Four Health and Life Sciences Companies to Present at the Second Health Challenge Pitch Event on Oct. 2
HALIFAX, NS (September 25) – Four Atlantic Canadian health and life sciences companies will present their mental health and wellness solutions virtually during the second Health Challenge Pitch Event on Friday, October 2, beginning at 12pm.
Thanks to support from Nova Scotia Health, Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA), QEII Foundation, and BioNova, one company developing a mental health and/or wellness solution will receive $100,000 and their innovative medical technology will be launched as a proof of concept within Nova Scotia Health and consideration given for scaled deployment.
The competition was created to drive innovation in the health and life sciences space, showcase the exemplary medical technologies coming out of Atlantic Canada, and encourage the adoption of existing technologies to improve the accuracy and level of care health practitioners require to keep people well, and to make concise, life-saving diagnoses and treatments for patients from a physical and mental wellness perspective.
The four companies that will be pitching virtually on Friday, October 2 include:
Pitches will be 10 minutes in length, followed by five minutes for the judges to ask questions. The event is taking place via videoconference and begins at 12pm on Friday, October, 2.
Those interested in watching are encouraged to register for the event on Eventbrite.
Quotes:
“It’s incredibly inspiring to see such strong leadership and innovation from companies across Atlantic Canada, focusing their efforts on developing mental health and wellness solutions. Given the quality and calibre of the applications we received, I am confident these companies will continue to have a tremendous impact on patient care across our region.” – Martha Casey, Volta CEO
“The submissions that were received are incredibly impressive and the fact that these are medtech companies from our Atlantic provinces proves that we have the knowledge, expertise and resources to develop world-class healthcare solutions right here, for our patient population. Nova Scotia Health is a proud partner, supporting health innovation and discovery.”
– Dr. Gail Tomblin Murphy, Vice President, Research, Innovation & Discovery and CNE, Nova Scotia Health
“We’ve worked hard to build a supportive and collaborative ecosystem for the advancement of the health and life sciences industry to support companies like the finalists announced today. Through BioNova’s programs we can continue to support them beyond the Health Challenge.”
– Scott Moffitt, Executive Director, BioNova
“The QEII Foundation is extremely proud to be part of this initiative, addressing the conversation head-on and tackling some of the big needs in our community. Investing in innovative solutions in mental health and wellness is an investment in the health of our community.” – Susan Mullin, President and CEO, QEII Foundation
“The Government of Canada is proud to support the Health Challenge that highlights the extraordinary work Atlantic Canadian businesses are doing to tackle real challenges and create a more robust health care system.”
– Andy Fillmore, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Infrastructure and Communities and Member of Parliament for Halifax, on behalf of the Honourable Mélanie Joly, Minister of Economic Development and Official Languages and Minister responsible for ACOA
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About Volta
Volta (formerly Volta Labs) is one of Canada’s largest innovation hubs, located in downtown Halifax, Nova Scotia. Volta is creating a space where members of the Atlantic Canadian innovation ecosystem can work, connect and learn from one another by accessing co-working space, participating in programs and attending events. Volta has been home to more than 50 startups through its Residency program, which has created more than 300 jobs and raised a combined total of $60-million in equity financing.
About Nova Scotia Health
Nova Scotia Health provides health services to Nova Scotians and a wide array of specialized services to Maritimers and Atlantic Canadians. We operate hospitals, health centres and community-based programs across the province. Our team of health professionals includes employees, doctors, researchers, learners and volunteers. We work in partnership with community groups, schools, governments, foundations and auxiliaries and community health boards. Visit nshealth.ca for more.
About BioNova
BioNova leads the development of Health and Life Sciences in Nova Scotia. Our industry-led sector growth plan, BioFuture 2030, has made us the fastest growing sector in Atlantic Canada. We represent over 100 companies in Nova Scotia who have raised over $65 million in investment dollars since the beginning of 2020.
About QEII Foundation
The QEII Foundation inspires generosity to advance health care at the QEII. With financial support from all levels of the community, the QEII Foundation helps fund new technologies, medical research, innovation and professional education that contribute to life-changing moments experienced every day by patients and their loved ones. By working together with people who share a vision of better health, the Foundation strengthens care delivered at the QEII, improving the health and lives of Atlantic Canadians.
