Member Directory

Our members are the backbone of the Life Sciences sector.

Life Sciences Nova Scotia’s member community is comprised of a diverse group of life sciences innovators, research institutions, government agencies, investors, students and partners who offer a variety of support services.

Our members, along with our vital stakeholders, contribute significantly to the development of Nova Scotia’s Life Sciences sector.

MNP

Support Services
MNP is a leading national accounting, tax and business consulting firm in Canada. We proudly serve and respond to the needs of
our clients in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors. Through partner-led engagements, we provide a collaborative, cost-effective approach to doing business and personalized strategies to help organizations succeed across the country and around the world.

Partner International Inc.

Support Services
+1-902-431-3171 Ext. 2
mregular@partner-intl.com
101-A Research Drive, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, B2Y 4T6
Partner International’s global life sciences team track record speaks for itself: Managing acquisitions and divestitures for
leading life sciences companies. Selling innovative, breakthrough science to big corporations – and connecting players large and small. Securing licenses for products and technologies at any development stage. Securing new customers for contract research and manufacturing organizations. Finding cost-effective manufacturing in unlikely places. With more than three billion dollars of completed agreements, Partner International has the track record to turn vision into successful agreements. Licensing, acquisitions, divestments: these are the kinds of mandates the Partner International team works on every day. From its presence in 26 countries, our life sciences corporate and business development experts have With more than three billion dollars of completed agreements, Partner International has the track record to turn vision into successful agreements. Licensing, acquisitions, divestments: these are the kinds of mandates the Partner International team works on every day. From its presence in 26 countries, our life sciences corporate and business development experts have unequalled access to decision makers at more than 45,000 companies, and the strategic depth and experience to lead projects of any size and complexity. Whether you need to maximize the profitability of new innovations or unlock the value of existing assets, Partner International will bring years of industry knowledge and business expertise to your next corporate or business development initiative.

Grant Thornton LLP

Support Services
+1 902 491 7747
Gerry.Lacroix@ca.gt.com
Nova Centre, Suite 1000 – 1675 Grafton Street, Halifax, NS B3J 0E9
Grant Thornton LLP is a leading Canadian accounting and advisory firm providing audit, tax and advisory services to private and
public organizations. We help dynamic organizations unlock their potential for growth by providing meaningful, actionable advice through a broad range of services. Together with the Quebec firm Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton LLP, Grant Thornton in Canada has approximately 4,000 people in offices across Canada. Grant Thornton LLP is a Canadian member of Grant Thornton International Ltd, whose member firms operate in over 100 countries worldwide.

BioScotia Technologies Inc.

Support Services
902-702-0795
consulting@bioscotia.com
5991 Spring Garden Road, Suite #740, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3H 1Y6
BioScotia Technologies Inc. is a Nova Scotia-based Canadian Corporation, offering a wide range of products and business
consulting services to Lifescience, Medtech, and Cleantech Industries. We offer a specialized portfolio of Lifescience research products used in a wide range of applications including Plant Tissue Culture, Animal breeding and fertility, Lab Animal health monitoring, development of Biologics and Cell Therapies, New Drug discovery, Regenerative medicine, Cell and Tissue transportation systems, 3D Cell Culture and tissue engineering. The company is also in the process of launching some of the latest technologies in improving Indoor Air Quality & in Surface Disinfection. We work with Lifescience, Medtech, and Cleantech SMEs that are looking for management or marketing support through industry-experienced professionals, who would help them design, develop, and implement an effective marketing and distribution strategy that could deliver their short-term and long-term business goals, especially in the high growth & emerging markets in Asia and Africa. BioScotia Technologies offers customized short-term as well as long-term engagement solutions through business support processes tailored to the specific needs of our clients. We work along closely with our clients and are committed to providing prompt and consistently highest level of quality services, which includes hand-holding and walking alongside our clients with their projects to help them meet their desired goals.

