Pleased to announce that Novo Nordisk recently acquired rights to develop PRX004, a technology poised to advance the treatment of ATTR amyloidosis, a rare form of heart disease. First discovered at University Health Network by Dr. Avi Chakrabartty and his team, PRX004 has the potential to offer a new treatment option for this rare and often fatal disease where treatment options are currently lacking. Following successful Phase I clinical trials with our original licensee, Prothena Corporation plc, Novo Nordisk will now use its clinical expertise to develop PRX004 further, accelerating potential patient impact for this rare condition. Industry partnerships such as this help...

The Ontario government is providing over $70.4 million to support the development of homegrown ideas, products and technologies. Of these funds, $3.8 million has been provided to help advance research and innovation at UHN.

The funds were provided through two competitive programs from the Ontario Research Fund: the Early Researcher Award, which helps exceptional early career researchers to build their research teams, and the Research Infrastructure program, which enables the acquisition of advanced research infrastructure to conduct world-leading research. The projects that received funding are described below.

Early Researcher Awards
Three early career researchers at UHN...

Adela, based on the cutting-edge work of two scientists at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, raises US$60 million in financing

A simple blood test for cancer and other diseases could be on the horizon with Adela, a start-up company launched Wednesday out of UHN  that is poised to advance precision based, personalized medicine. Based on the cutting edge research of Drs. Daniel De Carvalho and Scott Bratman, both Senior Scientists at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Adela envisions a future where multiple cancers – and other diseases  – could be detected by taking just a simple blood sample.

In the creation of Adela, Dr. Daniel De Carvalho, the...

News Release: 

Lucid Psycheceuticals Inc. (Lucid), a psychedelics-inspired company focusing on total brain health, today announced that it has entered into a world-wide license agreement with University Health Network...

NanOlogy Labs’ foundational technology, Manganescan™ was originally developed in collaboration with University Health Network scientists Drs. Ralph S. DaCosta and Azusa Maeda and the University of Toronto. 

Nanology Labs, an IND-stage company developing next generation nanomedicines to conquer cancer, announced today that its seed capital raise was oversubscribed at $3M. The round was led by FACIT with co-investors Creative Destruction Lab Angels, Ontario Brain Institute, Ontario Center of Innovation, and MEDTEQ. The capital will advance development of T-MX (aka Manganescan), a smart nanomedicine designed to overcome tumor...

The UHN Inventor of the Year Award (IOTY) recognizes an inventor or team who has made a substantial and noteworthy contribution to developing healthcare innovations with high commercialization potential.

Thanks to our world-class researchers, scientists and clinicians, UHN is now Canada’s top research institution and 8^th best North American hospital in commercialization. UHN’s Technology Development and Commercialization office (TDC) is pleased to be calling for nominations for the 18^th Annual UHN Inventor of the Year Award to further celebrate our achievements...

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is being explored as a treatment for individuals with Alzheimer's disease.

The lead author of the study, Dr. Andres Lozano, is a Senior Scientist at UHN’s Krembil Brain Institute. (Photo: UHN StRIDe Team)

Researchers have previously shown that stimulation applied to the fornix – a memory-related structure located deep in the brain – can cause vivid flashbacks of old memories and events in some, but not all, individuals with Alzheimer's disease. The occurrence of flashbacks suggests that the stimulation is activating brain circuits involved in memory recall.

"It is a mystery why only certain individuals experience...

What if there were a protein that could influence eye development, slow the growth of brain tumours and allow doctors to get medications more directly to the brain?

After years of trial and error in her lab, Dr. Valerie Wallace has made a series of important discoveries about Norrin, a protein involved in neurological signalling for the eye, brain and ear. Now, she's leading the world in research on this protein that could hold the key to a range of vision-preserving and life-saving applications.

Dr. Valerie Wallace is working with Dr. Mark Reed of the Krembil Research Institute’s Centre for Medicinal Chemistry and Drug Discovery. (Photo: The Globe...

Join our dynamic, growing & successful research commercialization team at UHN! We are currently recruiting for a Commercial Agreements Specialist.

UHN has a proud history of innovative research and important discoveries and considers innovation and the commercial development of intellectual property (IP) to be integral to its purpose of transforming lives and communities through excellence in care, discovery and learning. Technologies discovered and developed at UHN have formed the basis for many global products and services including pharmaceuticals, biologicals, devices, and diagnostics and represent the foundational IP of spin-out companies which have generated a combined...

Results of a world-first Canadian pilot study on patients treated with gene therapy for Fabry disease show that the treatment is working and safe.

The Canadian research team was the first to use gene therapy in 2017 to treat patients with Fabry disease, a rare, chronic illness that can damage major organs and shorten lives. They report their findings on February 25 in the journal Nature Communications.

"Being one of the first people in the world to receive this treatment, and seeing how much better I felt afterward, it definitely gives me hope that...

