Biotechnology Focus Podcast

On this weeks show, and amazing turnaround in the fortunes of the MaRS West Tower, CQDM and Brain Canada team up once again, and a significant step in the fight against cancer. We have all this and more on this week’s Biotechnology Focus Radio Show Podcast. Welcome to another episode of Biotechnology Focus Podcast. I’m your host Shawn Lawrence, here to give you a rundown of this week’s top stories on the Canadian biotech scene,   Story CQDM and Brain Canada are join forces again in the funding of two new research projects to address unmet needs in brain research. Together, the two organizations are awarding a total of $3 million to the projects which will oversee the development  cutting-edge tools, technologies and platforms designed to accelerate the discovery of new drugs for brain and nervous system disorders. The two distinguished research teams will unite nine researchers from seven public and private organizations across Canada. The first project is led by Edward Fon at the Montreal Neurological Instit

On this weeks show, Accelerating precision medicine for cancer patients, Avivagen partners with NRC to tackle antibiotic resistance in humans, and Knight buys in on an Israeli biotech, We have all this and more on this week’s Biotechnology Focus Radio Show Podcast. Welcome to another episode of Biotechnology Focus Podcast. I’m your host Shawn Lawrence, here to give you a rundown of this week’s top stories on the Canadian biotech scene, Story Montreal’s Knight Therapeutics-a specialty pharma company reports it is taking a small stake in an Israeli-based company, Protalix BioTherapeutics, through the acquisition of 6,200,000 common shares of the company at an average price of US$0.57 per share. With the purchase, Knight now owns approximately five per cent of the outstanding common shares of Protalix. The shares were purchased by Abir Therapeutics Ltd., Knight’s wholly-owned Israeli headquartered subsidiary, which owns 28.3 per cent of Medison Pharma (Medison), Israel’s third largest pharmaceutical company rank

Coming up on this week’s show: Pfizer partners with a Canadian biotech on a new therapeutic antibody discovery project, Quark Ventures keeps rolling out the dollars and Bloom Burton & Co. to host its first award gala. We have all this and more on this week’s Biotechnology Focus Podcast. Welcome to another episode of Biotechnology Focus Podcast. I’m your host Shawn Lawrence, here to give you a rundown of this week’s top stories on the Canadian biotech scene. Story 1 Our first story this week takes us to TORONTO, ON- where Canadian healthcare investment banking firm Bloom Burton & Co., has announced that it will host its inaugural Award Gala at the Four Seasons Hotel in Toronto, ON on September 14, 2017. As part of this special event, the firm also plans to recognize Canada’s Healthcare Industry biggest star with its newly minted ‘Bloom Burton Award.’ According to the firm, it plans to bestow this award annually to an individual scientist, inventor, executive, entrepreneur, industry leader, or policy ma

Versant Ventures closes its newest fund, a new stem cell company is born in the MaRs Discovery District and Auven Therapeutics official pulls the plug on the KIACTA™ AA amyloidosis program. We have all this and more for you this week on Biotechnology Focus Podcast.

Industry insiders weigh in on the impact of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, the 2017 World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology set to return to Montreal, and a simple blood test that better diagnoses concussions.

On this week’s show…A Canadian made Ebola vaccine enters the next phase of clinical trials, a major Canadian generics company goes into restructuring mode, a young VC fund based in Vancouver makes it known it wants to be a major player on the life sciences investment scene and two Canadian biotech company’s hit endpoints in their clinical trials, good news for one company and bad news for the other. We have this and more on this week’s show! Welcome to another episode of Biotechnology Focus Podcast. I’m your host Shawn Lawrence, hear to bring you a rundown of this week’s top stories on the Canadian biotech scene. Story 1 The Ebola outbreak of the last three years has winded down, but that hasn’t stopped researchers in their quest to develop new vaccines to treat it. In fact, a promising Ebola vaccine originally developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada is set to begin the next phase of clinical trials later this fall. As part of this next phase, the vaccine, VSV-EBOV, will be tested on volunteers seropo

Two new biotech companies launched, TO Health! launches a new online health hub, and Government flexes its financial muscle backing science initiatives across the nation. We have this and more on this week’s show! Welcome to Biotechnology Focus Podcast. I’m your host Shawn Lawrence. Story 1 We kick things of this week in Toronto, where TO Health!, an industry led cluster organization has launched a new online networking site, the Toronto Health Hub (engage.tohealth.ca).  According to the organization, the new Hub will showcase news and events in the burgeoning Human Health & Sciences (HHS) cluster in Toronto, as well as provide a centralized place for government, business and academia to engage around critical topics pertaining to the region.  The new platform coincides with organization’s mandate to make Toronto a Top 5 global health science cluster within the next 10 years. Toronto Health Hub is powered by the content sharing publishing platform Pressly, which was developed by a Toronto based start-up P

On today’s show, we go one-on- one with Borden ladner Gervais’ Jeff Graham to discuss his article in our latest issue of Biotechnology Focus Magazine, Genetic Discrimination: Creating a New Canadian Law, plus we look at the week that was and the top stories on the Canadian biotech scene. Hello this is Shawn Lawrence, senior writer for Biotechnology Focus, and your host for Biotechnology Focus Podcast. We start today’s show with our weekly rundown of the top stories in Canadian biotech this week, and our first story takes us to Vancouver, BC, with AbCellera Biologics Inc., a biotechnology company specializing in the rapid discovery of monoclonal antibodies from natural immune cells, successfully completing its antibody discovery partnership with Kodiak Sciences. Through this collaboration, AbCellera applied its antibody discovery platform to perform ultra-deep screening of immunized animals and identified hundreds of antibodies against an undisclosed target. Multiplexed single cell binding assays were used to