MindSea

Support Services
reuben.hall@mindsea.com
MindSea is a mobile app design and development agency catering to the digital health and life sciences industries. They are a
team of passionate UX designers, developers, and strategists who create digital experiences that improve lives. Their team has expertise in Android, iOS, React Native domain-driven-design backend, front-end web, and server-side technologies. For the last 5 years, MindSea has been named a top mobile app developer by Clutch. MindSea has maintained a 5-star rating on Clutch and has been featured in the App Store over 50 times by Apple.

Roche

Pharmaceuticals & Vaccines
(902) 440-3293
vivian.ng.vn4@roche.com
Roche is a global pioneer in pharmaceuticals and diagnostics focused on advancing science to improve people’s lives. The
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.

AstraZeneca

Pharmaceuticals & Vaccines
AstraZeneca is a science-led biopharmaceutical company pushing the boundaries of science to deliver life-changing
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.

Encyt Technologies Inc.

Pharmaceuticals & Vaccines
Today’s cancer treatment methods often employ a “shotgun” approach because we lack the tools to determine the cancer’s
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.

AGADA BioSciences

Pharmaceuticals & Vaccines
(902) 442-4011
AMullen@agadabio.com
1344 Summer St., Suite 312, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3H 0A8
Facilitating orphan drug development AGADA BioSciences is a clinical research organization (CRO) housed within the Innovacorp
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.

Appili Therapeutics

Pharmaceuticals & Vaccines
Appili Therapeutics is developing novel approaches to lead the fight against infectious disease. Despite numerous achievements in
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.

Solid State Pharma Inc.

Pharmaceuticals & Vaccines
1-(902) 442-4012
info@solidstatepharma.com
210-1344 Summer St., Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, B3H 0A8
Solid State Pharma Inc (SSPI) is a crystallization engineering and solid state science company founded on the basis of scientific
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.

TREVENTIS

Pharmaceuticals & Vaccines
647.228.1276
416.603.6274
cbarden@treventis.com
6191 Duncan Street, Halifax, NS B3L 1K1
TREVENTIS research will make a meaningful difference in the lives of patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) by discovering and
developing novel drugs that may halt the progression of AD, stabilize and potentially improve the patient’s cognition. Our proprietary discovery platform allows for rapid identification of promising new chemical entities as potential therapeutics in both AD and other protein misfolding disorders such as Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease.

MNP

Support Services
MNP is a leading national accounting, tax and business consulting firm in Canada. We proudly serve and respond to the needs of
our clients in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors. Through partner-led engagements, we provide a collaborative, cost-effective approach to doing business and personalized strategies to help organizations succeed across the country and around the world.

Partner International Inc.

Support Services
+1-902-431-3171 Ext. 2
mregular@partner-intl.com
101-A Research Drive, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, B2Y 4T6
Partner International’s global life sciences team track record speaks for itself: Managing acquisitions and divestitures for
leading life sciences companies. Selling innovative, breakthrough science to big corporations – and connecting players large and small. Securing licenses for products and technologies at any development stage. Securing new customers for contract research and manufacturing organizations. Finding cost-effective manufacturing in unlikely places. With more than three billion dollars of completed agreements, Partner International has the track record to turn vision into successful agreements. Licensing, acquisitions, divestments: these are the kinds of mandates the Partner International team works on every day. From its presence in 26 countries, our life sciences corporate and business development experts have With more than three billion dollars of completed agreements, Partner International has the track record to turn vision into successful agreements. Licensing, acquisitions, divestments: these are the kinds of mandates the Partner International team works on every day. From its presence in 26 countries, our life sciences corporate and business development experts have unequalled access to decision makers at more than 45,000 companies, and the strategic depth and experience to lead projects of any size and complexity. Whether you need to maximize the profitability of new innovations or unlock the value of existing assets, Partner International will bring years of industry knowledge and business expertise to your next corporate or business development initiative.