One out of every six Canadians is currently living with osteoarthritis, a painful and debilitating form of arthritis affecting the cartilage surrounding the bones in your hips, knees, hands and spine.

By 2035, that number is expected to increase to one in four, with a new diagnosis every 60 seconds.

No treatment currently exists for osteoarthritis that can slow or stop the disease.

It has always been thought that increased weight puts strain on joints and that this is what causes osteoarthritis. Now, scientists from the Schroeder Arthritis Institute at UHN have discovered a surprising new molecular link between obesity, diet and osteoarthritis that could have impact...

Creating "super soldiers" of specific white blood cells to boost an anti-tumour response has been shown in a series of elegant experiments by researchers at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre.

Research led by PhD candidate Helen Loo Yau, Post-doctoral Fellow Dr. Emma Bell, and Senior Scientist Dr. Daniel D. De Carvalho describes a DNA modifying epigenetic therapy that can transform immune killer T-cells into "super soldiers" by boosting their ability to kill cancer cells.

Their findings could potentially enhance immunotherapy, a new paradigm in cancer treatment currently effective for a minority of cancer patients. Some patients respond well to immunotherapy, with their...

Leading new oncology start-up establishes its research and development base at the Princess Margaret Cancer Research Tower

Toronto, February 10, 2021 — Following a very successful 2020, UHN spin-out Treadwell Therapeutics continues its global growth with the recent opening of its 9000 square-foot research and development facility in February 2021 at Toronto’s University Health Network, Canada’s leading research hospital. Treadwell’s footprint in Toronto is an important addition to Ontario’s emerging biotechnology cluster with the hire of 17 employees and a focus on current programs involving small molecules, biologics, TCR-based cell therapy and novel platforms for...

Dr. Philippe Monnier’s work with the protein neogenin has already delivered results in treating retinitis pigmentosa.

When Dr. Philippe Monnier set out to find effective treatments for debilitating vision disorders, he had no idea that his research might allso lead to breakthroughs in the treatment of a wide range of neurological conditions, from multiple scerosis to stroke. 

It was a welcome – if unexpected – discovery. 

Dr. Monnier, a senior scientist at the Donald K. Johnson Eye Institute, University Health Network,...

For researchers at UHN, 2020 was unlike any other year. The onset of COVID-19 forced all experiments to come to a halt and led to the shutdown of laboratories for three months, resulting in a significant decrease in productivity.

For Drs. Michael Laflamme and Stephanie Protze (photo on left), principal investigators in the McEwen Stem Cell Institute’s cardiac program, there was no choice but to persevere through the challenges to continue making progress in their critical efforts to develop new treatments for heart disease. These world-leading researchers are working on...

TDC was pleased to be part of the recent commercialization of Lu-DOTATATE with POINT Biopharma and CanProbe (www.canprobe.ca), a joint venture between the University Health Network (UHN) and the Centre for Probe Development and Commercialization (CPDC). This is an important milestone in treatment development for patients with neuroendocrine cancer, and is poised to help many patients in Ontario with this difficult-to-treat cancer who previously had no other options for treatment. 

Read the full release below: 

POINT Biopharma Inc. (POINT), a radiopharmaceutical...

As Canada’s only “school within a hospital” dedicated exclusively to healthcare education, Michener is uniquely positioned to prepare healthcare professionals in such emerging fields as artificial intelligence. (Photo: iStock)

The Michener Institute of Education at UHN is creating new programs in artificial intelligence (AI) to meet the health system's need for digitally-literate health professionals.

The new Digital Health and Data Analytics Program will consist of a new full-time program in the School of Applied Health Sciences; new curriculum in these emerging areas in the School of Applied Health Sciences' current programs; and an expansion of professional development programming in and...

Toronto Innovation Acceleration Partners (TIAP) and Amgen recently announced a joint initiative including the co-funding of local transformative projects in support of new venture development. Three transformative projects were chosen, including University Health Network Senior Scientist Robert Rottapel's project focused on developing new therapies for ovarian cancers. The joint initiative also includes dedicated scientific & business expertise from TIAP and Amgen to accelerate treatment development to ultimately help patients. 

Dr. Rottapel's project is focused on developing monoclonal antibodies against a novel target for the treatment of drug-resistant ovarian cancers. In...

Congratulations to regenerative medicine pioneer, TDC’s commercialization partner and BlueRock Therapeutics scientific co-founder, Dr. Gordon Keller, the latest recipient of the 2020 Bloom Burton Award. Created by Bloom Burton & Co. (Bloom Burton), Canada’s leading healthcare investment banking firm, the award is given every year to recognize the most significant contributor to the Canadian health care industry. 

The Bloom Burton Award honours an individual scientist, inventor, executive, entrepreneur, industry leader, or policy maker who made the greatest contribution to Canada's innovative healthcare industry in the previous year. Dr....

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