, which is all about genetics – RNA, DNA and linking the genetics to what’s going to go wrong inside the cell.”

Founded in 2015, Deep Genomics has built an “artificial intelligence-powered discovery platform” that combines machine learning with genomics research to develop genetic medicines that can potentially treat a myriad of genetic illnesses, from autism to cancer.

The startup, which raised US$13 million in financing last year, received support from �鶹��Ƶ's Innovations & Partnerships Office, as well as UTEST and the Creative Destruction Lab at the Rotman School of Management – all part of the expansive �鶹��Ƶ entrepreneurship ecosystem. It is now working with Johnson & Johnson’s JLABS life sciences incubator in Toronto.

Wave, meanwhile, is a publicly listed company that uses a chemistry-based platform to find “transformational therapies for patients with serious, genetically-defined diseases.”

While Deep Genomics’ main research focus continues to be on metabolic and neurodegenerative disorders – it’s investing $10 million to develop its pre-clinical platform in these areas – Frey said working with Wave on neuromuscular diseases offers a number of additional benefits. They include “a way to rapidly deploy the output of our platform within a drug development context,” and the opportunity to further fine-tune Deep Genomics’ machine learning technologies.

Frey said Deep Genomics has held talks with most of the world’s major pharmaceutical companies, as well as several smaller ones, but decided to partner with Wave because it’s a young, research-focused firm that shares his startup’s vision.

And what is that outlook? If the traditional approach to medical research is mostly trial and error at the lab bench, Frey believes machine learning can be used to crunch through billions of data points, including those created by the sequencing of the human genome, to determine not only the cause of a particular genetic illness, but to find a cure – all “in silico,” or on the computer.

“The AI systems that we’ve built aren’t meant to speculatively offer up potential solutions,” Frey says.

“They’re highly precise and very intentional.”

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�鶹��Ƶ health accelerator H2i breaks down 'walls' with innovation-focused networking event

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 03 Oct 2017 16:08:44 +0000

�鶹��Ƶ health accelerator H2i breaks down 'walls' with innovation-focused networking event

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 10/03/2017 - 12:08

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Health researchers, students and industry professionals were encouraged to forge new connections at H2i's Pillars of Health event (photo by Chris Sorensen)

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More than 200 health researchers, students and industry professionals – many connected to the University of Toronto – gathered at JLABS @ Toronto Monday for an interdisciplinary networking event designed to spark innovation and entrepreneurship.

The event, dubbed Pillars of Health, was hosted by �鶹��Ƶ’s Health Innovation Hub, or H2i, the Translational Research Program (TRP) and JLABS, the first location of Johnson & Johnson’s life sciences incubator outside of the United States.

Guest speaker Pat Furlong, the founding president of the U.S. non-profit Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy, which she helped create in the mid-1990s after she lost both her sons to Duchenne muscular dystrophy, emphasized the critical importance of working across disciplines in the health-care sector.

The rest of the evening was dedicated to making connections between people who might not normally cross paths.

Pat Furlong founded Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy, a U.S. non-profit, after she lost both her sons to Duchenne muscular dystrophy (photo by Chris Sorensen)

“The thing about innovation, we’ve learned, is that it happens not in isolation, but between people,” said Joseph Ferenbok, an assistant professor in �鶹��Ƶ’s Faculty of Medicine who is TRP’s director and a co-director of H2i, one of several entrepreneurship hubs on campus.

“If you can bring in a group of different thinkers, with different ideas, backgrounds and experiences, then the creativity and problem-solving takes on a whole new momentum.”

It's easier said than done given the size of Toronto's life sciences cluster. The Toronto Academic Health Science Network comprises �鶹��Ƶ and nine research hospitals, while an estimated 1,000 health-focused institutes and local companies are involved in moving research from the lab into the broader health-care industry.

H2i's co-directors Paul Santerre, an entrepreneur and professor in the faculty of denistry, and Joseph Ferenbok, the director of �鶹��Ƶ's Translational Research Program (photo by Chris Sorensen)

To help facilitate interactions, student volunteers wandered the room with flashing red LED lights dangling from their lanyards. Their job was to facilitate conversations between strangers after consulting a smartphone app that listed all of the event’s attendees and their backgrounds.

“If you want to meet someone in a particular pillar or industry, you can come up to one of the ambassadors and they can do a search for you,” Ferenbok said.

A volunteer helps make connections between attendees (photo by Chris Sorensen)

A similar networking event was held last year that incorporated a speed-dating format. But organizers later decided a less-structured approach was more likely to yield the desired results.

“People just ended up chatting,” said volunteer Craig Madho, who is in his second year of a master’s in health sciences at �鶹��Ƶ. “We decided we didn’t actually need the speed-dating to break down those walls.”