About the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency
The Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency works to create opportunities for economic growth in Atlantic Canada by helping businesses become more competitive, innovative and productive, by working with diverse communities to develop and diversify local economies, and by championing the strengths of Atlantic Canada. Together, with Atlantic Canadians, ACOA is building a stronger economy. For more information, please visit www.acoa-apeca.gc.ca.
For more information, contact:
Kelly Reinsborough, Director, Innovation, Nova Scotia Health
OTTAWA, September 22, 2020 – BioTalent Canada is expanding its successful national Student Work Placement Program (SWPP) to Canadian healthcare for the first time.
Providing wage subsidies to healthcare students builds on BioTalent Canada’s successful track record of delivering SWPP in the bioscience industry since 2017. Over the past three years, with its many wage subsidy programs including SWPP, BioTalent Canada has placed 2,650 students with biotechnology companies across the country.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating to employment in Canada, including for young people and new graduates,” said Rob Henderson, President and Chief Executive Officer of BioTalent Canada. “Enhancements to the Student Work Placement Program will ensure that young people gain valuable career experience and position them to secure meaningful employment in healthcare.”
“Ensuring a strong economic recovery depends on the success of our students and youth. Programs like the Student Work Placement exist to provide young people with the chance to grow professionally and develop new skills while working in sectors that are in line with their interests and field of study,” said Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion Carla Qualtrough. “Our Government’s investment in BioTalent Canada will go a long way in helping young students across the country gain meaningful work experience in the healthcare industry, an industry which is especially important in responding to the current pandemic.”
Since 2017, BioTalent Canada has successfully placed more than 1,600 students in work-integrated learning placements through the SWPP program with more than 350 biotech employers. With this new enhancement, BioTalent Canada will now be able to offer an additional 1,500 placements devoted exclusively to healthcare. These placements may include (but are not limited to) hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, long-term care facilities and dental offices anywhere in Canada.
Under the SWPP program, employers can receive up to $7,500 per placement in wage subsidies to hire a post-secondary student for up to a 16-week student placement opportunity. Enhancements to the SWPP program administered by BioTalent Canada include an expansion of eligibility to part-time students across Canada, and the broadening of the eligibility criteria to include healthcare workers. For more information about the program please visit biotalent.ca/Co-opFunds.
This project is funded in part by the Government of Canada’s Student Work Placement Program through the department of Employment and Social Development Canada.
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About BioTalent Canada
BioTalent Canada™ is the HR partner of and catalyst for growth in Canada’s bio-economy. Our engagement with employers, associations, post-secondary institutions, immigrant serving agencies and service providers has built a dynamic network that is strengthening skills, connecting job-ready talent to industry and creating opportunities. Recently awarded a Great Place to Work® Certification, BioTalent Canada practices the same industry standards they recommend to their stakeholders.
Recently, BioTalent Canada was named one of Best Workplaces in Ontario for 2020 and Best Workplaces in Healthcare These distinctions were awarded to BioTalent Canada following a thorough and independent analysis conducted by Great Place to Work®. Direct feedback from employees was provided to Great Place to Work® through a staff survey.
September 14, 2020 by Lou Shuman, DMD, CAGS and Thais Carter of Cellerant Consulting Group
In Combining Botanical Foam with the Latest in LED Innovation, PhotoDynamic is Poised to Revolutionize Home-Based Oral Hygiene for Ortho Patients
Moving from research and development to an operationalized business is a milestone for any company but in the case of PhotoDynamic – a small, Halifax, NS-based firm – bringing its Phyto-Light device and foam to the dental industry isn’t just an institutional milestone. It is groundbreaking for every orthodontist or GP who has dealt with white spot lesions or periodontal damage from the poor home hygiene of orthodontic patients, and a potential game-changer (and I don’t use that word lightly) for the 20% of the population in Canada and the US considered “high plaque formers.”
In the midst of rebooting a clinical trial stalled by COVID-19 earlier this year, we caught up with PhotoDynamic CEO Martin Greenwood to discuss the characteristics that set this product apart and merit a financial investment by the American Association of Orthodontists – the first in the Association’s history.
Health Canada approves DMF Medical’s memsorb™CO2 membrane filtration device for sale in Canada
Press Release
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, Canada, September 2020 – DMF Medical Incorporated – a privately held medical device company focused on making anesthesia safer, is pleased to announce that it has received a Class II medical device license from Health Canada to sell its memsorb™ carbon dioxide (CO2) filtration device in the Canadian market. This follows on the heels of successful ISO 13485:2016 and MDSAP certifications earlier this year. This approval is the culmination of years of research, development, and clinical validation of this next-generation solution for general anesthesia.
