Inovia Capital is a venture capital firm that works with founders to create influential and permanent businesses. The team leverages an operator mindset to provide founders with support, mentorship, and access to a worldwide network. Inovia manages over US$2.2B with operations in Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, San Francisco, and London.

Inovia Capital

CTI Life Sciences, a Canadian venture firm makes venture capital investments in high quality emerging life sciences companies at the pre-clinical and clinical development stage in Canada and in the U.S. CTI Life Sciences currently manage $345 million of assets.

CTI Life Sciences Fund

Cantos is a pre-seed venture capital firm with $90M under management that invests in founders audacious enough to believe they can change the world.

Cantos

We help startups get from prototype to ramen profitable

Ramen Ventures

Radical Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm investing in entrepreneurs applying deep technology to transform massive industries. With a primary focus on artificial intelligence, Radical Ventures partners with entrepreneurs with global ambition to build enduring companies. The firm is based in Toronto, Canada, with offices in London (UK), and Palo Alto (US)

Radical Ventures

Hike Ventures is a venture capital firm that invests in artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Hike Ventures

MaRS Innovation (MI) is a commercialization engine that integrates, centralizes and accelerates time to market of the discovery and intellectual property assets from its 15 world-class research institutions.   MI’s discovery and innovation pipeline is derived from $1 billion in annual R&D funding. Created as a not-for-profit organization through the Government of Canada’s Center of Excellence for Commercialization and Research program (CECR), MI has raised $50 million from federal and provincial governments, member institutions and industry partners. MI’s vision is to transform the Toronto-based research enterprise into one of world’s most successful commercialization clusters.  Through detailed, market facing due diligence, MI identifies opportunities from Canada’s largest academic cluster for further development and commercialization through project management, intellectual property management, investment and technology development. By crossing the innovation gap, MI transforms these opportunities into successful high-value licensing transactions and financeable start-up companies.

Toronto Innovation Acceleration Partners

Garage Capital is a venture capital firm focused on Canadian companies.

Garage Capital

They bring decades of experience with a hands-on approach to working closely with start-ups. Their investment and support team leverages deep technical, entrepreneurial and venture experience to help their companies succeed. Their network includes some of the brightest minds in health, machine learning, enterprise technology, mobility, robotics, hard sciences and biology.

AV8 Ventures

Viva BioInnovator (VBI) is the specialized investment and incubation arm of Viva Biotech Holdings. We focus on the initial creation and development of biotech startups across all indications and drug types. During the early stages of drug discovery, we can nurture and accelerate a startup's growth from idea to clinical program.  VBI's unique investment and incubation model started out of necessity in 2014. Our roots are in drug discovery services, where we operate world-leading and proprietary drug discovery platforms. While serving big pharma customers from around the globe, we came to realize the huge demand from many entrepreneurs who have great ideas but cannot receive funding to advance their plan due to lack of data. We saw the value in many of these innovative ideas and provided our CRO drug discovery services, operational support, and monetary backing to help these creative scientists embark on the ''0 to 1''​ transformation. This spark launched our ''equity for service (EFS)''​ investment and incubation model.  VBI is based in Shanghai, with an office in Boston and personnel in California. As of early 2019, VBI has invested in over 30 companies out of the hundreds of proposals submitted for review and we plan to invest at a rapid pace in the years to come. The majority of our current portfolio companies are US based, but we are open to proposals globally and are excited to see new ideas that fit our investment strategy.  If you would like to learn more about us, please visit: www.vivabioinnovator.com  Or send an email to innovation@vivabiotech.com  If you would like to learn more about our parent company, Viva Biotech, please visit: www.vivabiotech.com

Viva BioInnovator

University of Toronto Early-Stage Technology Program is an accelerator which is part of University of Toronto's growing ecosystem of incubators and commercialization support services. In partnership with MaRS Innovation and with the financial support of the Connaught Fund, it provides companies with start-up funding, mentoring, business strategy and office space at the Banting Building at the University of Toronto St. George Campus. The firm prefers to invest in the mobile, web and big data sectors.

UTEST

At Outsized Ventures we partner with founders pushing the boundaries of science and technology to solve the world’s greatest challenges. Some call it deep tech, others frontier tech, tough tech, hard tech or high tech - for us, it is simply the future.

