Member Directory

combined strengths of pharmaceuticals and diagnostics, as well as growing capabilities in the area of data-driven medical insights, help Roche deliver truly personalized healthcare. Roche is the world’s largest biotech company, with truly differentiated medicines in oncology, immunology, infectious diseases, ophthalmology and diseases of the central nervous system. Roche is also the world leader in in vitro diagnostics and tissue-based cancer diagnostics, and a frontrunner in diabetes management. Roche Canada was founded in 1931, and employs more than 1,800 people across the country through its Pharmaceuticals division in Mississauga, Ontario as well as its Diagnostics and Diabetes Care divisions in Laval, Quebec.

medicines. The company employs more than 700 people in Canada who work to research, develop and market innovative medicines. AstraZeneca Canada was recently designated a global Clinical Hub for oncology and immuno-oncology clinical studies. We are currently leading global oncology clinical studies in lung, head and neck cancer. We are focused on developing innovative medicines in three core areas: Cardiovascular and Metabolic diseases (CVMD); Oncology; and Respiratory, Inflammation and Autoimmunity (RIA). In 2015, AstraZeneca invested more than $54 million in Canadian health sciences research in our focus areas.

next move. Taking advantage of the fact that cancer cells can hijack the body’s normal wound healing processes provides us with insight into cancer cell behaviour. By studying how cancer cells utilize the inflammatory pathway triggered by our treatments, we can predict those patients who still harbour micrometastatic disease after treatment, and at the same time provide far more effective therapies for the treatment of cancer. Encyt was founded in 2014 and has been engaged in pioneering research that has uncovered evidence for a distinct and highly conserved inflammatory response triggered by surgical removal of a primary breast, colorectal, or prostate tumor and treatment with chemotherapy or radiation. This response occurs within a predictable time frame after cancer treatment and can trigger accelerated regrowth of a surviving cancer cell population and induce cancer stem cell enrichment. This inflammatory response will lead to the development of a metastatically competent, treatment-resistant cancer cell phenotype in the cancer cells that survive the treatment. Encyt’s main focus at present is to test our novel and proprietary therapeutic approach in a human clinical trial. However, based on our research discoveries, Encyt has also started to work in the area of liquid biopsy. We are developing a blood test that can predict the effectiveness of a given chemotherapeutic regimen on the basis of the level of expression of several distinct cytokines. We believe this work has enormous potential to serve as a valuable predictive tool to help guide treatment decisions made by medical oncologists.

Enterprise Center on Summer St on the Dalhousie University campus. AGADA provides pre-clinical and clinical research and services to an international clientele of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, as well as stake holder foundations. AGADA was initiated through a spin-off of a highly successful pre-clinical efficacy core facility at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington DC, designed and managed by Kanneboyina Nagaraju DVM PhD and Eric Hoffman PhD. Founded in 2013, AGADA employs a dozen highly educated and motivated staff to carry out drug trials in mouse models of human disease. Positive results typically become an important aspect of a company’s orphan drug application to the FDA or EMA, and a proof of principle of drug mechanism of action and therapeutic benefit. In the 3rd year of operation, AGADA generated revenues of $2.3M, and shows a double digit annual growth rate. AGADA is expanding services to support pharmacodynamic biomarker discovery and integration into both pre-clinical and clinical programs. AGADA works closely with Dalhousie University, helping facilitate their growing rare disease and orphan drug development programs.

the development of anti-infectives, infectious disease remains the leading cause of death worldwide. Many pathogens are becoming increasingly resistant to standard anti-infectives, making treatment difficult or even impossible. The emergence and spread of deadly viruses and antimicrobial resistant bacteria and parasites remain critical threats to human health. Antimicrobial resistance is one of the most urgent health care issues today, driven by the overuse and improper use of antibiotics and anti-infectives. While historically there have many alternative antibiotics available for treatment of bacterial infections, today the development of antibiotics has slowed dramatically. Many infections acquired in hospitals are caused by bacteria that are resistant to at least one commonly used drug therapy and are associated with lengthier hospital stays, very high costs of treatment and an increased incidence of mortality. Appili Therapeutics is developing novel strategies to bring new classes of antibiotics and anti-infectives to the clinic to improve treatment and health of patients suffering from infection.

knowledge, hands on experience and advanced characterization technologies utilization. SSPI’s vision is to be a partner to pharmaceuticals and natural products companies to understand the solid state of their drug candidate/product and also develop crystallization processes that will lead to optimal physical properties through crystallization engineering. The majority of pharmaceutical intermediates or APIs exhibit polymorphism. Different polymorphs of a drug can have different solubility, dissolution rate and therefore different bioavailability in the body and ultimately different therapeutic effects. The FDA and health Canada requires all pharmaceutical companies to perform polymorph screening before submitting a new drug application (NDA). Therefore, control of API polymorphism has become a critical part of the drug development. SSPI offers a unique workflow that finds all possible polymorphs and identify the most viable one for drug development. In addition to pharmaceuticals, SSPI is involved with natural health products. The use of these products is steadily increasing in recent years. When natural products are used as or defined as a drug, purification to meet the regulatory requirements becomes mandatory. In many cases the primary purification method is chromatography, which is expensive compared with crystallization techniques. Applying solid state science and crystal engineering, cost effective crystallization procedures could be developed which may significantly reduce the manufacturing costs and make natural products more competitive. In addition many natural products have low bioavailability and they have to be used in high dose to be effective. SSPI plans to reformulate poorly soluble natural products through crystal engineering techniques to improve bioavailability and decrease the oral daily dose to lower side effects.