Dr. Michael Schmidt, Founder and Chief Medical Officer (CMO), expressed his thoughts regarding this revolutionary technology by saying “My goal has always been to make anesthesia safer by bringing technologies like memsorb™ from the bench to the bedside. The approval of memsorb™ in Canada is a meaningful and crucial next step in addressing the ongoing challenges we face in anesthesia, such as our aging patient population, ongoing economic pressures, and our environmental footprint. We are thrilled to have been able to develop this first-of-its-kind technology in Nova Scotia, and are eager to share it with our colleagues across Canada and around the world.”
Dr. David Roach, President, would like to thank the numerous funding partners who have supported the company through the many stages of the commercialization of memsorb™. These include the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA), the National Research Council of Canada – Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC-IRAP), Sustainable Development Technologies Canada (SDTC), Next Generation Manufacturing Canada (NGen), the Dalhousie Department of Anesthesia, Pain Management and Perioperative Medicine, BioNova, and the Province of Nova Scotia, without whom this made-in-Canada solution would not have been possible.
About memsorb™
memsorb™ is a next generation CO2 removal system for general anesthesia. It uses patented medical membrane technology rather than a chemical reaction to remove CO2 from the breathing circuit of anesthesia machines. memsorb™ provides numerous advantages over current technologies including: longer life, elimination of waste, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, elimination of chemical byproducts, and increased machine reliability.
Appili Therapeutics Inc.’s common shares will begin trading on the main board of the Toronto Stock Exchange on Wednesday, after spending 15 months on the TSX Venture exchange.
The Halifax-based company, which is working on bringing a portfolio of anti-infectious drugs to market, issued a statement Monday saying the change would take place at the start of trading Wednesday. By trading on the main TSX board, the company will have exposure to a broader group of investors, which should make it easier to raise capital.
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, September 11, 2020 – Appili Therapeutics Inc. (TSXV: APLI; OTCQX: APLIF) (the “Company” or “Appili”), a biopharmaceutical company focused on anti-infective drug development, today announced that it has submitted a new protocol to its open investigational new drug application (IND) with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to conduct a Phase 3 clinical study evaluating favipiravir in the early treatment outpatient setting for adult COVID-19 infections. Favipiravir is a broad-spectrum antiviral administered in oral tablet form. Investigators will seek to determine if favipiravir is a safe and effective treatment for mild-to-moderate COVID-19 infections and, if administered early, may shorten the time to clinical recovery and keep the infection from progressing into the severe or life-threatening form of the illness.
“As the global incidence of COVID-19 cases continues to rise at alarming rates, and we learn more about the virus and patient demographics, it is clear that we will need multiple approaches to effectively quell this pandemic,” said Dr. Armand Balboni, Chief Executive Officer at Appili Therapeutics. “As part of this global effort, Appili has focused on the outpatient setting with the first orally available antiviral for the potential treatment of COVID-19 in adults with mild to moderate disease. We look forward to working with clinical teams to rigorously study the utility of favipiravir, helping to determine if it can help reduce the spread and inhibit COVID-19 disease progression.”
Appili’s study is designed to be a randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled, multi-center Phase 3 trial investigating the safety and efficacy of favipiravir in the early treatment outpatient setting for adult COVID-19 infections with mild to moderate symptoms. Appili plans to recruit 826 eligible participants, who are recently diagnosed as COVID-19 positive with mild to moderate symptoms, across multiple clinical trial sites in the U.S. Participants are expected to be outpatients who do not require hospitalization and who have had a positive COVID-19 test. Participants will self-administer the drug regimen in their homes, with clinical investigators monitoring them remotely. Appili expects to initiate trial recruitment in the Fall of 2020.
In a sub study, researchers intend to further examine 136 trial participants to evaluate favipiravir’s effect on viral shedding. This occurs when the virus is contagious, replicating inside the body, and is released into the environment. In this portion of the study, investigators are seeking to determine if treatment with favipiravir can shorten the period of viral shedding, thus diminishing the period of infectivity and decreasing the spread of the virus.
