Innovation + Job News

Several years ago the Ontario government began noticing a trend: major clinical trials were being conducted here less frequently. Pharmaceutical companies, it turned out, were increasingly choosing to run trials in developing nations, where costs are lower.

Clinical Trials Ontario is a new organization that hopes to combat that trend and attract major clinical trials back to Ontario. The nonprofit, which is right now fully funded by the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation, wants to make us more competitive again, by making the most of our key advantage: the quality of our research and clinical practices.

"We are not going to compete with emerging economies on an absolute cost levels," says CTO executive director Ronald Heslegrave, "but we do have the support clinically… Quality is as important or more important than cost itself. If you fail on the quality side, the regulators will never approve your product anyways."

CTO's first step will be to streamline the regulatory hurdles that can make it onerous for pharmaceutical companies who need to conduct large-scale trials. Currently, if you want to run a trial with a large population distributed across multiple sites, for instance, you need to get separate sign-off for your trial procedures according to the approval process of each of those sites. Twenty sites? Twenty approval processes. This, says Heslegrave, is unnecessary. "We can devise a centralized approval process which maintains the highest standards in trial protocols, but make the process more efficient and easier to navigate." (Ontario instituted a centralized review system for cancer trials several years ago; CTO hopes to expand that centralized approach to cover other disease areas.)

If Ontario does see an increase in clinical trials, Heslegrave says, there are two key benefits that follow. One is that "we need clinical trials for the health of Ontarians—this provides access to investigational drugs prior to them being approved on the market." The other is a job creation spin-off. "If the trials are conducted here... they are more likely to be analyzed here as well." In other words, our biomedical research sector would grow to provide support for the trials.

CTO's board includes pharmaceutical industry representatives as well as academics and business experts. Collectively, they hope, they can make the case that cost shouldn't be the determining factor in where clinical trials are conducted.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Ronald Heslegrave, Executive Director, Clinical Trials Ontario

Co-location has, in recent years, become increasingly prevalent in the small business and non-profit sectors. It's a useful alternative for enterprises that are smaller or just starting out. Pooling costs for essentials like office space and phone service helps keep overhead costs down, not to mention cutting down the time time spent managing infrastructure and logistics.

Stepping into the co-location world is consulting firm Ideacia ONE Inc., which has just launched a space specifically geared to innovative businesses. The 3,000-square-foot facility is located in Markham, in an office tower at Woodbine and Steeles; they are currently accepting applications from prospective tenants.

Ideacia's aim, says co-founder Jennifer Powers, is to create a middle ground between "typical business centres where you can rent space, [but] if you walk through the aisles everyone has their door closed" on the one hand, and intervention-oriented government incubators on the other. Ideacia's Innovation Centre, if things go according to plan, will "bring [a] diverse group together into an environment that's very open… that will really encourage them to share ideas and support each other in their growth."

Powers says prospective tenants will be screened to ensure than none are in direct competition with each other. The founders hope tenants will eventually develop business relationships with each other as an organic outcome of sharing physical space.

Ideacia's current roster of clients—about 150 in total—ranges from companies that have worked with NASA to smaller entrepreneurs who want help streamlining their day-to-day operations. On this effort, Ideacia is specifically seeking technological enterprises and other small businesses that provide relevant support services.

As for the "innovation" in "Innovation Centre," Powers emphasizes that it's important not to invest the word with some sort of mythic weight. Innovation, she says, "doesn't necessarily have to be incredibly earth-shattering. People can absolutely use innovation in every sector, every business—it's really a mind-shift."

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Jennifer Powers, Principal and Co-Founder, Ideacia ONE Inc.

The Hospital for Sick Children opened its new Centre for Genetic Medicine six months ago—quietly, and without much fanfare.

They had a good reason to wait: Sick Kids has just announced that it will be the first hospital in Canada to install cutting-edge genome sequencers, ones that will allow them to sequence a patient's full genome "in a couple of hours, for a thousand dollars."

It's the kind of advancement in medical technology we last saw when MRIs became common, and researchers hope it will usher in a new era in pediatric medicine.

One feature that's distinctive of pediatric patients: a much higher proportion of them are being treated for chronic illnesses compared to the adult hospital populations.