Outsized Ventures

We're Acequia Capital, a team and partnership with roots in Albuquerque. We're knowledge workers and systems thinkers who love to keep good company in most fields.

Acequia Capital (AceCap)

Phenomic AI

Phenomic AI is a developer of a drug discovery platform designed to discovery and optimize therapeutics directly against phenotypic assays.The company's platform uses artificial intelligence to analyze phenotypes in complex disease models including high-content co-culture and 3D assays, enabling pharmaceutical companies to discover drugs in an easier way.

Phenomic AI’s drug discovery platform uses machine learning tools for processing imaging and RNA sequencing data to study the complex interactions in multi-cell systems. Its technology is targeted at tumor stroma (includes connective tissue, blood vessels, and inflammatory cells) which is considered a major barrier in treating solid tumors. The company develops drug targets for cancer and fibrosis which it aims to advance internally or via partnerships with other pharma companies.

Artificial intelligence is identifying and testing new therapies faster than ever.

AI Drug Discovery

Boehringer links up with Phenomic AI on stroma-rich cancer drugs

Astellas Pharma

Phenomic AI partners with Astellas Pharma through Xyphos Biosciences to enhance cell therapy for solid tumors with antibodies targeting tumor stroma.

Novel therapies to reboot cells and organs

Cell & Gene Therapy

Includes therapies that use cells (other than CAR-T and stem cells) such as Adipose-Derived Regenerative Cells (ADRCs), cardiosphere-derived cells, and gamma delta T cells (GDT cells)

Boehringer Ingelheim

To focus on leveraging Phenomic's scTx single-cell transcriptomics platform to improve the treatment of stroma-rich cancers, such as colorectal and pancreatic cancers.

Biotechnology companies that have integrated AI as a core component of their in-house drug development process. They typically have a few in-house drug development programs, and also collaborate with pharma companies to develop certain drugs.

<div>
 
 HiberCell is a biotechnology company that develops novel therapies focused on oncology. It entered the AI drug discovery space when it acquired AI genomics analysis company Genuity Science (and its subsidiaries in Iceland and Ireland) in August 2021.&nbsp;
 
 
 Genuity Science&rsquo;s solutions include end-to-end therapeutic discovery and development services such as building custom disease datasets, discovering and prioritizing targets, identifying biomarkers, and optimizing clinical trials. Genuity Science leverages its AI-powered platform to manage, process, and analyze genomic data. HiberCell intends to use Genuity Science&rsquo;s AI/ML capabilities to advance its oncology pipeline of five programs, of which one has reached the Phase 2 clinical trial stage.
 
 
 As of March 2024, the company&rsquo;s pipeline included three drug candidates, namely: 1) HC-7366, targeting the general control nonderepressible 2 (GCN2) kinase as part of the integrated stress response (ISR) signaling pathway; 2) HC-5404, aimed at inhibiting the PKR-like endoplasmic reticulum kinase (PERK) involved in the unfolded protein response (UPR) signaling pathway; and 3) odetiglucan, a therapy targeting tumor-immune interactions within the tumor microenvironment​.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 In December 2023, HiberCell and Merck &amp; Co partnered to conduct a Phase Ib trial to evaluate the combination therapy of belzutifan and HC-7366 for treating clear cell renal cell carcinoma. Further, in January 2021, the company partnered with Biodesix to develop an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay as a companion diagnostic test.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In 
 <a href="https://hibercell.com/news/hibercell-closes-67-4-million-series-b-financing-and-secures-30-million-debt-facility-from-hercules-capital/">
 May 2021
 </a>
 , HiberCell completed a Series B financing round, raising USD 67.4 million, and secured an additional USD 30 million in debt financing from Hercules Capital. The funds were expected to be used for clinical advancement of its novel therapeutic candidates. 
 