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�鶹��Ƶ researcher and JLABS draw U.S. drug delivery startup to Toronto

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 10 May 2017 16:49:21 +0000

�鶹��Ƶ researcher and JLABS draw U.S. drug delivery startup to Toronto

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 05/10/2017 - 12:49

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�鶹��Ƶ's Christine Allen and Pendant Biosciences are working on a new polymer-based drug delivery system (photo by Chris Sorensen)

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Shawn Glinter, the CEO of Nashville-based Pendant Biosciences, was born in Winnipeg and played hockey in college.

But it took a leading University of Toronto researcher – and last year’s launch of life sciences incubator JLABS @ Toronto – to rekindle his interest in Canada.

Though Pendant originally licensed its polymer-based drug delivery technology from Vanderbilt University, the path to commercializing it soon led Glinter and his team to Christine Allen, a professor in �鶹��Ƶ’s Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy.

“I courted her for about a year before she finally said yes,” says Glinter.

Allen's research focuses on new technologies for drug delivery. She's one of only a handful of people in North America familiar with Pendant's polymer technology, which promises to make drugs more efficient, longer lasting and opens the door to drug-impregnated implants and other medical devices.

Glinter calls her a “rock star” in the field.

Now the relationship is poised to grow even closer – and more productive – after Pendant was accepted into Toronto's JLABS life sciences incubator earlier this year. The 40,000 sq. ft. facility, which celebrates its one-year anniversary on Thursday, is housed on one of �鶹��Ƶ’s floors in the MaRS West Tower and provides biopharmaceutical, medical devices and consumer digital health startups with shared lab and office space, as well as connections to experts, industry and investors.

Toronto's JLABS location, the first to be opened outside the United States, is the result of a unique collaboration between Johnson & Johnson Innovation, Janssen, �鶹��Ƶ, MaRS Innovation, the Ontario government and several hospital partners. The number of resident startups calling Toronto's JLABS home has nearly doubled over the past 12 months, with nearly half of them boasting connections to �鶹��Ƶ. They include WinterLight Labs, Nanovista, 6Biotech App4Independence and DNAstack.

Learn more about entrepreneurship and startups at �鶹��Ƶ

The presence of JLABS in Toronto has added to the city's growing reputation as a life sciences hub, centred on �鶹��Ƶ and its adjoining cluster of partner hospitals, research institutes and business incubators.

Global giant Johnson & Johnson “made a conscious decision to invest in Toronto life sciences,” says Glinter, when asked about the decision to move his company north (Glinter himself plans to remain in Nashville but will travel to Toronto several times a month). “That, to me, speaks volumes.”

Allen, meantime, envisions her graduate students and post-doctoral researchers moving seamlessly back and forth between Toronto's JLABS and her lab at �鶹��Ƶ – precisely the type of private-public cross pollination that was envisioned by its founders. She says Pendant’s biodegradable polymer technology promises to vastly improve drug treatments for patients because it’s far more flexible than Poly (lactide-co-glycolide), or PGLA, the industry’s current polymer of choice.

“Think of all the drugs that are out there and how every single molecule is different,” Allen says. “But molecule-material interaction impacts drug formulation performance. It impacts its stability, the amount of drug you can incorporate and the drug’s release-rate.”

For patients, that could mean the difference between having one injection every three to six months, instead of every couple of days.

“It’s about making drugs more effective,” Allen says. “If you can give patients an injection, and they don’t have to come back to the doctor every day, week or month that improves their compliance and quality of life.”

Pendant’s polymer can also be stretched into thin sheets to be used for coatings on medical devices or fashioned into tiny nanoparticles. Another possible application: using the polymer to make transparent, drug-infused contact lenses that allow allergy sufferers to forgo eye drops.

Allen’s partnership with Pendant has been very much a two-way street.

She says working with the hard-driving Glinter and his team has injected her lab with a strong dose of business savvy and helped her better understand the market opportunities facing Nanovista, another startup that she co-founded with David Jaffray, a professor in �鶹��Ƶ’s Faculty of Medicine and the director of the Institute for the Advancement of Technology for Health, as well as Jinzi Zheng, an assistant professor at �鶹��Ƶ’s Institute of Biomaterials & Biomedical Engineering (IBBME). Nanovista makes an imaging agent that helps surgeons see tumours more precisely.

“I think JLABS has been great for Toronto,” Allen says. “It’s been huge for us, and it’s been huge for Canada. And we can make the most of this at �鶹��Ƶ because we’re right across the street.”

JLABS gives �鶹��Ƶ startups a place to call home

lanthierj — Wed, 11 May 2016 13:35:07 +0000

JLABS gives �鶹��Ƶ startups a place to call home

lanthierj Wed, 05/11/2016 - 09:35

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Premier Kathleen Wynne, Mayor John Tory, Ontario cabinet minister Reza Moridi and �鶹��Ƶ president Meric Gertler were on hand for the official opening of JLABS @ Toronto (all photos by Johnny Guatto)

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“They’ll give us the right exposure to the business side and they’ll help us carve out a clear path to market”

Up until today, Nanovista existed only in the virtual world.