"70 per cent of the patients at Sick Kids come in with chronic disorders that have some kind of genetic component to them," says centre co-director Dr. Steve Scherer. Because such a high percentage of Sick Kids' patients are ill at least in part due to genetic factors, genomic sequencing has the potential to be especially beneficial in a pediatric setting—it is there that genetic research may have its greatest impact.

The long-term goal, Scherer says, is "to sequence the genomes of all of the children who come in the hospital."

That's up to 10,000 genomes a year, once things are fully up to speed. For the first year, the sequencers, supplied by Life Technologies Corporation, will be used in clinical research testing, covering maybe 1,000 patients. The hospital will then incrementally cover more and more of its patients. They are also hiring clinical geneticists, counsellors and other support staff (such as computer scientists with a background in biology or medicine) to manage the large influx of new information they will be processing.

"In a way it's a big experiment," Scherer says. The hospital will inevitably learn as it goes—as, hopefully, will the researchers who have a massive new influx of information to help them provide individualized medical care.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Dr. Steve Scherer, Co-Director, Centre for Genetic Medicine

Further proof that Toronto is a burgeoning hub of the clean technology sector: an executive search firm that specializes in that area is setting up shop here.

Hobbs & Towne, which currently operates in five US cities, will open its first Canadian office in Yorkville next month.

"We founded the company in 1997," says managing partner Bob Hobbs, "doing work in North America with clean tech company and venture capitalists that have invested in energy tech and sustainability."

The firm has been placing executives in Canada for about 10 years. "Just based on all the activity in Canada over the past few years and the amount of work that we've done with clean tech companies [there], we decided it was important for us to actually have feet on the ground."

Initially several of the firm's partners will be rotating through the Toronto office on a weekly basis; the plan is to hire several recruiters to cover placements throughout the country. Hobbs and Towne's three-year plan calls for further expansion—specifically, they hope to open a second Canadian office in Calgary within that timeframe—but Toronto was the place they needed to start.

"Some of our longer lasting relationships with investors are with investors in Toronto," Hobbs says.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Bob Hobbs, Managing Partner & Co-Founder, Hobbs & Towne, Inc.

Increasing the amount of energy we get from renewable sources—an aspiration that was once the province of idealists—has become a much more common goal in recent years, one trotted out by politicians of many different partisan stripes. But as the pressure to move to sustainable energy grows, so too do the technical challenges in implementing the needed new technologies effectively, and on a large scale.

One of these challenges: because renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind power, are less consistent and predictable than their traditional counterparts, energy companies are reluctant to rely on them for a significant percentage of their power. How do you manage on a cloudy day or a still one, if you need constant source of power to keep the grid up and running?

Hoping to help solve this is Prolucid Technologies, a Mississauga software engineering firm that has just received nearly $900,000 in funding from Ontario's Smart Grid Fund. That money will support a two-year demonstration project in which the company will install its power grid management platform, including both hardware and software, at Exhibition Place.

"The goal," says company president Bob Leigh, "is to monitor the state of the local grid, keeping tabs on both the amount of energy being used as well as the amount being produced by the various local power producers—solar panels, wind turbines, or other."

This effort will help combat the problem power companies face with managing the more erratic renewable energy sources.

"By actively monitoring the system and having the ability to control its various components on the fly, we hope to increase the amount of renewable generation that can be connected to the local grid beyond the current low limits," says Leigh. Exhibition Place, he explains, makes the perfect testing ground because it already has a mix of energy sources on-site, most famously, it's large wind turbine.

Prolucid currently has nine staff members, and will double in size to manage this new project: they are currently hiring for five positions, and expect to hire for an additional three later this year, when the demonstration period begins. They have also announced the creation of a new offshoot, Prolucid LocalGrid Technologies Inc., which will work on bringing the company's technology to market.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Bob Leigh, President, Prolucid Technologies Inc.

The Ontario Brain Institute was founded in 2010 to foster collaboration among brain researchers, and develop relationships between those researchers and industry partners who can bring innovations to market.