</div>

HiberCell

<div>
 
 Arbor Biotechnologies specializes in gene editing to develop novel therapeutics for a variety of indications, starting with liver-related diseases. It operates an AI-powered biodiscovery platform to discover novel CRISPR enzymes, which are sequences of repeating genetic code. To do this, its platform deploys computational search techniques, genome sequencing, gene synthesis, and high-throughput screening. This can eventually be turned into drugs or even applied to agriculture and other industrial uses. In 2018, the company announced the discovery of Cas13d, a new type of gene editing enzyme that helps to alter RNA to treat genetic diseases.&nbsp;
 
 
 As of February 2024, the company had five internal drug discovery programs, of which one was in the IND-enabling stage. It also has multiple collaborative programs under development focused on oncology and various other therapeutic areas.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The company has a long-standing partnership with Vertex Pharmaceuticals since
 <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190103005194/en/Vertex-and-Arbor-Biotechnologies-Establish-Collaboration-to-Discover-Novel-Proteins-to-Advance-Discovery-of-Gene-Editing-Therapies">
 January 2019
 </a>
 , which focused on developing gene-editing treatments for cystic fibrosis and four other diseases. The alliance was further extended in 
 <a href="https://www.biospace.com/article/vertex-and-arbor-strike-a-1-2-billion-deal-for-gene-editing-programs/">
 August 2021
 </a>
 and 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15741">
 January 2023
 </a>
 .&nbsp;
 
 
 Other partnerships included a collaboration with 
 <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/arbor-biotechnologies-announces-collaboration-with-ginkgo-bioworks-to-advance-the-discovery-and-development-of-precision-gene-editors-302011991.html">
 Ginkgo Bioworks
 </a>
 (December 2023) to leverage Ginkgo's R&amp;D services to further optimize Arbor's novel precision editors, a non-exclusive licensing agreement with 
 <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2022/02/08/2380680/0/en/EdiGene-and-Arbor-Biotechnologies-Announce-Worldwide-Non-exclusive-License-Agreement-to-Advance-Ex-Vivo-Engineered-Cell-Therapy-Programs.html">
 EdiGene
 </a>
 (February 2022) to leverage Arbor&rsquo;s platform for ex vivo oncology therapies, a strategic research and non-exclusive licensing agreement with 
 <a href="https://investors.tcr2.com/news-releases/news-release-details/tcr2-therapeutics-and-arbor-biotechnologies-establish">
 TCR2 Therapeutics
 </a>
 (January 2022) to develop allogeneic TRuC T-cell therapies using Arbor&rsquo;s CRISPR technology, and a license agreement with 
 <a href="https://www.lonza.com/news/2020-12-23-14-00">
 Lonza
 </a>
 (December 2020) to use Arbor&rsquo;s gene-editing technology for Lonza&rsquo;s bioproduction products and services.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In its latest Series B funding round in November 2021, which was led by Ally Bridge Group, TCG Crossover, and Temasek, Arbor Biotechnologies raised USD 215 million. The proceeds of the round were earmarked to fuel the company&rsquo;s clinical development pipeline.
 
</div>

Arbor Biotechnologies

Based in the UK, Arctoris provides an automated drug discovery platform, offering fully validated research and development (R&amp;D) processes under an Experiments-as-a-Service model. The company works with biotechnology companies, AI drug discovery companies, pharma and academic institutions enabling these institutions to run experiments in Arctoris’s platform and provides on-demand access to a broad scale of datasets for AI drug discovery companies to train their algorithms.

Arctoris

<div>
 
 Frontier Medicines leverages AI/ML technologies to develop treatments for cancer-causing proteins that are dismissed by traditional pharma companies as undruggable.&nbsp;
 
 
 The company has a proprietary chemoproteomic platform which entails an approach based on the interaction of small-molecule compounds and proteins to screen a large number of targets and combine them with a protein database that contains more than 150,000 novel binding pockets (hotspots). This enables it to access 90% of the human proteome that were not previously targeted due to lack of hotspots. The platform&rsquo;s AI/ML engine incorporates a library of diverse compounds, a hotspot map that serves as the starting point for understanding the druggability of a potential therapeutic target, and lead design and generation.&nbsp;
 
