Fall 2008

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Bio-Matrix

Golden Horseshoe Biosciences Network n Fall 2008 n volume 2 n issue 3

World-class at your door We have world-class science and research at academic and hospital campuses, government facilities, and private-sector businesses in Hamilton, Halton, and Niagara regions. Many of the players have global reputations. In an occasional series, Bio-Matrix will feature these world-class researchers who live and work in our area. You can read about our first featured scientist, paleogeneticist Hendrik Poinar, on page 5.

Inside – n Petro Sep cleans up [page 2]

n Brock and biosciences [page 4]

n Down evolution’s path [page 5]

Making the well a safer place Roller-coaster markets have made oil a mad commodity in the past year. Gold has benefited from market and global instability. But water, good-quality water, remains probably the most precious commodity of all. As demand for drinking water outruns supply in overdeveloped areas and as developing nations thirst for safe water sources, Hamilton-Halton area is offering some answers to the problem of the shrinking well. That’s a bittersweet irony and is the upside of years of despoliation of Hamilton Harbour and its adjacent watershed. If you poison it, you must remedy it. That remedy effort is proving costly – involving tens of millions of dollars – and drains reservoirs of both time and human effort. But the remediation is producing successes. Coote’s marsh, while not exactly a paradise regained and still fighting a problem with sediment runoff from adjacent lands, is “sort of a poster child” for restoration and for public awareness of the value of such wetlands, says Tys Theysmeyer, aquatic ecologist at the Royal Botanical Gardens. The restoration successes also have an international benefit: the collected expertise of area scientists, water specialists and engineers is helping other nations deal with their contamination problems and increase potable water supplies. For example, academics from McMaster University are among those on operational teams helping developing countries set up water purification and management centres. City of Hamilton officials will go to Kenya this month to consult on drinking water in lake areas. The National Water Research Institute, at the harbour, is helping to set up lab programs to monitor water pollution in the wider Caribbean region. “I think in some ways the example of the bay area restoration is an interesting story to share with people in developing nations,” says Zafar Adeel, head of the International Network on Water, Environment and Health, based in McMaster Innovation Park. The network is an arm of United Nations University (UNU). Now, all this expertise has led to a joint research proposal [ See following story ] by four Ontario universities, including McMaster, as well as the UNU network, and Environment Canada. The proposal would see a waterhealth centre of excellence built around the national Wastewater Technology Centre at the harbour. The private sector would also be involved. The centre would focus on technologies for providing safe water and sanitation, related health issues, such as waterborne infectious diseases, and the use of renewable energy resources and energy efficiencies in water services. The Hamilton-Halton watershed, once a glorious nature sanctuary, has been sick for many decades. The harbour has been designated one of more than 40 “areas of concern” within the Great Lakes system. Randle Reef, in the harbour off Wentworth Street, is an environmental dead zone. – Continued on page 3

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Science clean to the bottom line

Looking for a partner in Israel? The Golden Horseshoe Biosciences Network is working on potential partnerships, especially for water-technology companies, under the Canada-Israel Industrial Research and Development Foundation. The network wants to open doors to new markets and create reciprocal trading opportunities, through foundation-linked programs such as the Ontario-Israel Industrial Collaborative Research Projects. The Ottawa-based foundation promotes R & D between firms in both countries, helps to match companies with counterpart research partners, and provides funding for research costs.

Cleaner is more profitable, less wasteful of resources, and more environmentfriendly. That sales wisdom – a package of ethics and enterprise – means revenues and a growing reputation for Petro Sep Membrane Technologies. The Oakville company occupies a nice little niche in cleantech, the industry sector that improves performance and productivity, while cutting a user’s costs, energy consumption, and environmental waste. One estimate places the cleantech global market at well over $200 billion US. Petro Sep, with roots grown at the National Research Council in Ottawa more than a decade ago, is small: only 14 employees at head office. Its strategy is taking a joint venture and licensing approach – with a focus on North America, Asia and the Middle East – to gain a global footprint in membrane separation technology,. “This facility here, we would love to keep it small, maybe 20 to 40 research people,” says president and CEO Fakhir Baig, himself a former research council veteran. “We will be doing joint ventures and partnerships worldwide.” Two principal joint ventures (JV) are in Virginia and in Shandong Province, China. Ontario likes the North American JV idea so much the government invested $1 million from its Innovation Demonstration Fund. The list of clients that employ patented Petro Sep module separation technologies include such giants as generic drugmaker Apotex, Dow Chemical, and Johnson & Johnson. Petro Sep has several patented separation technologies used in chemical, petrochemical, food, and wastewatertreatment industries. Revenues – the company says only that they are in the “several millions” of dollars



