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Our Companies

Medical technologies discovered at UHN fuel the foundational platform of nearly 20 financed life science companies and have catalyzed the formation of the companies listed below.

Many of our recently formed companies present later-stage investment and partnership opportunities.

As stated within our values and strategic priorities above, UHN’s commercialization approach seeks to elevate Canada as a world destination for life science commercialization. We also follow technology sector best practices for research commercialization regarding the commercialization of IP generated at UHN. Since 2014, our approach has been to focus on supporting internal capacity to create well-financed start-ups ourselves, in order to steward UHN IP to its greatest inflection point of success, maximizing  benefit to the hospital, local economy, and our position on the national commercialization stage.

UHN Commercialization and our expert team of business development/legal professionals work closely with our ecosystem to guide, co-promote and encourage the success of home-grown IP initiatives through numerous collaborative activities and committee leadership/participation.

Founded on ground-breaking research from UHN’s Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Adela is a precision medicine company developing novel liquid biopsies for the diagnosis of cancer. Adela’s platform is based on UHN’s proprietary, ultra-sensitive, cell-free DNA methylation pattern detection technology (CfMeDIP-seq). Powered by AI, CfMeDIP-seq is transforming the cancer diagnosis and disease management landscape. For more information, visit: https://www.adelabio.com/

Atuka provides contract research and consultancy services for the biopharmaceutical industry to aid the development of novel therapeutics and diagnostics for Parkinson’s disease. For more information, visit: https://atuka.com/ 

AvroBio is a clinical stage gene therapy company aiming to halt or reverse disease with a single dose of gene therapy. Originally incubated at UHN, AvroBio was founded on discoveries by Drs. Christopher Paige and Jeffrey Medin. In 2018, it became a publicly traded company and is now listed on NASDAQ. For more information, visit: https://www.avrobio.com/ 

Founded on ground-breaking stem cell discoveries at UHN, BlueRock Therapeutics, a wholly-owned and independently operated subsidiary of Bayer AG, is a leading engineered cell therapy company developing cell-based therapies designed to alter the course of degenerative diseases, including neurological, cardiovascular and immunological conditions. The launch of BlueRock in 2016 was made possible by Bayer AG and Versant Ventures, who provided a US$225 million series A investment - one of the  largest biotechnology investments of its kind in Canada at the time. BlueRock Therapeutics, which operates out of the Princess Margaret Tower at UHN, was fully acquired by Bayer in 2019. For more information, visit https://bluerocktx.com/ 

BresoTec Medical is a UHN/TRI (Toronto Rehabilitation Institute) start-up company specializing in the diagnosis of sleep apnea from a patient’s home. BresoTEC develops portable devices for sleep apnea diagnosis based on acoustic analysis of breath sound recordings during sleep. Its BresoDX diagnostic device was recognized with UHN’s Inventor of the Year Award for its compact, sleek design. BresoTec’s mission is to improve quality of life for patients and become a global leader in providing simple, effective technologies for the management of sleep apnea and related health conditions.  For more information visit: https://bresotec.com/ and https://kite-uhn.com/startup/bresotec

Founded on a UHN neuronal stem cell technology, Inteligex is a regenerative medicine company currently developing novel stem cell and drug-based therapies for the treatment of traumatic spinal cord injuries (SCIs) and other diseases of the Central Nervous System (CNS). Inteligex’s proprietary regenerative stem cell therapies address both acute and chronic forms of SCI and are the culmination of over 15 years of work on stem cells for SCI in the academic laboratory of Dr. Michael Fehlings at the Krembil Research Institute (KRI) of the University Health Network (UHN). For more information, visit: https://www.inteligex.ca/ 

Medly Therapeutics is a medical device company dedicated to advancing cardiac care. Developed on proprietary UHN technology to reduce heart failure management costs, Medly includes a Health Canada approved class II medical device and an AI-enhanced, clinically validated digital platform leveraging clinical expertise at the University Health Network. Ongoing refinement and development since inception in 2012 resulted in its unrivalled clinical validation and a 50% reduction in heart failure-related hospitalizations with a six-fold increase in patient management capacity.