Helping the institute make good on that goal is the federal government, which recently announced an $11-million investment in OBI. The money will aid the commercialization of 14 separate projects, devices and therapies, and is bolstered by an additional $11 million in private investments OBI has already raised.

A sampling of the projects that will supported by the funding:

- A study of the potential benefits of deep brain stimulation in the treatment of Alzheimer's, led by Dr. Andres Lozano of Toronto Western Hospital
-  A clinical trial of a "site-specific and sustained release-microparticle technology platform" that can deliver drugs directly to the brain, a collaboration between Dr. Robert and Edge Therapeutics Inc.
- Bringing Smarter Kids, a learning tool for pre-school children, online through a variety of virtual platforms, a project coordinated by Dr. Sylvain Moreno (Baycrest Centre for Brain Fitness) and Cookie Jar Entertainment

A total of 28 partners are involved in the projects supported by this funding, including both nonprofits, local private companies and five multi-national corporations.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Michele-Jamali Paquette, FedDev Ontario

Ontario has been making a concerted effort to develop its clean energy sector for a number of years. Now a new venture will help that sector take its innovations around the world. This month the provincial government, in partnership with MaRS Discovery District, announced the creation of the Clean Energy Institute.

"The overall goal," says Jonathan Dogterom, the practice lead for cleantech at MaRS, "is to be able to put a bit more of an economic development focus on energy technology."

Which is to say: the institute's key objective will be to help the community of clean energy innovators that has started to cluster here by creating new export opportunities that will allow them to expand their businesses in foreign markets.

"Energy represents a huge market around the world," Dogterom says, "and we have some of the best innovations in energy technology."

We don't, as of yet, have the international presence to match.

The project is still in the very early stages of development. MaRS and the Ontario government will be reaching out to industry stakeholders in coming months to get input into the project; they also expect to add some private partners as the Clean Energy Institute takes more concrete shape. Their immediate goal: develop a detailed plan for setting up the institute over the course of a year.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Jonathan Dogterom, Practice Lead (Cleantech), MaRS

It was just in September that Wattpad announced it had secured $3.5 million in Series A financing. Now, nine months later, they've closed another round of funding—a whopping $17.3 million.

"We still have a lot of money in the bank," says Allen Lau, Wattpad's co-founder. "The [original] plan was to raise Series B next year, but the traffic was growing so quickly that we thought it was a good time to raise a bigger round and secure the future."

Wattpad is a social media platform for sharing stories; it currently hosts five million user-generated pieces of writing in 25 languages. A key focus for the company and its users is fostering relationships between writers and readers: authors engage with their audience while developing story outlines, for instance, or seek feedback as they publish a novel in chapters. The growth was so strong, explains Lau, that "we ended up spending time and effort in sustaining activities—adding more servers, making sure our infrastructure was scaling up—rather than improving the product per se."

The Series B financing, spearheaded by San Francisco's Khosla Ventures (also including former Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang and current investors Union Square Ventures and Golden Venture Partners), will enable Wattpad to focus on enhancing its product, with a particular emphasis on the streamlining the user interface and boosting social functions on its mobile apps. They'll be doubling their current staff complement, going to 40 from 20, and are currently seeking a talent acquisition specialist manager to help them manage that growth. Lau says they will be primarily seeking developers, designers and community managers.

Citing an old business maxim, he adds: "The best time to raise money is when you don't desperately need the money."

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Allen Lau, CEO and co-founder, Wattpad

Kobo last made headlines in November 2011, when it was sold to Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten Inc. In its first major venture under new ownership, the Toronto-based eReader company is set to launch a self-publishing platform at the end of this month.

The venture, called Kobo Writing Life, aims to help writers manage their own publications more effectively, as well as retain a greater percentage of royalties than with competitors currently in the market. Writing Life will provide authors with real-time analytics and data to help them fine-tune their offerings, via a metrics dashboard; users will then be able to tweak specific elements, like cover art or price in individual markets, on the fly. Writers will receive 70 per cent of the royalties from any publications priced between $1.99 and $12.99, and 45 per cent from books priced outside of that range.

Mark Lefebvre, Kobo's director of publisher and author relations, told us that Writing Life began when Kobo asked writers "What can we do to make it easier, not only to get into the catalogue but to become more successful?" One key reply, he says, was provide more information: writers want to know how their publications are doing in as much detail as possible.