Grant Thornton LLP

Support Services
+1 902 491 7747
Gerry.Lacroix@ca.gt.com
Nova Centre, Suite 1000 – 1675 Grafton Street, Halifax, NS B3J 0E9
Grant Thornton LLP is a leading Canadian accounting and advisory firm providing audit, tax and advisory services to private and
public organizations. We help dynamic organizations unlock their potential for growth by providing meaningful, actionable advice through a broad range of services. Together with the Quebec firm Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton LLP, Grant Thornton in Canada has approximately 4,000 people in offices across Canada. Grant Thornton LLP is a Canadian member of Grant Thornton International Ltd, whose member firms operate in over 100 countries worldwide.

BioScotia Technologies Inc.

Support Services
902-702-0795
consulting@bioscotia.com
5991 Spring Garden Road, Suite #740, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3H 1Y6
BioScotia Technologies Inc. is a Nova Scotia-based Canadian Corporation, offering a wide range of products and business
consulting services to Lifescience, Medtech, and Cleantech Industries. We offer a specialized portfolio of Lifescience research products used in a wide range of applications including Plant Tissue Culture, Animal breeding and fertility, Lab Animal health monitoring, development of Biologics and Cell Therapies, New Drug discovery, Regenerative medicine, Cell and Tissue transportation systems, 3D Cell Culture and tissue engineering. The company is also in the process of launching some of the latest technologies in improving Indoor Air Quality & in Surface Disinfection. We work with Lifescience, Medtech, and Cleantech SMEs that are looking for management or marketing support through industry-experienced professionals, who would help them design, develop, and implement an effective marketing and distribution strategy that could deliver their short-term and long-term business goals, especially in the high growth & emerging markets in Asia and Africa. BioScotia Technologies offers customized short-term as well as long-term engagement solutions through business support processes tailored to the specific needs of our clients. We work along closely with our clients and are committed to providing prompt and consistently highest level of quality services, which includes hand-holding and walking alongside our clients with their projects to help them meet their desired goals.

MindSea

Support Services
reuben.hall@mindsea.com
MindSea is a mobile app design and development agency catering to the digital health and life sciences industries. They are a
team of passionate UX designers, developers, and strategists who create digital experiences that improve lives. Their team has expertise in Android, iOS, React Native domain-driven-design backend, front-end web, and server-side technologies. For the last 5 years, MindSea has been named a top mobile app developer by Clutch. MindSea has maintained a 5-star rating on Clutch and has been featured in the App Store over 50 times by Apple.

Roche

Pharmaceuticals & Vaccines
(902) 440-3293
vivian.ng.vn4@roche.com
Roche is a global pioneer in pharmaceuticals and diagnostics focused on advancing science to improve people’s lives. The
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.

AstraZeneca

Pharmaceuticals & Vaccines
AstraZeneca is a science-led biopharmaceutical company pushing the boundaries of science to deliver life-changing
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.

Encyt Technologies Inc.

Pharmaceuticals & Vaccines
Today’s cancer treatment methods often employ a “shotgun” approach because we lack the tools to determine the cancer’s
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.

AGADA BioSciences

Pharmaceuticals & Vaccines
(902) 442-4011
AMullen@agadabio.com
1344 Summer St., Suite 312, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3H 0A8
Facilitating orphan drug development AGADA BioSciences is a clinical research organization (CRO) housed within the Innovacorp
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.

Appili Therapeutics

Pharmaceuticals & Vaccines
Appili Therapeutics is developing novel approaches to lead the fight against infectious disease. Despite numerous achievements in
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.

Solid State Pharma Inc.

Pharmaceuticals & Vaccines
1-(902) 442-4012
info@solidstatepharma.com
210-1344 Summer St., Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, B3H 0A8
Solid State Pharma Inc (SSPI) is a crystallization engineering and solid state science company founded on the basis of scientific
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.

TREVENTIS

Pharmaceuticals & Vaccines
647.228.1276
416.603.6274
cbarden@treventis.com
6191 Duncan Street, Halifax, NS B3L 1K1
TREVENTIS research will make a meaningful difference in the lives of patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) by discovering and
developing novel drugs that may halt the progression of AD, stabilize and potentially improve the patient’s cognition. Our proprietary discovery platform allows for rapid identification of promising new chemical entities as potential therapeutics in both AD and other protein misfolding disorders such as Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease.