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february/march 2018 volume 22, number 1
advanced air controls help ensure safe air in laboratories Page 7 three industrial revolutions coming from Speedy, cheap genome technology Page 13
R&D News ................. 1
Appointments ............ 6 New Products ..........16
App Reviews.............18
eSight named one of the beSt inventionS
in 2017 by giving the gift of Sight eSight will work on individuals with low vision, and who are legally blind. People who are legally blind have an acuity of 20/200 or poorer in their better eye. Low vision is another term often used, referring to people who have an acuity of 20/70 or poorer in their better eye. The eyes are very complex organs and there are many eye conditions that can cause blindness or low vision. The company has seen tremendous amounts of interest from companies wishing to help their blind employees to schools wanting to give the gift of sight to students. Time magazine has aptly named eSight for being one of the best inventions in 2017.
To see this story online visit
https://laboratoryfocus.ca/ esight-named-one-of-the-bestinventions-in-2017-by-givingthe-gift-of-sight/
Time magazine has named eSight one of the best inventions in 2017. After years of challenging work, and millions of dollars, the company was able to develop electronic glasses that actually allowed the blind to see. Inspired by his two blind sisters, the founder had decided to use his engineering skills to find a solution they could live with.
The organization believes that everyone deserves to see. This technology has the capability of changing millions of individual lives across the world. It will allow for mobility and freedom and for each person to experience those momentous moments when they can see their loved ones faces, their peers, and a whole new way to virtually see life.
ontario awardS grantS to bring quality healthcare cloSer to home
Ontario is contributing 12 new projects grants through the Health Technologies Fund to bring quality help closer to home. The fund is there to support the development of Ontario-based technologies that improve care for people, boosts the impact of investments in health innovation and grow health innovation companies.
The twelve grants that were awarded were in the ballpark of $294,000 to $500,000 each totaling $5.5 million. The new projects will include a portable device that detects brain bleeds in traumatic brain injury patients; a platform that allows people with upper body mobility injuries to access smart devices, computers, wheelchair driving controls and more; and a new digital tool that will shorten the time patients need to spend in the hospital following heart surgery by
newS
uottawa oPenS an interactive reSearch lab inSide a muSeum
The University of Ottawa is now conducting a new experiment – but inside a museum. Developmental psychologists and linguists are studying how language and cognition develop from infancy to school age at the country’s second “Living Lab”.
The state-of-the-art UOttawa Living Lab opened in late 2017 and is connected to the children’s gallery at the Canada Science and Technology Museum. Families can walk right in and participate in short games, puzzles, or problem-solving tasks with the researchers.
The greeting room consists of a large glassed-in area where interesting facts about child development are shared on a large flat-screen. This space leads to three testing rooms where UOttawa professors pursue their research with the help of senior undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows.
This is the largest living lab in
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Ontario awards grants Continued from page 1
providing high-quality monitoring from home.
The $20-million Health Technologies Fund is developed and funded by the Office of the Chief Health Innovation Strategist (OCHIS) and administered by the Ontario Centres of Excellence. This is the second round of Health Technologies Fund investments by Ontario this year. The 2017-18 grants are focused on market-ready projects that were selected for their potential to improve patient outcomes and bring value to the healthcare system.
Investing in innovative health technologies that help patients receive care closer to home is part of Ontario’s plan to create fairness and opportunity during this period of rapid economic change. The plan includes a higher minimum wage and better working conditions, free tuition for hundreds of thousands of students, easier access to affordable child care, and free prescription drugs for everyone under 25 through the biggest expansion of Medicare in a generation.
To see this story online visit
https://laboratoryfocus.ca/ontario-awards-grants-to-bring-qualityhealthcare-closer-to-home/
Research lab inside a museum Continued from page 2
Professor Chris Fennell with child (Photo Credit: University of Ottawa)
Canada, and the second built after the University of British Columbia.
Research in a museum is a relatively new concept. It began back in 2005 when researchers at Harvard University and MIT began collaborating with the Museum of Science in Boston to undertake studies on cognitive development.
The living lab model is ideal for quick research projects because they can be conducted in a public setting with people who are already expressing an interest in science. It results in gathering variable data during short interactions that will not incur taking time away from families. As the lab progresses, more researchers will be inducted into the facility.
Before the opening of the new lab, the researchers were engrossed in a two-year pilot project at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum to test how a permanent living lab would work and fine-tune studies.
To see this story online visit
https://laboratoryfocus.ca/uottawaopens-an-interactive-research-labinside-a-museum/
ArtificiAl intelligence reseArchers discover A new wAy to discern medicAl imAges
A team of artificial intelligence researchers has developed a new deep-learning method to identify and segment tumours in medical images.
This software makes it possible to automatically analyze several medical imaging modalities. Through a supervised learning process from labeled data inspired by the functioning of the neurons of the brain, it automatically identifies liver tumours, delineates the contours of the prostate for radiation therapy or makes it possible to count the number of cells at the microscopic level with precision.
“We have developed software that could be added to visualization tools to help doctors perform advanced analyses of different medical imaging modalities,” explains Samuel Kadoury, a researcher at the CRCHUM, professor at Polytechnique Montréal and the study’s senior author. “The algorithm makes it possible to automate pre-processing detection and segmentation (delineation) tasks of images, which are currently not done because they are too time-consuming for human beings. Our model is very versatile – it works for CT liver scan images, magnetic resonance images (MRI) of the prostate and electronic microscopic images of cells.”
When a patient has a CT scan, the image will have to be standardized and normalized before being read by the radiologist. It takes an expert eye to quickly and confidently determine what the images represent. And perhaps, a little bit of magic.
The researchers came up with the idea of combining neural networks to create image segmentation. A neural network being a complex series of computer operations that allows the computer to learn by itself, feeding it a massive number of examples. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) work a little like the human visual cortex by stacking several layers of input
“Ontario has a wealth of innovators looking to connect with clinicians and patients to find new ways of delivering better care, closer to home,” says William Charnetski, chief health innovation strategist for Ontario. “The job of my office and the purpose of the Health Technologies Fund is to help spark that demand-driven innovation and get it embedded into our health system quickly. The fund is part of our value-based innovation framework that has three clear goals: improve patient outcomes, optimize the impact of our investment in health innovation and scale promising Ontario companies.”
to then process and produce an output result – an image. There are several types of neural networks, all structured slightly differently. The researchers then combined two neural networks: a fully convolutional network (FCN) and a fully convolutional residual network (FC-ResNet) to create an algorithm that will discover lesions by itself.
The researchers compared their results of their algorithm with the results of other algorithms to conclude that theirs compares on the same level, or better than the ones previously obtained. The versatility of this new algorithm could make it possible to train it for different pathologies such as lung or brain cancer. Training an algorithm is a very long process, but, once trained, this model could analyze images in fractions of seconds and reach a performance level in detection and classification comparable to that of human beings. Researchers, however, think it will still be many years till AI will fluidly be at work in hospital settings.
Despite AI possibly being many years yet from fully coming to fruition, the advancements are allowing researchers to perform tasks at a speed that can not be done by a human. We are coming into an age of remarkable possibilities – and this new method of deep learning only demonstrates that further.
To see this story online visit
https://laboratoryfocus.ca/artificialintelligence-researchers-discovernew-way-discern-medical-images/
news KnOwing when a plant is stRessed COuld maKe all the diffeRenCe
Determining what a plant needs at precisely the right time is critical when a plant’s health is stressed through lack of nutrients or by weeds; but how can farmers know when the right time is?
This Grain Farmers of Ontario research project, led by Dr. Clarence Swanton, of the University of Guelph, and the University of Waterloo’s Dr. Roydon Fraser, has shown that a corn plant’s leaf temperature can tell you whether that plant is healthy or not – and do so before the problem is readily visible.
Supported by funding from Growing Forward 2, both Swanton and Fraser have been working on a prototype sensor for corn that can rapidly detect changes in leaf surface temperatures.
This will help farmers identify and respond to plant stress like nitrogen deficiency or weed competition quickly and accurately, and often before any visual evidence of stress, like yellowing leaves, becomes apparent. There were four controlled environment trials using corn that were completed in the University of Guelph greenhouse which let the researchers control inputs like water and nitrogen. There were also three outdoor field trials conducted, two in Woodstock and one in Elora. Swanton and Fraser observed that healthier plants had cooler temperatures during the day compared to plants lacking nitrogen or fighting weeds, especially when comparing low and high nitrogen rates. The results were less clear with nitrogen rates in the middle of the dose range. More research will be needed to establish what is causing that variability. If growers were able to recognize stressed plants early, they could target applications of nitrogen or crop protection materials more precisely and rapidly. This would ensure that they’re only used where and in the quantities they’re needed – a benefit for both the environment and growers looking to manage costs. Funding for this project was provided by Growing Forward 2 (GF2) a federal-provincial-territorial initiative. The Agricultural Adaptation Council assists with the delivery of GF2 programming in Ontario.
To see this story online visit
https://laboratoryfocus.ca/knowingwhen-a-plant-is-stressed-couldmake-all-the-difference/
Possible “4d” Printing APProAch Arrives
To see this story online visit
https://laboratoryfocus.ca/possible-4d-printing-approach-arrives/
Chess piece 3D printed with hydrogel (Credit: Daehoon Han/ Rutgers UniversityNew Brunswick)
Engineers from Rutgers University have invented a “4D printing” method for a smart gel that could lead to the development of “living” structures in human organs and tissues, soft robots and targeted drug delivery.
“The 4D printing approach here involves printing a 3D object with a hydrogel (water-containing gel) that changes shape over time when temperatures change,” says Howon Lee, senior author of a new study and assistant professor in the department of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Rutgers University.
The study, published in Scientific Reports, demonstrates that a fast, scalable, high-resolution 3D printing of hydrogels will remain solid and retain their shape despite containing water. Examples of hydrogels in modern life include Jell-O, contact lenses, diapers and the human body.
Engineers at Rutgers and the New Jersey Institute of Technology have been working with a hydrogel that has been used for decades in devices that generate motion and biomedical applications such as scaffolds for cells to grow on. This hydrogel manufacturing has traditionally relied heavily on conventional, two-dimensional methods such as molding and lithography.
In the study, the engineers used a lithography-based technique that’s fast, inexpensive and can print a wide range of materials into a 3D shape. It involves printing layers of a special resin to build a 3D object. The resin consists of the hydrogel, a chemical that acts as a binder, and another chemical facilitates bonding when light hits it with a dye that controls light penetration. The smart gel could provide structural rigidity in organs such as the lungs, and can contain small molecules like water or drugs to be transported in the body and released.
The engineers have learned to control how much the hydrogel will shrink and grow. If temperatures sink below 32 degrees Celsius (about 90 degrees Fahrenheit), the hydrogel will absorb more water and swell in size. Meanwhile temperatures that exceed 32 degrees Celsius will begin to expel water and shrink the hydrogel. Thus far, the objects the researchers have been able to create within the hydrogel range from the width of a human hair to several millimeters long. They have also discovered that they can control the motion of these objects by interceding with the temperature.
anandia labs annOunCes the ClOsing Of a $13.4-m pRivateplaCement finanCing
Anandia Laboratories Inc. announces that it has closed a private placement financing of common shares of CAD$13.4 million at a postmoney valuation of CAD$63 million. Lead investors in the financing were Green Acre Capital and York Plains Investment Corp.
Anandia Labs is making a name for itself as a cannabis analytics, testing and genetics company. They are one of 33 Health Canadaissued Dealers Licenses, that will cultivate, extract, test, import and export cannabis in any form. The company also uses genomics and modern plant breeding technologies to develop advanced products and next-generation cannabis varieties.
Anandia Labs has approximately a 20 per cent market share under the Access to Cannabis for Medical Purposes Regulations (ACMPR). The company operates out of a 5,400 square foot facility in Vancouver, British Columbia and has plans to construct a 40,000 square foot purpose-built cannabis innovation centre in British Columbia during 2018. The financing will fund the land purchase and construction of the initial phase of Anandia Labs’ Cannabis Innovation Centre, including a 20,000 square foot R&D cultivation facility and a 20,000 square foot building to house tissue culture and extraction infrastructure, including the equipment required for its breeding, laboratory analysis and commercial scale extraction activities.
To see this story online visit
https://laboratoryfocus.ca/anandia-labs-announces-the-closingof-a-13-4-m-private-placementfinancing/
newS
Reaping the fruit of the last fifteen years, a company out of Quebec develops the first Health Canada approved solution for Listeria monocytogenes (Listeria) to protect fish, and ultimately the human consumer.
Fumoir Grizzly with partners Université Laval and Merinov announce the development completion of the M35 bacteriocin, which they have named BAC M35.
This bioingredient will be integrated into Grizzly’s production chain and hopes that this will open the door to eradicate the risk of Listeria contamination all over the world.
The M35 bacteriocin is an alternative to traditional microbiological barri- M35 protects fish for 21 days at 4 °C ers and contains less salt and fewer without affecting taste or nutritional chemical additives. This bacterial content. Ensuring healthier fresh food, culture is analogous to probiotics, is BAC M35 is natural, remains effective sourced from a bioingredient naturally even in varying temperatures and is present in marine environments and is not harmful to the environment. deemed safe for human health. BAC Currently, there is no equivalent currently known anywhere in the world for BAC M35. Fumoir Grizzly intends to market this bacteriocyte internationally. Patent requests have been submitted in the United States and are in progress for Europe. The company plans on first targeting markets where fish is plentiful, such as Chili, Alaska, and Norway. Fumoir Grizzly is also working on the development and improvement of BAC M35 for use with other foods, including fruits and vegetables, cheeses, beef and deli meats. Fumoir Grizzly promises fish of uncompromising natural quality, without added chemicals and salt after the application of BAC M35. This bacteriocin has become a game changer and will keep many consumers out of hospitals from Listeria. Every year in Canada there are roughly 178 cases of Listeria infection that cause over 150 hospitalizations and 35 deaths; not to leave out the immense financial burden on the economy that is estimated around $240 million annually. This is indeed a breakthrough in food preparation and a tasty one at that.
To see this story online visit
https://laboratoryfocus.ca/quebeccompany-makes-a-breakthrough-infood-preparation/
delivrA And intervivo solutions collAborAte to mArket An Anti-Anxiety toPicAl creAm
Hamilton-based corporation, Delivra, announces that they have signed a joint venture agreement using Delivra’s topical therapeutic platform. This topical base cream can house hundreds of molecules that can be used for human and animal health sectors.
Under the agreement, Delivra and Intervivo Solutions have developed a therapeutic topical cream for sleep, anxiety and separation anxiety for companion animals, as well as transdermal delivery of therapeutics for osteoarthritic pain. Delivra’s expertise in formulation using its innovative delivery system platform combined with Intervivo’s success in demonstrating pharmacokinetic, safety and efficacy data in clinically relevant canine and feline models provides a unique platform for rapid development of transdermal commercial products for the veterinary market. The Humane Society reported in 2016 that 30-40 per cent of relinquished pets are given up due to behaviour problems such as anxiety.
Delivra Corp. is a specialty biotechnology company that has a proprietary transdermal delivery system platform that can shuttle pharmaceutical and natural molecules through the skin, in a targeted specific manner. Delivra manufactures and sells a growing line of natural topical creams with the proprietary transdermal delivery system platform under the LivRelief brand, for conditions such as joint and muscle pain, nerve pain, varicose veins, wound healing, and under the LivSport brand for sports performance.
To see this story online visit
https://laboratoryfocus.ca/delivraand-intervivo-solutions-collaborateto-market-an-anti-anxiety-topicalcream/
PreciSion nanoSyStemS extendS nanomedicine Platform with bidmc
Precision NanoSystems provides the NanoAssemblr technology in collaboration with The Cancer Centre at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at their recently opened Non-Coding RNA Precision Diagnostics and Therapeutics Core Facility. This new state-of-the-art facility is devoted to the study of noncoding RNAs, which play a pivotal role in regulating gene expression and are key to understanding, detecting, and treating disease. NanoAssemblr technology plays will aid in overcoming challenges that are presented with gene-delivery nanoparticles for research and drug development.
“An important consideration for providing the NanoAssemblr Platform is the critical role the ncRNA Core Facility is poised to play in the revolution of Personalized Medicine. Nanomedicines are clinically validated for delivering nucleic acids to the site of disease, which overcomes a crucial technological challenge in ncRNA research and genetic medicine development,” says Euan Ramsay, COO and co-founder, Precision Nanosystems. “Additionally, the Facility’s accessibility to other major academic institutions and the pharma community in the Boston/Cambridge area furthers our goal to lead the charge in providing an accessible solution for the discovery and development of molecularly tailored and targeted medicines and aligns with PNI’s philosophy of advancing Personalized Medicine.”
Speeding up the discovery, development, and manufacturing of nanomedicine are some of the aims of this technology and improving treatments for patients with the acceleration of the development of personalized therapies.
The NanoAssemblr platform consists of three instruments that will collaboratively support each stage of the drug discovery and development process. The NanoAssemblr Spark produces microlitre volumes of nanomedicines for discovery research; the NanoAssemblr Benchtop manufactures 1 – 15 mL of nanomedicine formulations per run for pre-clinical nanomedicine development and optimization; the NanoAssemblr Blaze can manufacture up to 1 L of nanomedicines, which allows pre-clinical testing of the nanomedicines in a disease model.
To see this story online visit
https://laboratoryfocus.ca/precision-nanosystems-extends-nanomedicine-platform-with-bidmc/
