This Week’s Biotech Highlights

Actually, it’s this fortnight’s biotech highlights as we catch up from the long weekend. Like everything else in this feels like 35° summer, the biotech market freeze is melting a bit. Ontario in particular has been heating up lately, thanks to two government funding initiatives:

The Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario), which gave BDC $50 million for Ontario tech investments last year, has allocated $45 million this year to the NRC’s Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP). The NRC-IRAP program has been active in funding life science companies, so this money seems likely to provide a boost to the sector.

The Ontario Emerging Technologies Fund — which has met with some criticism for the onerous disclosure required to qualify as an investor and for restrictions on investees’ deployment of invested funds – showed this week that it can nevertheless fund life science companies and qualify biotech investors.

Stay tuned to The Cross-Border Biotech Blog and @crossborderbio on Twitter to see how and when these funding announcements pay off for the industry and for Canadians.