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New Model System for Better Crops

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To improve traits in monocot crops, such as wheat, corn and rice, we need a unique model for both prediction of candidate genes and the validation of effectiveness. Ontario Genomics is providing seed funding for an academic-industry partnership to do just that.

Frontier Agri-Science Inc., an Ontario Agri-Tech company, and Dr. Dario Bonetta (University of Ontario Institute of Technology) are developing and refining Brachypodium as a highly efficient and novel monocot model system for crop development for their industry partner BASF. This project could ultimately lead to the development of plant traits with herbicidal tolerance in key food crops, and a valuable service that Frontier can provide commercially.

This funding has created further opportunities for Frontier to acquire follow-on financing from Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE).


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Diverse Chemical Libraries

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Synthetic chemical libraries are a common source of drug discovery molecules. The challenge is that these libraries adhere to synthetic structures and biological activities. By contrast, naturally occurring chemicals have a vast diversity of structure, but their industrial or medical uses are limited due to the complexity and inaccessibility of these natural products.

Drs. Eiji Nambara, Peter McCourt (University of Toronto) and Dario Bonetta (University of Ontario Institute and Technology) plan to take these chemical libraries and expose them to a plethora of plant enzymes to exponentially increase the diversity of compounds with the hope of finding novel functions.

The team is using plant genomics resources to create libraries of various chemical compounds for industrial uses. In an effort to produce the advantages of these two systems, this project aims to set up an enhanced system to evaluate metabolic conversion of diverse chemical library by plant xenobiotic enzymes, which will be useful sources to identify chemicals with new functions.


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Funding Opportunity: Announcing the launch of BioCreate Cohort 2

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Ontario Genomics’ (Cohort 2) is open to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in southern Ontario seeking to commercialize genomics and engineering biology enabled products and/or technologies in the health, food and agriculture, and cleantech sectors at a Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of 4+.

BioCreate provides funding, access to mentorship and business support to help companies bring new products and technologies to market.

Program Highlights:

  • The multi-phase BioCreate program includes direct, non-repayable funding of $150,000 that will be matched by an additional $100,000 (minimum) from participating companies to a total project size of $250,000 or more.
  • Funded companies will have access to 18 months of intensive business mentorship and access to critical infrastructure provided by Ontario Genomics’ strategic sectoral and regional partnerships.
  • Each cohort will conclude with an investor showcase, giving the companies an opportunity to pitch to investors and potential partners.

The BioCreate Program will consist of three phases:

Application Steps and Dates

Interested SMEs should submit the initial BioCreate intake form at any time. Following the submission of this form, a representative from the BioCreate team will reach out to discuss your project idea. Eligible applicants will be invited to submit an application.

Interested SMEs should review the Program Guide for more information on the BioCreate program, including eligibility requirements and evaluation criteria.

If you have questions, please contact BioCreate@ontariogenomics.ca.

The deadline to submit an intake form to be considered for Cohort 2 is June 30, 2023. Additional details related to BioCreate and the application process can be .

Complete the intake form now to find out more about your company’s eligibility!

The BioCreate program is supported by the Government of Canada through the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario) and Ontario Genomics. The current budget is greater than $7 million over five years.

Biosensors for Healthy Plant Growth

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Plant hormones determine plant growth, and breeding programs designed around hormone action have a big impact on crop yields.

Strigolactones (SL) are plant hormones that stimulate the growth of symbiotic mycorrhizal fungi that help promote plant growth and development. However, SL also triggers the germination of parasitic plant seeds that can compete with key crop plants, especially in the developing world. To better understand how these hormones interact with their receptors in plants, Dr. Peter McCourt (University of Toronto) and his team will use synthetic biology to develop a biosensor for SL activity. With SPARK and additional support from the DOE-Joint Genomics Institute, the team will synthesize over 250 SL receptor variants that will be screened for activity within the plants. This information will be used to develop a toolbox to promote the healthy growth of agriculturally important plants, instead of the noxious plants that compete with them.