Lefebvre sees three kinds of writers especially benefiting from the new platform: what he calls "the Terry Fallises," who have fully developed works but can't get an agent or publisher; writers who have traditional publishers but have some pieces (say shorts stories or novellas) that don't fall into their usual type of writing; and writers who are already self-published in Canada and want to explore foreign markets.

Kobo began the project with just a "bare bones" staff, Lefebvre says. It's tripled over the past three months, with about 30 people in total working on Writing Life. The company is aggressively hiring staff to work both on Writing Life and other products; about 35 positions are currently open at the company.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Mark Lefebvre, Director of Publisher and Author Relations, Kobo

French video game developer Ubisoft opened a Toronto studio in September, 2010. Finally the company has released details about that studio's inaugural production: the sixth installment in the Tom Clancy video game series Splinter Cell, called Splinter Cell: Blacklist.

Unveiled at the Electronic Entertaintment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles this month, the game (whose protagonist is black-ops agent Sam Fisher) will incorporate new movement and voice recognition features. The game has been in development for two years, and is expect to launch in the spring of 2013.

When Ubisoft first launched in Toronto, it was with four staff. They are currently at 220, says communications director Heather Steele, and they plan to grow to 800 staff by 2020. She added that Ubisoft is currently hiring "in all different functions."

While Toronto is known for its indie gaming community, Ubisoft is the first major player to open up a production facility here. Steele says they draw inspiration from those independent developers, and says the company hopes to "round out" the local gaming culture with its larger game products. Until recently the Toronto studio was also working on the development of another game, Rainbow Six; they have completed their deliverables on that project and are turning their attention exclusively to Splinter Cell for the time being.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Heather Steele, Director of Communications, Ubisoft Toronto

Last week Telus announced that it would be making major investments in Ontario over the next three years: $650 million, which would support the creation of more than 900 jobs. This week the company explained what that would mean for the GTA—and it's very good news. Of that Ontario investment, $280 million and more than 600 new jobs are coming to the Toronto region.

"The positions are to help keep up with increasing client demand for Telus services, as we bring the world's fastest wireless technology 4G LTE  to Ontario," Telus's Elisabeth Napolano told us. "We need more people to service those customers." This demand comes from mobile subscribers who are seeking to do more with and on their phones: web browsing, video streaming and the like. Wireless demand is exploding as customers become used to treating their phones as mobile computers, using correspondingly more data on the go.

4G is the latest iteration of mobile communications standards, which allows for high speed Internet access on mobile devices. (Specifically, according to Telus, this means peak download speeds of up to 75 megabits per second and an average of 1,225 megabits per second.) 4G is currently available in select cities across Ontario; the just-announced funding will beef up this coverage and expand its range—the goal is to have 95 per cent of Ontarians able to access the 4G network by the time Telus completes this round of upgrades in 2014.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Elisabeth Napolano, Telus Media Relations

"It's the biggest project we have done to date, and the second biggest in Africa," a slightly rushed-sounding Daniel McCormick tells me over the phone—understandably, since he's having a rather busy day.

McCormick is a managing partner of Siginik Energy, which just announced that it has signed a deal to provide solar energy to Ghana, one of the fastest-growing economies in Africa, and a nation seeking not just new energy sources but renewable ones. The deal will see Siginik build a 50-megawatt ground solar installation, from which the Electricity Company of Ghana will purchase power for a 25-year term.

Siginik, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Toronto-based Episolar Inc., is "a full turnkey solar energy provider," says McCormick, and also one of the beneficiaries of Ontario's Green Energy Act. That act was passed in 2009, and McCormick says that "it created a labour force that is highly skilled."

Ghana is hoping to draw on those skills to help meet its own energy needs, which are substantial and growing. To help the country expand its power sources, Siginik will be hiring both abroad and here at home—about 50 full-time, part-time and contract positions in the Toronto area, says McCormick, ranging from engineering consultants to components providers. Some of those hired here will also work in Ghana to train local workers.

