“Toronto Brings Biotech Ideas To Life”

Today, Transition Therapeutics Inc. of Toronto is a thriving, 39-employee biopharmaceutical company. But less than a decade ago it was no more than an idea in the mind of co-founder Dr. Tony Cruz, then a senior scientist at Mount Sinai Hospital. Since founding the company in 1998, Dr. Cruz and his team have built a diverse product pipeline with five products currently in clinical trials for such maladies as diabetes type I and II, hepatitis C, multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer’s. After a 2001 initial public offering and a recent $10 million round of financing, the company’s current market capitalization has grown to just under $100 million. That success is uniquely attributable to the talent pool and easy access to science-savvy capital that exists in Canada’s largest biotech market and Toronto’s Discovery District.

Transition Therapeutics is just one firm among a cluster of fast-proliferating companies locating along Toronto’s University Avenue between Dundas and College Streets, the area known as the Discovery District. In fact, the neighbourhood harbours more than 100 other science-related firms plus dozens of University of Toronto-affiliated research centres and nine teaching hospitals. In addition, the City is home to more than half of Canada’s pharmaceutical companies, with a combined employment near 160,000, and approximately 40% of the Canadian biotech industry, making Toronto the continent’s fourth-ranked magnet for research investment, totaling $1 billion of private and public-sector funding in 2005.

The ideas begin at places like the Terrence Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research, opened in spring of 2006, a factory for Nobel-quality basic research that integrates in a communal setting some of the best minds from the University of Toronto’s medical, pharmaceutical and engineering faculties. The aim is to foster collaboration between previously disparate academic disciplines at the nexus of information science and biology. Among the 35 principal investigators at the Donnelly are teams using the tools of molecular engineering to attempt new stem cell therapies. Another group uses materials science techniques to discover new coatings for transplanted organs, in an attempt to reduce the frequency of recipient rejection.

Just down the street, the University of Toronto’s Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy opened in September 2006, housing Canada’s largest pharmacy school as well as basic research that may one day yield drug treatments for cancer, HIV/AIDs and heart disease, among others.

Inevitably ideas and drug treatments developed in the Dan Faculty and the Donnelly Centre will lead to MaRS. Opened in the fall of 2005, the centre is intended to speed commercialization in the emerging fields of biotech and related sciences by grouping in one location the resources a fledgling start-up requires to grow. In addition to state of the art wet-dry lab facilities, MaRS also houses a 35,000 sq. foot incubator that currently houses 24 young firms working in the life sciences, information technology and materials sectors. But MaRS isn’t just for young companies. Currently located in the 700,000 square-foot first phase of the project are 50 tenants that range from comparatively youthful operation, such as NPS Pharmaceuticals, to mid-sized growing operations, such as Transition Therapeutics, to long-established world conglomerates, such as Merck Frosst Canada Ltd. The MaRS initiative has worked out so well the first phase is completely occupied; another 800,000 square feet building will be ready sometime in 2008.

It’s all part of Toronto’s 175-year-long heritage of life-changing discoveries, a trait begun with Banting and Best’s discovery of the insulin effect and continuing through recent innovations such as the isolation of the genes for muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis, Alzheimer’s and breast cancer. The Discovery District’s close proximity to the financial services of Bay Street, Canada’s financial capital, home to biomedically experienced legal firms as well as high-tech venture capital creates synergistic opportunities. A geographical mosaic of international neighbourhoods illustrates Toronto’s status as one of the world’s most multicultural cities, making it an easy place to attract talented minds from other countries; they’ll feel at home here. Great public transit, reasonable cost of living and major-league sports and entertainment options also make this city of five million people an attractive place to live.

“Toronto’s government and business leaders understand the district’s projected 30% annual growth rate hinges on its ability to commercialize innovations in biotech and related fields,” says Matt Buist with the City of Toronto’s Economic Development Division. “Thanks to public sector incentive programs, conducting research in the city’s Discovery District can reduce your research costs by 66%.” For more information, please request a copy of the Toronto Discovery District brochure or the BioSource CD by contacting Mr. Matt Buist or Dr. David B. Shindler.