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A Genetic Toolbox for Tomato Flavour Differentiation

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Tomatoes, it is said, are the quintessence of summer in a bite. They are also responsible for more than half a billion dollars in annual farm gate sales and are Canada’s biggest fresh vegetable export. Canadian growers are facing competition due to lower production costs in other regions, leading to difficulties maintaining their market share. Canadian producers need to innovate in order to offer a differentiated product that will give them a competitive edge.

Generally, plant breeding programs focus on production traits such as yield or disease resistance. Drs. Charles Goulet (Université Laval) and David Liscombe (Vineland Research and Innovation Centre) are collaborating to ensure that new tomato varieties possess these traits, and something more important to the consumer – flavour. The team was awarded $1.8 million for this project, co-led by Genome Quebec and Ontario Genomics.


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Affordable Solutions to Clean Up Wastewater

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In response to a need for a simpler, more cost-effective and environmentally responsible solution for treatment of wastewater, Ontario Genomics provided financial support to Bishop Water Technologies (BWT) to partner with Dr. Christopher Weisener and his colleague Dr. Rao Chaganti of University of Windsor. This research project also earned an NSERC Engage Plus award, based on previous success with an NSERC Engage grant for which Ontario Genomics contributed strategy and proposal development.

Their goal? To find a solution for BWT’s product, BioCord, that would be:
  • affordable to communities
  • environmentally responsible
  • simpler to operate
  • compliant with Federal and existing provincial regulations
Towards a unique collaboration

We know that the composition of nutrients (i.e., phosphate, nitrate levels) varies across different water environments, and microorganisms accumulate different types of nutrients. Biofilm forms when a natural substance like bacteria adheres to water surfaces and creates a slimy residue. Although biofilm grows on any surface where water and nutrients are present, some natural systems only provide a limited amount of surface area for biofilm to develop.

Bishop Water Technologies (BWT) is an Ontario-based technology and engineering water company which delivers a unique and innovative suite of services and solutions for environmental challenges facing the water industry.

One of BWT’s products is BioCord, a man-made inert polymer scaffold that provides more surface area for nutrient cycling biofilm to develop, thereby improving the efficiency of (waste) water treatment at a fraction of the cost, without requiring any chemicals. BWT offers 10 types of BioCord to its clients and evaluates parameters of the water to be treated such as biological oxygen demand (BOD) and number of suspended solids in order to select the best type of BioCord.

With financial support from Ontario Genomics, as well as scientific expertise from Dr. Christopher Weisener, the team is working together to characterize the microbial ecosystem through genomic sampling. This will support future studies to identify and quantify microbes as well as determine their activities within each type of BioCord to understand nutrient removal, ultimately improving the cost and efficiency of wastewater treatment and reducing point source nutrient loads to the Great Lakes.


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Novel Cancer Immunotherapy with Genomics

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Nearly all (96 percent) people aged 65 or older diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) die within five years, as do two-thirds of younger patients. Because it primarily affects older people, the incidence of this aggressive cancer is expected to rise in the coming years as the population ages. Chemotherapy regimens for AML have remained essentially unchanged since the 1970s. With standard treatment, many patients can achieve remission, but most will relapse; following relapse two-thirds of patients will die within three years.

One of the reasons for the high rate of relapse in AML is that standard chemotherapy does not kill leukemia stem cells, leaving them to grow and mature into new leukemia cells. Leukemia stem cells express high levels of a protein called CD47. This protein sends a “do not eat” signal that stops white blood cells of the immune system called macrophages from surrounding and “eating” cancer cells.

With previous support from Genome Canada and Trillium Therapeutics Inc. (TTI), a publicly traded biotech company in Toronto, Canada, Dr. Jean Wang and team at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University Health Network, and Dr. Jayne Danska and team at SickKids have developed SIRPaFc, a novel therapeutic that blocks the “do not eat” signal, freeing the immune system to attack leukemia stem cells. With new funding of $3.4M, Drs. Wang and Danska and TTI are again collaborating to complete formal preclinical studies and to carry out clinical trials aimed at demonstrating SIRPaFc’s safety and efficacy. This will help realize the commercial potential of this promising discovery.