MyndTec Inc., is a CSE-listed neurotechnology company revolutionizing care for stroke and spinal cord injury patients thanks to the innovative MyndMove device. MyndTec Inc. researches, develops and distributes innovative therapies designed to improve function, maximize independence and enhance the quality of life for individuals with upper limb paralysis due to stroke, spinal cord injury or traumatic brain injury. MyndMove™ is MyndTec’s first product to market. The technology was developed based on the research conducted at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute and the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering and the University of Toronto.
For more information, visit: https://www.myndtec.com/
Watch the discovery story behind MyndTec

Founded on proprietary imaging technology (injectable imaging agent) discovered at UHN, Nanovista is an oncology company working in the image-guided intervention space. Its platform works to illuminate tumours both at the planning stage and inside the operating room, helping surgeons better target them while preserving healthy tissue. Nanovisa’s imaging agents are showing substantial improvement over alternative agents that last just hours and that require continual injections. Nanovista has now joined JLabs and was named one of the of “Ten Start-ups Changing Healthcare” by Scientific American.  For more information visit: https://www.nanovista.ca/ 

Founded in 2012 based on fluorescent light technology discovered at UHN, Moleculight is a medical device company improving wound care for patients internationally. Moleculight’s hand-held device enables the detection of elevated bacterial levels in wounds right at the point of care, helping detect wound infection not yet visible to the eye. It’s approved for use in markets world-wide. For information , visit: https://moleculight.com/

Paradox Immunotherapeutics is an orphan drug platform company dedicated to the creation of antibody therapies for the treatment of rare diseases caused by protein misfolding. Based on UHN discovery, Paradox's platform technology can be applied to the designing of therapeutic antibodies for multiple protein misfolding diseases, aiming to overcome challenges that previously made these diseases incurable.  For more information visit: https://www.paradoximmuno.com/  
https://youtu.be/2tCpe28Ok9Q (YouTube)

Point Surgical Inc. (PSI) is a Toronto-based company developing technology for first-in-class, intra-surgical pathology analysis in record time. It was founded as a joint venture between Toronto’s University Health Network, Unity Health Toronto and Light Matter Interaction Inc.  The technology, first demonstrated by Drs. Arash Zarrine-Afsar (UHN) and Howard Ginsberg (Unity), offers clinicians a new way to measure tissue pathology in real-time—right in the operating room. It also enables the ability to identify tumour types in as little as 10 seconds. For more information, visit: https://pointsurgical.com/

Though not founded on UHN Technology, Animal Health Partners (Companion Healthcare Corporation) was initially formed as a result of a collaboration born out of UHN’s TECHNA Institute. The company is an emergency animal hospital with state-of-the art diagnostics for pets. For more information visit: https://animalhealthpartners.com/ 

Traferox Technologies Inc. is a Toronto-based medical device company dedicated to turning UHN's world-class Canadian research into the new global standard of care. Founded on transplant innovations discovered at UHN, Traferox is a unique company in the Canadian landscape, combining an executive team with global experience with the research and innovation present at UHN. For more information, visit:
https://www.traferox.com/

Treadwell Therapeutics is a clinical stage, multi-modality oncology company with a pipeline of cancer therapeutics based on discoveries first made at UHN’s Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. The company has an operational base at the Princess Margaret Cancer Research Tower (PMCRT), and a development facility in Toronto. Treadwell was founded in part by Dr. Tak Mak, Senior Scientist at UHN’s Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, whose discovery of the T-cell receptor changed the face of cancer therapy.  For more information, visit: https://treadwelltx.com/

Thornhill Medical is a medical device company specializing in acute critical care devices specifically designed for military, field hospital, transport medical and first responder teams. Founded on respiratory care technologies discovered at UHN, Thornhill Medical is now internationally recognized as a leader in the precise control and management of arterial blood gases. For more information visit www.thornhillmedical.ca.

Fully owned by Treadwell, Therapeutics, TCRyption is a leader in developing T-cell immunotherapies, based on the groundbreaking work of Dr. Naoto Hirano, winner of UHN’s Inventor of the Year Award in 2019. His innovative TCR-HLA multimer staining technique greatly expanded how immunotherapy targets cancer.

Acumyn was created by UHN, with support from the Techna Institute,  to commercialize AQUA, a clinical software platform for use by radiotherapy clinics. The platform consolidates quality assurance tests and calibrations into a single location, helping to increase efficiencies and ensure quality patient care.  Acumyn was acquired by Elekta, a global leader in radiotherapy. For more information visit: https://www.elekta.com/company/about-us/ 

Founded in 2014 in one of the biggest biotech deals at the time, Northern Biologics was the first modern UHN spin-off backed by venture capital (Versant Ventures). Founding scientists Drs. Benjamin Neel, Bradly Wouters and Robert Rottapel and University of Toronto researchers Drs. Sachdev Sidhu and Jason Moffat founded the company to pursue drug leads and a novel antibody generation platform focused on advancing antibody-based treatments for cancer and fibrosis. Northern Biologics was bought by Boehringer Ingelheim, the world’s largest private pharmaceutical company, in 2020.  For more information, please visit: https://www.boehringer-ingelheim.com/science/human-health/fostering-science