Legal Research

This Week?s Biotech Highlights

By Jeremy Grushcow

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.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on August 10, 2010 (boomark / email).