Welcome to Biotechnology Focus Podcast. I’m your host Shawn Lawrence. We kick things off this week with the release of our latest issue of Biotechnology Focus and as such we thought we should give you our listeners a rundown or sneak peak of all the stories you’d see. As most or our listeners know, there are comprehensive changes to the way the Federal Government supports science and innovation in Canada coming with consultations on Canada’s Innovation Agenda drawing to a close and this issue reaches your desk with this Call to Action in mind, beginning with our cover story on the results from our latest Hot Button Issue Survey. The survey was open to everyone in both the private and public sectors and at all organizational levels, from the c-level right on down. In all, 163 of you got back to us with what you’d like to see from the Innovation Agenda. Under the microscope for many of you was one of the biggest sources of government cash for private sector research and innovation in Canada, the Scientific Rese

Zymeworks, ProMetic Life Sciences, Innovative Targeting Solutions all back in the news again; Saskatchewan researchers make a breakthrough on a devastating pig virus, and healthcare behemoth GE partners with STEMCELL Technologies.We have this and more on this week’s Biotechnology Focus Podcast! Welcome to Biotechnology Focus Podcast. I’m your host Shawn Lawrence. Story 1 We kick things off this week in the prairies, where in less than a year, University of Saskatchewan (U of S) scientists have developed and tested a prototype vaccine that could protect the North American swine industry from a virus that has killed more than eight million pigs and cost more than $400 million in lost income since 2013. The Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus (PEDV) hit the U.S. in 2013 and spread to Canada in 2014. It is a coronavirus, a virus group which includes important emerging human diseases such as SARS and MERS. It was first discovered in Europe, and has become increasingly problematic in Asian countries. Occurring only in

ProMetic Life Science hits two significant clinical milestones, Antibe Therapeutics reports promising Phase 2 results, In BC researchers, take a closer look at the DNA of the world’s greatest wines, and using genomics to treat and track tuberculosis We have this and more on this week’s Biotechnology Focus Podcast! Welcome to Biotechnology Focus Podcast. I’m your host Shawn Lawrence. Story 1 We start this week’s show in beautiful British Columbia, highlighting two local projects with an international flavor. The first story sees UBC researchers Dan Durall and Mansak (Ben) Tantikachornkiat getting ever closer to identifying the biological personalities of the world’s greatest wines. In a recent study, published in the International Journal of Food Microbiology , the duo developed a technique that combines a process to identify the full spectrum of DNA in yeast and bacteria samples with a technique that distinguishes between live and dead micro-organisms. As Durall, an associate professor of biology at UBC’s Oka

Genome Canada names its latest GAPP Recipients, DelMar Pharma lists on NASDAQ, and OPKO health acquires Toronto’s Transition Therapeutics. We have this and more on this week’s Biotechnology Focus Podcast! Welcome to Biotechnology Focus Podcast. I’m your host Shawn Lawrence. Story 1 We start this week’s show in the biotech business world with a longtime player on the Toronto Life Science scene being acquired. Miami based OPKO Health says it is buying clinical stage Toronto-based biotechnology company Transition Therapeutics, in an all-stock transaction valued at about $60 million. Through the acquisition of Transition, OPKO will take over the full clinical portfolio of the company including a treatment for type 2 diabetes and obesity, a treatment for low testosterone and a third neuropsychiatric drug candidate that targets patients with Alzheimer’s disease and Down syndrome. The first product, Transition’s lead metabolic drug candidate TT401, is a once- or twice-weekly oxyntomodulin for type 2 diabetes and obe

Biotechnology Focus senior writer Shawn Lawrence goes one-on-one with Mike Woollatt, chief executive officer of the Canadian Venture Capital & Private Equity Association (CVCA), to discuss the upswing of venture capital investment in Canada, and to find out just  how much is going to Canadian biotech and life science companies.

Bellus Health is left reeling as its lead drug Kiacta fails its Phase 3 clinical study, Vancouver based QLT inks a merger deal with Aegerion Pharmaceuticals and looks to a fresh new start, and Biotechnology Focus relaunches its Hot Button Issue Survey. We have this and more on this weeks show! Show Notes: We kick things off this week with some bad news on both the business and the clinical trial front with BELLUS Health the rare disease drug development firm reporting top line results from its Phase 3 study of KIACTA™ (eprodisate) as a treatment of AA amyloidosis. The disease is characterized by secondary to severe chronic inflammation or infection leading to the formation and deposition of amyloid fibrils in organs, often resulting in end-stage renal disease and death. Currently there are no therapies available that target the disease directly. According to company CEO Roberto Bellini, KIACTA™ failed to meet its primary efficacy endpoint in slowing renal function decline. The news, announced on June 20, was

Our first story takes us to Southwestern Ontario, where the government of Ontario and Bioindustrial Innovation Canada have partnered to launch a new commercialization hub in Sarnia-Lambton As part of the partnership, the Government of Ontario says it will invest $3 million over four years through the Business Growth Initiative to help build the Centre of Excellence for the Commercialization of Sustainable Chemistry Innovations at the Western Sarnia-Lambton Research Park, Canada’s largest clean-tech incubator. The new centre will focus on bridging critical gaps and addressing commercialization challenges facing the industrial biotechnology and manufacturing sectors, including developing expertise, forging commercial partnerships, and accessing risk-capital to help bring discoveries and technologies from the lab to the marketplace. The good news goes further as its expected that 400 high-value jobs will be created at the new site. The region is known for its Biomanufacturing prowess, turning sustainable feedsto

On this week’s show, we recap all the Canadian news coming out of the San Francisco and BIO2016, including: four announcements from the Quebec delegation, Valeant makes manufacturing moves, Merck backs another BC antibody developer and much more! http://biotechnologyfocus.ca/canada-bio-podcast-ep-20/