 
 The company focuses on oncology and immunology target and, as of February 2024, it had five wholly-owned therapeutic programs and three AbbVie-partnered programs in its pipeline. All programs were in their discovery stage, except the company&rsquo;s lead candidate, FMC-376 (activated and inactivated forms), focused on treating different cancer types, including non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), colorectal carcinoma (CRC), and pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), which is in the IND-enabling stage.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The company entered a USD 100 million partnership with 
 <a href="https://news.abbvie.com/2020-12-02-AbbVie-and-Frontier-Medicines-Establish-Global-Partnership-to-Discover-and-Develop-Novel-Therapies-and-E3-Degraders-Against-Difficult-to-Drug-Targets">
 AbbVie
 </a>
 In December 2020 to develop small-molecule therapeutics against hard-to-drug protein targets including around 600 E3 ligases (the enzymes that drive the ubiquitination and degradation of proteins.&nbsp;
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In July 2021, the company raised USD 88.5 million in a 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4347">
 Series B
 </a>
 funding round co-led by Woodline Partners LP and RA Capital Management, with equal participation from Deerfield Management Company. The proceeds were earmarked for advancing the company&rsquo;s drug pipeline and expanding operations in Boston, where its new facility was to complement the company&rsquo;s headquarters in California. 
 
</div>

Frontier Medicines

<div>
 
 Verge Genomics is a biotechnology company engaged in developing therapeutics for neurological diseases using human genomics and AI to accelerate drug discovery. The main target areas are Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), Parkinson&rsquo;s Disease (PD), and Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD).&nbsp;
 
 
 It has built a proprietary all-human platform (unlike standard clinical trials that rely on animal data), called CONVERGE, that uses data sets from brain tissue samples of deceased patients with ALS and PD. While most drugs target only one gene at a time, the company claims its technology can identify hundreds of genes that cause disease and develop drugs that target all the genes at the same time. The company uses AI technology to optimize the drug discovery process as a whole.
 
 
 As of March 2024, Verge had one drug candidate in the clinical stage (Phase I) and 10 drug candidates in the discovery stage.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The company has partnerships with various tissue banks (such as Harvard University and University of Miami Miller School of Medicine) and several educational institutes and foundations (such as Target ALS, Answer ALS) that enabled its drug discovery platform.&nbsp;
 
 
 In addition, the company&rsquo;s customers include several pharmaceutical companies, such as 1) 
 <a href="https://www.vergegenomics.com/news-blog/verge-genomics-announces-research-collaboration-with-the-sheffield-institute-for-translational-neuroscience">
 Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN)
 </a>
 to accelerate the validation of novel drug targets and screening of drug compounds for Parkinson's disease (February 2021), 2) 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4146">
 Eli Lilly
 </a>
 to research and develop novel therapies to treat ALS (July 2021), 3) 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21707">
 Alexion
 </a>
 to identify novel drug targets for rare neurodegenerative and neuromuscular diseases (September 2023), and 4) 
 <a href="https://www.vergegenomics.com/news-blog/verge-genomics-and-the-pritzker-neuropsychiatric-disorders-research-consortium-form-cutting-edge-schizophrenia-research-collaboration">
 Pritzker Neuropsychiatric Disorders Research Consortium
 </a>
 to analyze data from schizophrenic patient&rsquo;s brain tissue with Verge&rsquo;s technology (October 2023).
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In December 2021, Verge raised USD 98 million in an oversubscribed 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/7426">
 Series A
 </a>
 funding round led by BlackRock. The funds were used to scale up its pre-clinical and clinical candidate programs in the pipeline and enhance its lead therapeutics through clinical testing. 
 
</div>

Verge Genomics

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies providing their ML platform to other pharma companies for drug discovery services such as target selection, validation and lead optimization.

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies providing their ML platform to other pharma companies to design and run preclinical experiments.

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies providing their ML platform to other pharma companies to identify biomarkers (measurable biological signs used to determine disease progression) and predict drug response. 

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies aggregating and analyzing biomedical data with the help of AI to generate insights across the drug development pipeline.

Companies leverage GenAI to support drug discovery through accelerated drug designing

Companies offer AI/ML-based SaaS products to accelerate the discovery and development of novel therapeutics

Offers AI/ML-based solutions to accelerate drug discovery and development

INCUMBENTS_PRESENT

PROMINENT_CATEGORY

<div>
 Canada-based AI-drug discovery company Phenomic AI has partnered with pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim to discover components in stroma-rich cancers.
 Under the agreement, Phenomic will receive $9 million upfront and potential earnings of over $500 million in milestones and royalties.
 The collaboration will focus on using Phenomic's scTx single-cell transcriptomics platform to improve treatment for stroma-rich cancers, such as colorectal and pancreatic cancers. Boehringer Ingelheim will license Phenomic's targets and handle non-clinical, clinical development, and commercialization of associated cancer therapies.
</div>

Phenomic AI

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