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TORONTO – (October 9, 2020) – The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the critical importance of keeping Canada at the cutting edge of health technology to offer the best possible care to Canadians, while supporting economic growth. The Government of Canada is partnering with innovative health tech businesses, and organizations that support them, to nurture promising ideas and talent, while creating good jobs and helping our economy recover from the impact of the global health crisis.
Today, the Honourable Mélanie Joly, Minister of Economic Development and Official Languages and Minister responsible for FedDev Ontario, announced a total FedDev Ontario investment of $13.4 million for four Toronto-based recipients to advance health innovation.
Strengthening southern Ontario’s leadership in health technology solutions
The federal government is proud to announce a $6.5-million investment for Toronto Innovation Acceleration Partners (TIAP), a membership-based organization of top universities and major research hospitals and institutes in Ontario working together to advance health science technologies by supporting companies from discovery to market. Funding will allow TIAP to expand its programming and reach to create a network aimed at scaling high-growth health and life sciences companies, with a focus on three key areas: therapeutics, artificial intelligence and medical technology. Through this project, TIAP expects to create more than 400 highly skilled jobs, scale up 32 life sciences companies, and support at least six companies to become anchor firms in the southern Ontario life sciences sector.
The Toronto life sciences ecosystem abounds with companies that have developed digital solutions aimed at improving the quality of patient care. Today’s announcement also includes a total investment of $6.9 million for MindBeacon Holdings Inc., Cyclica Inc., and Healthism Systems Inc. (InputHealth) to scale up their innovations, including digital mental health treatments, drug discovery software powered by artificial intelligence and software solutions for greater patient engagement and coordination of care. In total, these three projects are expected to create 84 skilled jobs in the Toronto region. For additional project details, please see the backgrounder.
With a strong entrepreneurial ecosystem, Toronto has anchored its position as a leader in key sectors including life sciences. Through strategic investments like these, the Government of Canada is building on regional strengths to help secure our position as a world leader in innovative health technologies and create the right conditions for growth the post-COVID-19 economy.
About Cyclica
Cyclica is the first company to approach polypharmacology with a structure-based, AI-augmented in silico discovery platform, centered on Ligand Design and Ligand Express. Powered by MatchMaker™, a proprietary deep learning proteome screening technology, and POEM™, an innovative supervised learning technology for predicting molecular properties, Cyclica’s platform is suited uniquely to the design of novel, chemical matter by simultaneously prioritizing compounds based on their on- and off-target polypharmacological profiles as well as their developmental properties. With a world-class team that has deep roots in the industry, a first-in-class platform, and an innovative decentralized partnership model, Cyclica is creating medicines with greater precision for unmet patient needs.
Cyclica Media Inquiries:
Jennifer Sacco
jennifer.sacco@cyclicarx.com