Recently Ghana's Parliament passed a Renewable Energy Act; the country has set a target of obtaining 10 per cent of its power from renewable sources by 2020.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Daniel McCormick, Managing Partner, Siginik Energy

While stem cell research garners a lot of buzz, the science of taking developing effective therapies from research is still very new.

Hoping to make contributions in this area is Bay Street-based biotech company Actium Research Inc., which has just entered into an agreement with McMaster University to take some of the research being conducted there and use to it bring new cancer drugs to market. While we're used to thinking of stem cells as they pertain to healthy cells in humans and other animals, it turns out the stem cells in this case are cancer stem cells.

A tumour is not made up of just one kind of cell, says Actium president Helen Findlay. In addition to the rapidly multiplying normal tumour cells are cancer stem cells, which "can escape from many forms of treatment and they are the ones that are responsible for cancer recurring or spreading."

Dr. Mick Bhatia, scientific director of McMaster's Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute, has found a way to grow cancer stem cells and also to do research with normal, adult human stem cells (rather than working, as many researchers do, with embryo or animal stem cell sources). Bhatia's work involves screening both kinds of stem cells against a library of drugs and therapies, to see which target the cancer stem cells, and which might help repair damaged tissue.

For its part, Actium will be working on the development process that will allow drugs—both newly developed ones and existing therapies which have not previously been used in cancer treatment but are found to be effective with this research—to pass through the regulatory process and come to market. Actium will be hiring in a number of areas. Findlay says they "need people with skill sets that do things like look at drug manufacturing, clinical research, designing studies" as it works to raise initial funding.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Helen Findlay, President and Chief Operating Officer, Actium

"Trading technology is really complex stuff," says Lynn Suderman, director of communications for Questrade, Canada's largest independent provider of online trading services. Questrade is hoping to make it easier soon, with the launch of a new suite of software in early June that will help clients make their investments more easily, and with better information at hand.

Questrade's goal is to dramatically increase usability in a software sector that is isn't known for it. On the one hand, clients need to be able to actually understand the transactions they are contemplating, since most aren't professionally trained investors. On the other, the information required to make those transactions is detailed and often hard to parse. Building software that can process all the relevant data—from various markets and exchanges, from the client's account information, and from Questrade itself—and do so in a very secure environment compounds the design issues.

The upshot, says Suderman, is that "what most platforms provide is either a very basic view, where you just get to buy and sell, or it's a patchwork of all sorts of complex pull-down menus that are meant for professional trades."

Questrade's new platforms will be available for desktops, mobile phones and tablets, and they will follow web design trends in allowing clients to completely customize their screens: change displays, modify order and placement of information, select how detailed that information is, add and subtract widgets, and more.

In order to support this platform relaunch, Questrade has been and continues to be looking for new talent. In addition to a spate of recent hires, the company currently has 11 positions to fill in Toronto, and 11 more elsewhere.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Lynn Suderman Director of Communications, Questrade

At the intersection of increasing health care costs and growing public comfort with medical information lies Mihealth Global Systems Inc., a company founded on the idea that if patients had quicker, easier ways to communicate with their physicians everyone would benefit. Mihealth provides a secure web portal through which patients can access their medical records, and a smartphone app which lets patients take that information with them wherever they go.

Last week Mihealth announced a new partnership with American company Preventice to expand those digital services. The technology the companies will be implementing falls into the category of body telemetry, a growing category of medical service which allows physicians to keep watch on patients from a distance.

Typically, body telemetry mechanisms have tended to be cumbersome (keeping users from bathing, for instance), but this new one will make the process vastly less burdensome, says Mihealth founder Dr. Wendy Graham.

Graham says it will consist of a "disposable patch the size of a Band-Aid, and a tiny sensor," which will transit information via Bluetooth. Physicians will be able to monitor blood pressure, heart rate and respiration; a later iteration of the device will provide for motion sensors as well, to check sleep patterns and ensure patients are appropriately active.

Like any new medical device, this one will need to make its way through the standard regulatory and approvals processes; Graham hopes that Ontario residents will have access to it within a year. It's a way of saving the health care system money, she points out, by allowing faster, easier patient monitoring, in addition to providing patients with greater freedom.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Wendy Graham, Founder and CEO, Mihealth