“Helping to reduce the time to clinical recovery and infection severity could reduce the need for invasive and costly measures such as hospitalizations,” said Yoav Golan, MD, Chief Medical Officer, Appili Therapeutics. “Reducing the duration in which a patient is contagious could help reduce secondary cases and infection spread. Our goal is to generate robust clinical data that can help determine if favipiravir can safely and effectively support these outcomes. Favipiravir’s preliminary clinical data, broad spectrum antiviral activity, and oral formulation make this an exciting candidate for early intervention and treatment against COVID-19.”
Favipiravir is a broad-spectrum antiviral in oral tablet form originally developed by FUJIFILM Toyama Chemical Inc. and approved in Japan as a treatment and stockpile countermeasure for pandemic influenza under the name AVIGAN. Following promising clinical studies, Russia and India recently approved favipiravir-based antiviral medications for the emergency treatment of COVID-19.[i][ii] Clinicians are conducting additional trials evaluating favipiravir as a treatment for COVID-19 in countries including Japan, China, and the United Kingdom.
About Appili Therapeutics
Appili Therapeutics Inc. was founded to advance the global fight against infectious disease by matching clearly defined patient needs with drug development programs that provide solutions to existing challenges patients, doctors, and society face in this critical disease space. Appili has built a pipeline of assets designed to address a broad range of significant unmet medical needs in the infectious disease landscape. This diverse pipeline aims to address some of the most urgent threats in global public health, including ATI-2307, a novel, broad spectrum, clinical-stage antifungal candidate in development for severe and difficult-to-treat invasive fungal infections; ATI-1701, a vaccine candidate for tularemia, a very serious biological weapons threat; ATI-1503, a drug discovery program aimed at generating a novel class of antibiotics with broad-spectrum activity against Gram-negative superbugs; and ATI-1501, which employs Appili’s proprietary, taste-masked, oral-suspension technology with metronidazole for the growing number of patients with difficulty swallowing. In addition, the Company is also testing FUJIFILM Toyama Chemical Inc.’s drug favipiravir for the prevention of COVID-19 as a potential prophylaxis treatment. Headquartered in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with offices in Toronto, Ontario, Appili is pursuing worldwide opportunities in collaboration with scientific and industry commercial partners, governments and government agencies. For more information, visit www.AppiliTherapeutics.com.
Forward looking statements
This news release contains “forward-looking statements,” which reflect the current expectations of the Company’s management for future growth, results of operations, performance and business prospects and opportunities, including statements with respect to: the scope and parameters of the proposed clinical trial in the U.S. and the likelihood that such clinical trial will be consummated on the terms and timeline provided herein or at all; and the potential use of favipiravir for the treatment of COVID-19 (including as an early treatment of COVID-19 to control disease progression and limit virus spread). Wherever possible, words such as “may,” “would,” “could, “ “should,” “will,” “anticipate,” “believe,” “plan,” “expect,” “intend,” “estimate,” “potential for” and similar expressions have been used to identify these forward-looking statements. Forward looking statements contained in this press release are provided in reliance on certain assumptions, including with respect to: securing all requisite required approvals and funding for the clinical trial in the U.S.; finalizing mutually acceptable clinical trial agreement and related agreements with the applicable clinical research organizations relating to this clinical trial; site and patient enrolment; and other expectations and assumptions concerning the proposed clinical trial in the U.S. (including with respect to potential outcomes and benefits). Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, the Company cannot give assurance that these expectations will prove to have been correct.
Forward-looking statements involve significant known and unknown risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including, without limitation, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties; known and unknown risks and liabilities relating to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic; risks relating to the inability of Appili to secure any requisite rights to manufacture and commercialize favipiravir in the U.S and other jurisdictions on favourable terms or at all; unforeseen events, developments, or factors causing any of the aforesaid expectations and assumptions not to be correct; and the other risk factors listed in the annual information form of the Company dated June 24, 2020 and the other filings made by the Company with the Canadian securities’ regulatory authorities (which may be viewed at www.sedar.com). Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize or should assumptions underlying the forward-looking statements prove incorrect, actual results, performance or achievements may vary materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements contained in this news release. These factors should be considered carefully, and prospective investors should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to revise forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise, except as required by law.
The Company is not making any express or implied claims that it has the ability to eliminate, cure or contain the Covid-19 (or SARS-2 Coronavirus) at this time.
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange, nor its regulation services provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the exchange), accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
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