Innovating Canada
Anne Marinier
CEO, RejuvenRx
Cate Murray
President & CEO, Stem Cell Network
The Stem Cell Network’s first Incubation Investment Award winner, regenerative medicine biotech company RejuvenRx, receives $1 million to advance its research.
Imagine if a pill could reset unhealthy blood stem cells and offer patients with serious blood cancers and other diseases an alternative to stem cell transplantation. That’s the visionary regenerative medicine approach that RejuvenRx, a Montreal-based emerging biotechnology company, is developing.
But moving scientific innovations like this toward commercialization, and ultimately to patients, is a tremendous challenge for early-stage Canadian companies working in cell and gene therapies and tissue engineering. They face ongoing hurdles in attracting investment and accessing the resources and expertise they need to grow.
RejuvenRx CEO Anne Marinier explains that companies can fall into a funding gap when moving out of the research lab and into ventures that can grow and attract investment.
“The challenge is really to ensure that we have the resources to translate these discoveries into companies and medicines that will bring economic value here in Canada,” she says.
The new Incubation Investment Award
The Stem Cell Network (SCN) supports Canada’s young regenerative medicine biotech companies through a broad commercialization readiness strategy, which now includes a unique new funding opportunity. Its Incubation Investment Award (IIA) is designed to fill a critical gap by supporting pre-seed and seed-stage Canadian regenerative medicine biotech companies with the funding they need to test their ideas, gather the corresponding results, and use that evidence to attract investors and continue to grow.
It’s the first time in SCN’s 25-year history that the organization is directly investing in companies, after a long track record of investing in research at universities.
The IIA program is really about giving our companies a hand up and providing a foundation for them to grow in Canada.
“Today, there’s growing interest across our research community in translating and commercializing innovations, all in an effort to bring Canadian science to the world and patients in need,” says Cate Murray, President and CEO of SCN.
RejuvenRx is the inaugural recipient of SCN’s IIA and is receiving a $1 million investment to support its growth. The company will use the funding to generate the development, manufacturing, and preclinical data required to advance the drug toward clinical trials. Marinier calls this an “extremely important value-creating milestone” that’s needed to attract more investment.
Supporting Canadian innovation
For Murray, supporting early-stage Canadian biotech companies is a matter of national importance.
“It’s about keeping our science, intellectual property, companies, and people here at home, which in the current environment has never been more important,” she says. “The IIA program is really about giving our companies a hand up and providing a foundation for them to grow in Canada.”
Murray also highlights the need for greater federal support of early-stage Canadian life sciences biotech companies to help bridge the commercialization gap, along with a more agile regulatory environment that can assess emerging therapies.
“It would be a national shame if we lost out on this field, one that we pioneered,” says Murray. Stem cells were discovered right here in Canada — and while the country continues to be a leader in the field, ongoing investment is critical.
Learn more about SCN and its new award at stemcellnetwork.ca, and visit rejuvenrx.com to explore RejuvenRx’s innovative work.