– come principally from JV deals, including licensing fees, manufacturing the membrane systems, providing technical support, and installation of the turn-key technologies. Petro Sep’s nanotech membrane and polymer science is aimed at both earnings and environment. Customers save money by reusing spent volatile organic compounds, thereby not buying as much upfront. That keeps solvents from waste chemical streams, cutting the cost of disposal for such effluent. A pharmaco, for example, could use Petro Sep module systems to reduce its toxic waste output. Effluent from such a plant might include water, spent chemicals, and ethanol – bound either for incineration or landfill. Conventional distillation is limited in handling and separation of such streams. Using trademarked Azeo-Sep pervaporation membranes – to separate organic compounds from the water – the pharmaco could filter out and upgrade the ethanol and sell it to a third party. Purified waste chemicals could be resold. And the wastewater is now more easily handled by a sewer system. The story of Petro Sep began at the research council, where scientists led by Takeshi Matsuura, now director of the Industrial Membrane Institute at the University of Ottawa, pursued topline research in membrane technologies. When NRC’s membrane division disbanded, Matsuura protege Fakhir Baig moved the research to the commercial sector, founding Petro Sep in 1999. “People from all over the world have come together, including foreign-trained professionals,” says director of marketing Jawad Jafry. “They are uniting their skills, their expertise, and developing a truly Canadian-made technology.” That science is moving to a next stage, research on polymeric nanofibre membranes, again with the aid of Matsuura and others. Among many potential uses for such technology is production of potable water from sea water, increasing the supply of a commodity more valuable than oil. n

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Making the well a safer place (cont’d from cover)

But the ongoing cleanup, which likely will continue for at least a decade, has huge health implications for people living around the lake and harbour. And it has economic payback. A 2007 York University-led study estimated the rescue could result in up to $1 billion in social and economic benefits in years to come. Dealing with Randle Reef, for example – an engineering project to entomb the contaminated sediments, with both a cap and clay-liner bottom – will result in a new pier and green space for the city. “It’s an innovative approach because you now have an end use,” says Roger Santiago, of Environment Canada. He’s been been at both national and international conferences to talk about the complex studies behind the ongoing harbour remediation.

Among the restoration-campaign elements: • Upgraded wastewater treatment plants and better sewage-overflow controls have led to improved-quality effluent into lake and harbour waters • Metal-loading reductions into the harbour have lessened toxicity levels • Contaminated sediment has been removed or capped where necessary and organic contaminants bioremediated • Sediment and erosion controls on development have been improved • Sediment-disturbing carp have been restricted from Coote’s Paradise. n

A Healthy Future n Taking clean water to market McMaster University is leading a joint academic-government-industry plan to set up a research centre of excellence dealing with water and sanitation issues. The core of the economic and technology cluster would be built around the Wastewater Technology Centre (WTC), an Environment Canada laboratory at the harbour. The plan is to set up “a world-class initiative” in watermanagement issues, ranging from identification of challenges to understanding how to implement solutions. An independent panel of experts set up by the Harper government saw the proposal as one of five science and technology centres “identified unanimously for recommendation as early candidates for transfer.” Harper government MP Mike Wallace, from Burlington, sees the plan as “an opportunity where we have the infrastructure in place (with) very little investment from the federal government.” Some background here: Ottawa plans to transfer nonregulatory labs dealing with science and technology – those that do not enforce legal, safety, and other standards – from the government to universities and the private sector.

Such transfers would increase integration among industry, government, and academia. The idea is that this integration will lead to economic spinoffs, technology transfers that can go to market. As the McMaster proposal notes, “slow diffusion of science and technology from universities to industry is a major hindrance to development.” The cluster would be based on the research strengths of McMaster University, the University of Waterloo, the University of Guelph and the University of Ontario Institute of Technology – as well as those of Environment Canada. Also in the consortium is the international network on water, environment and health, part of United Nations University, based at McMaster Innovation Park. The plan envisions a not-for-profit collaboration, with its own management board as a stand-alone water and wastewater research and development facility. Research and development would look at three broad research areas: urban and rural water, water and health, and energy and water. R and D would focus on “technologies for providing safe water and sanitation, related health issues and the use of renewable energy resources and energy efficiency in provision of safe water,” according to the proposal. n

Bring your Sherlock to Mohawk How would Sherlock Holmes fare with DNA analysis and using a mass spectrometer to find metal contamination? The fictional English detective was a forerunner of painstaking logical evidence collection, the basis of the forensic science popularized in the CSI television shows. If you want to learn about the real CSI deal, come to an Innovation Cafe discussion forum featuring Dr. Jon Millman, a forensic scientist and assistant biology section head with the Centre of Forensic Sciences (CFS) in Toronto. Jon will be reviewing the latest innovations in forensics research from 6 to 8 p.m. at Mohawk College, north cafeteria, on Sept. 24, 2008, during National Biotechnology Week.