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New Genomics Analysis Methods with Micro Laser Beams

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Not all cells in our bodies are created equal. Scientists around the world are working hard to understand the differences. The work has been difficult, because even seemingly uniform tissues like skin can consist of a diverse population of cells, usually in many different states. The differences between cells are important because, for example, they can lead cells to respond in surprisingly different ways to the same drug treatments. Progress has been slowed by the lack of good tools for accurately tagging individual cells in intact tissues for careful study. Researchers in Ontario are developing innovative technologies to address that need.

Drs. Matthew Bjerknes and Hazel Cheng (University of Toronto) aim to develop new methods for measuring the genomic status of single cells in intact tissues. Collaborating with scientists at the University of Georgia, the research team will validate and optimize efficient methods using micro laser beams to attach unique barcodes to cells. This will make single cell genomics more accessible to labs with limited resources and provide researchers with an effective, low-cost, and easy to use methodology for tagging individual cells in intact tissues for genomic analysis.


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Preclinical Development of Drugs for Intracerebral Hemorrhage (ICH)

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Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) is a form of brain hemorrhage responsible for 10 percent of all strokes. It affects about 90,000 people in North America each year, more than half of whom either die or are disabled. Anywhere from one-quarter to 44 percent of those who survive have recurring ICH. The annual economic burden of ICH is estimated at $300 million to Canada and $6 billion to the United States. Apart from treating hypertension, which is one of the causes of ICH, there is currently no way to prevent recurrent ICH.

Dr. Xiao-Yan Wen, director of the Zebrafish Centre for Advanced Drug Discovery (ZCADD) and his team at St. Michael’s Hospital, used genomics-driven research tools to identify several existing drugs that are already approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that have shown the ability to prevent ICH in zebrafish models. Edge Therapeutics partnered with Dr. Wen in this project, to perform preclinical studies on the most potent anti-ICH molecules known as EZF-0100 for treatment of ICH and brain microhemorrhages (BMH). The project was awarded $5.9 million.


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Genomics to Create Biopolymers from Tree Biomass

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In a world that is requiring increasingly biological-based solutions to meet a growing need for sustainable materials, tree biomass remains one of the most abundant resources on earth. Ontario researchers are applying genomics technologies to create materials from underutilized tree biomass to replace those made from fossil fuels used in everyday products — such as resins, adhesives and food packaging. These innovations will create higher value bioproducts, reduce our carbon footprint, and develop new tools for effluent treatment and energy recovery.

While there is general appreciation of the potential of microbial enzymes in expanding the range of products made from tree biomass to date, biotechnology development has focused largely on the deconstruction of renewable biomass into sugars that can then be converted through fermentation to biofuels.

Drs. Emma Master of the University of Toronto and Harry Brumer of UBC are leading a team looking in the other direction. Their project SYNBIOMICS is distinguished from other projects by focusing on biocatalysts that upgrade (rather than degrade) tree biomass to create and replace materials made from fossil fuels used in everyday products, from adhesives to packaging. By upgrading biomass, Synbiomics aims to leverage the unique qualities of Canadian bioresources, which can open new opportunities for the Canadian forestry sector.

The project will also foster small and medium-sized enterprises that will work together synergistically with nearby pulp mills, creating lasting knowledge-based economic opportunities for Canada’s forestry sector and breathing new life into rural communities across Ontario.

Quick facts:
  • As part of this project, the research team is coordinating an iterative bioproducts development cycle with end-users to ensure sustainability.
  • The team is also developing economic ecosystem models for small and medium enterprises in the forestry sector.
  • Additionally, the project includes a research component to develop predictive tools for effluent treatment and energy recovery, thereby reducing both economic and environmental burdens for Ontario.

For more information about the SYNBIOMICS projects, please visit http://www.synbiomics.ca/.


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