Meetings involving the startup’s three co-founders took place in the Mercatto coffee shop downstairs in the MaRs Discovery District, while research was conducted in labs and operating rooms around downtown Toronto.

Now, they’re moving on up to the 13th floor of the MaRS West Tower – one of the first 22 up-and-coming companies selected to be part of JLABS @ Toronto, an innovative research centre designed to advance bio/pharmaceutical, medical device, consumer and digital health programs.

“Being a part of JLABS brings us one step closer to commercializing and delivering this product to market to help patients,” said Jinzi Zheng of her company’s injectable imaging agent that helps surgeons see where tumours are located and remove them more precisely, while leaving healthy tissue intact.

“They’ll give us the right exposure to the business side and they’ll help us carve out a clear path to market. We’re scientists, we don’t have that expertise.”

Of the 22 startups at JLABS announced today, at least eight have ties to the University of Toronto and its partner hospitals – like Nanovista, which developed out of research started by Zheng as she worked towards her PhD in medical biophysics. The others include: 6Biotech, App4Independence, AvroBio, DNAstack, Ketogen Pharma, Ubiquitech and Proteorex Therapeutics Inc., which is working closely with Professor Robert Batey, chair of the department of chemistry.

Their new home is a gleaming 40,000-square-foot facility that has cutting-edge, modular and scalable lab space, equipment and, most importantly, access to scientific, industry and capital funding experts.

It also features JLABS’ first device and digital prototype lab, which was shown off today at its official opening to dignitaries including Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, Toronto Mayor John Tory and �鶹��Ƶ president Meric Gertler.

The space, which is rented by JLABS from the University of Toronto, is the result of a unique collaboration between global giant Johnson & Johnson Innovation LLC, the university, the Government of Ontario, Janssen Inc., MaRS Innovation and several hospital partners.

“The project to transform and fit out the floor into the first Canadian location for JLABS, budgeted at $18.3 million, came in on time and more than a million dollars under budget,” said Scott Mabury, �鶹��Ƶ’s vice-president of operations.

Every speaker at the event mentioned the university and the critical role it played in making JLABS @ Toronto a reality, including Wynne.

“The opportunities that JLABS will create for Ontario are immense,” she said. “And while the driving force behind those successes will be the people who take their research from lab to market, we need to recognize that there are other factors.

“If it weren’t for MaRS, if it weren’t for �鶹��Ƶ, the strategic partnership stream of our Jobs and Prosperity Fund, the life sciences corridor that surrounds us today, and the whole innovation ecosystem that we’ve built here in Ontario, there would be no JLABs launch today.”

With five locations in the United States, coming to Toronto next made sense.

“Canada’s startup scene is booming,” explained Melinda Richter, head of JLABS.

The location is also perfect – smack dab in the centre of Toronto’s bustling ecosystem of hospitals, businesses and university labs that already attract more than $1.4-billion in research funding each year to the city.

The university’s Banting and Best Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship (BBCIE) is also just across the street, making this stretch of College Street the place to be for ambitious researchers to hang out their shingle with the hope of turning their discovery into the next big thing.

“We’re excited to have JLABS @ Toronto join the University of Toronto as the newest addition to our vibrant entrepreneurship ecosystem,” said Gertler. “Together with our nine campus-led accelerators, under the umbrella of our Banting & Best Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship, we’re fuelling the creation of new companies, new jobs and solutions to some of the world’s most pressing challenges.”

Interested in startups and entrepreneurship? Visit the BBCIE

For Zheng and her Nanovista co-founders, Christine Allen and David Jaffray, a world of possibilities has now opened up by joining the JLABS family.

This in addition to their academic positions at �鶹��Ƶ. Zheng is an assistant professor in the Institute of Biomaterials & Biomedical Engineering,a scientist in the Institute for the Advancement of Technology for Health with the University Health Network (UHN) and a morning/evening MBA 2017 candidate at �鶹��Ƶ's Rotman School of Management. Allen is a professor in the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy and GSK Chair in Pharmaceutics and Drug Delivery. And Jaffray is a professor, director of TECHNA and executive vice-president of technology and innovation at UHN.

“It’s going to be great to be able to bounce ideas around with the other startups,” said Zheng (pictured below). “They’re going to have some of the same challenges as us, which means we can learn from each other. They’ll be a healthy competition.”

And aside from dreams of having operating rooms around the world stocked with vials of their product, Zheng says ideally they’d like their time at JLABS to lead to them meeting the right people who can take over the business side of their company, freeing them to focus on what they know best – pushing the science forward.