ProteinQure (Toronto) is looking to lead the charge in making Ontario a thriving hub of drug development and research, while focusing on breast cancer therapies.

What they’re doing: ProteinQure is testing the safety of their peptide-based tumour targeting drug ahead of a North American clinical trial.

How will this be used in the real world? We’re getting closer to personalized medicine and ProteinQure is working to raise the bar by designing anti-cancer therapies that are highly effective with less side effects for patients.

Noa Therapeutics (Toronto) is a biotech company working to create better treatments for the millions of people struggling with inflammatory illnesses like eczema, ulcerative colitis and inflammatory bowel disease.

What they’re doing: Noa is in the advanced development phase of a non-steroidal medication that targets inflammatory barrier diseases and are preparing to conduct a clinical trial on humans.

How will this be used in the real world? Over 200 million people around the world suffer from eczema, making it the leading cause of skin disease. Current treatments temporarily address the symptoms but Noa is developing medications that can provide lasting relief.

Mediphage (Toronto) is a genomics company that has created trademark DNA technology to improve the quality of key ingredients in genetic medicines.

What they’re doing: Their research-grade msDNAᵀᴹ platform is being used to develop genetic medicines that can help people with hard-to-treat conditions like hemophilia and other chronic and genetic diseases.

How will this be used in the real world? Science is getting us closer to personalized medicine and Mediphage’s DNA technology is aiming to make genetic therapies that are much more effective to meet the growing commercial demand for quality ingredients to create new DNA-based treatments.

Inteligex  (Toronto) is a genomics company hoping to change the way traumatic spinal cord injuries are treated by developing drug and stem cell therapies for patients.

What they’re doing: Regenerative treatment is the focus for Inteligex as they use stem cell innovation to create effective treatments for spinal cord injuries, as well as other central nervous system disorders.

How will this be used in the real world? Spinal cord injuries have a deeply destructive impact on patients that go far beyond the physical damage. Treatment options are few but Inteligex is working to generate effective and reliable stem cells that can be used in ground-breaking therapies for the millions of people with this condition.

Epiloid (Toronto) is a biotech company focused on finding effective treatments for neurological conditions through data analysis and personalized medicine.

What they’re doing: Epiloid is working on perfecting their machine learning algorithm to accurately predict whether a neurological drug will be an effective medicine before it goes to the clinic trial stage.

How will this be used in the real world? Clinical trials can be long, expensive and end with disappointing results. Epiloid is de-risking the development of neurological drugs to treat conditions like epilepsy, by using data to predict a drug’s effectiveness to speed up development and get medicines to patients faster.  

Scispot.io Inc (Kitchener) is transforming how genomics research is done with their efficient and integrated data management technology.

What they’re doing: Working on simplifying genomics research with a user-friendly platform that streamlines the collection and analysis of data from tools like DNA sequencers and analysis machines.

How will this be used in the real world? Genetic data is complex, but Scispot’s technology will make it quicker and easier for drug researchers to organize and accurately interpret findings, which can get medications to market faster with over 50% reduced experiment error rate.