combined strengths of pharmaceuticals and diagnostics, as well as growing capabilities in the area of data-driven medical insights, help Roche deliver truly personalized healthcare. Roche is the world’s largest biotech company, with truly differentiated medicines in oncology, immunology, infectious diseases, ophthalmology and diseases of the central nervous system. Roche is also the world leader in in vitro diagnostics and tissue-based cancer diagnostics, and a frontrunner in diabetes management. Roche Canada was founded in 1931, and employs more than 1,800 people across the country through its Pharmaceuticals division in Mississauga, Ontario as well as its Diagnostics and Diabetes Care divisions in Laval, Quebec.

medicines. The company employs more than 700 people in Canada who work to research, develop and market innovative medicines. AstraZeneca Canada was recently designated a global Clinical Hub for oncology and immuno-oncology clinical studies. We are currently leading global oncology clinical studies in lung, head and neck cancer. We are focused on developing innovative medicines in three core areas: Cardiovascular and Metabolic diseases (CVMD); Oncology; and Respiratory, Inflammation and Autoimmunity (RIA). In 2015, AstraZeneca invested more than $54 million in Canadian health sciences research in our focus areas.

next move. Taking advantage of the fact that cancer cells can hijack the body’s normal wound healing processes provides us with insight into cancer cell behaviour. By studying how cancer cells utilize the inflammatory pathway triggered by our treatments, we can predict those patients who still harbour micrometastatic disease after treatment, and at the same time provide far more effective therapies for the treatment of cancer. Encyt was founded in 2014 and has been engaged in pioneering research that has uncovered evidence for a distinct and highly conserved inflammatory response triggered by surgical removal of a primary breast, colorectal, or prostate tumor and treatment with chemotherapy or radiation. This response occurs within a predictable time frame after cancer treatment and can trigger accelerated regrowth of a surviving cancer cell population and induce cancer stem cell enrichment. This inflammatory response will lead to the development of a metastatically competent, treatment-resistant cancer cell phenotype in the cancer cells that survive the treatment. Encyt’s main focus at present is to test our novel and proprietary therapeutic approach in a human clinical trial. However, based on our research discoveries, Encyt has also started to work in the area of liquid biopsy. We are developing a blood test that can predict the effectiveness of a given chemotherapeutic regimen on the basis of the level of expression of several distinct cytokines. We believe this work has enormous potential to serve as a valuable predictive tool to help guide treatment decisions made by medical oncologists.

Enterprise Center on Summer St on the Dalhousie University campus. AGADA provides pre-clinical and clinical research and services to an international clientele of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, as well as stake holder foundations. AGADA was initiated through a spin-off of a highly successful pre-clinical efficacy core facility at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington DC, designed and managed by Kanneboyina Nagaraju DVM PhD and Eric Hoffman PhD. Founded in 2013, AGADA employs a dozen highly educated and motivated staff to carry out drug trials in mouse models of human disease. Positive results typically become an important aspect of a company’s orphan drug application to the FDA or EMA, and a proof of principle of drug mechanism of action and therapeutic benefit. In the 3rd year of operation, AGADA generated revenues of $2.3M, and shows a double digit annual growth rate. AGADA is expanding services to support pharmacodynamic biomarker discovery and integration into both pre-clinical and clinical programs. AGADA works closely with Dalhousie University, helping facilitate their growing rare disease and orphan drug development programs.

the development of anti-infectives, infectious disease remains the leading cause of death worldwide. Many pathogens are becoming increasingly resistant to standard anti-infectives, making treatment difficult or even impossible. The emergence and spread of deadly viruses and antimicrobial resistant bacteria and parasites remain critical threats to human health. Antimicrobial resistance is one of the most urgent health care issues today, driven by the overuse and improper use of antibiotics and anti-infectives. While historically there have many alternative antibiotics available for treatment of bacterial infections, today the development of antibiotics has slowed dramatically. Many infections acquired in hospitals are caused by bacteria that are resistant to at least one commonly used drug therapy and are associated with lengthier hospital stays, very high costs of treatment and an increased incidence of mortality. Appili Therapeutics is developing novel strategies to bring new classes of antibiotics and anti-infectives to the clinic to improve treatment and health of patients suffering from infection.

knowledge, hands on experience and advanced characterization technologies utilization. SSPI’s vision is to be a partner to pharmaceuticals and natural products companies to understand the solid state of their drug candidate/product and also develop crystallization processes that will lead to optimal physical properties through crystallization engineering. The majority of pharmaceutical intermediates or APIs exhibit polymorphism. Different polymorphs of a drug can have different solubility, dissolution rate and therefore different bioavailability in the body and ultimately different therapeutic effects. The FDA and health Canada requires all pharmaceutical companies to perform polymorph screening before submitting a new drug application (NDA). Therefore, control of API polymorphism has become a critical part of the drug development. SSPI offers a unique workflow that finds all possible polymorphs and identify the most viable one for drug development. In addition to pharmaceuticals, SSPI is involved with natural health products. The use of these products is steadily increasing in recent years. When natural products are used as or defined as a drug, purification to meet the regulatory requirements becomes mandatory. In many cases the primary purification method is chromatography, which is expensive compared with crystallization techniques. Applying solid state science and crystal engineering, cost effective crystallization procedures could be developed which may significantly reduce the manufacturing costs and make natural products more competitive. In addition many natural products have low bioavailability and they have to be used in high dose to be effective. SSPI plans to reformulate poorly soluble natural products through crystal engineering techniques to improve bioavailability and decrease the oral daily dose to lower side effects.