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Brock unveils ‘green’ bioscience complex

Biotech takes it to the street Biotechnology is getting down at the street at Gore Park in Hamilton on Sept. 25 during National Biotechnology Week. Buskers, dancers, urban poets and all sorts of cultural activities are planned to celebrate the Sept. 19-26 week. Designed to showcase biotech companies and their technology strengths, the week includes career fairs, company tours, and activities that promote biotech excellence in Canada. Similar activities are scheduled the next day at Toronto’s Metro Hall Square, all under the title of Dance ’N Action in the park.

Brock University is ready to add its own mindpower centre to the researchinto-revenues movement at Canadian schools. The St. Catharines university has a $90-million health and biosciences research complex on the drawing board, a centre that will provide both education and research space when completed in four years. Brock is about halfway in the drive to fund the complex, said associate vice-president of research Ian Brindle. “We are currently at capacity in terms of our ability to take on additional graduate students or new research,” said Dr. Brindle. “I think Brock University is probably the most space-challenged university in Ontario.” Addition of the five-storey complex will mean more lab and greenhouse space for both health and plant sciences as well as more teaching and office space. It should also result in more patentable research – “relatively modest until recently” – and collaboration with other top-flight universities, biosciences centres, and private-sectors partners. Plans call for a centre for innovation in biomanufacturing at the 44-year-old school. Dr. Brindle said Brock expects to take a stake in an enterprise company that will develop the intellectual property from such research. He said a U.S. associate and friend, Paul Anastas, director of the Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering at Yale University, “has voiced a great deal of enthusiasm” about partnering with Brock in ‘green’ research initiatives. The Brock complex would fit in nicely with other human and plant biosciences ventures in Niagara, such as the Niagara Regional Hospital Initiative, the Vineland



Research and Innovation Centre, and Brock’s own Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture institute. ‘Green’ bioscience and chemistry is a broad term referring to more nature-oriented research, such as biosynthesizing compounds created by plants, or working with plant genomes and hybrids, to create new drugs and chemicals. For example, Brock’s Vince DeLuca is working with a U.S. company to develop anti-cancer drugs from such compounds as vincristine and vinblastine, developed from Madagascar periwinkle. Among Brock research specialties are such diverse health areas as metabolism, infectious diseases, spinal cord injuries, and diabetes. In keeping with those areas, research labs would centre on genomics and proteomics, on advanced instrumentation and imaging, on drug discovery and synthesis. In the biosciences / plants arena, the lab space would include greenhouse-phytotron space. A phytotron is a lab in which plants can be grown and studied under individually controlled conditions. Brock hopes to develop value-added technologies in green chemistry, viticulture, drug development and other areas. For example, using genetic manipulation, scientists might modify tobacco plants to produce drugs and nutraceuticals – thus creating new economic opportunities for tobacco farmers and making tobacco “good for you”, jokes Dr. Brindle. Scientists also hope to develop anti-cancer and anti-viral compounds, and arrive at novel syntheses of analgesic compounds to treat pain. Since Brock is within the heart of the Niagara wine industry, the biosciences complex would also co-operate with other scientists in looking at the human health benefits of wine. Red wine, in particular, contains antioxidants, such as resveratrol, that have shown efficacy in treating some cancers and acting as an anti-atherogenic agent. The Brock complex may also house an industry-led incubator/accelerator to attract bioscience and health enterprises. A feasibility study will look at potential for an incubator, perhaps a counterpart to one planned for McMaster Innovation Park in Hamilton. n

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In the lab, professor Hendrik Poinar (centre) and his team examine an ancient

P R O F I L E S

I N

bone sample.

E X C E L L E N C E

Taking a walk down the path of evolution Hendrik Poinar has picked up dozens of marvelous souvenirs from his many walks down the path of evolution. Here’s a jawbone from a long-extinct Siberian woolly mammoth. How about skulls from victims of the Black Death or maybe coprolites (fossilized feces) from cavedwelling AmerIndians? And, of course, there’s amber – impossibly old chunks of forest resin that contain imprisoned insects. Poinar and his father, George, inspired author Michael Crichton and film director Steven Spielberg to bring dinosaurs back to life in the book and movie, Jurassic Park. The idea was that insects that sucked dino blood millions of years ago might contain dinosaur DNA. Hendrik Poinar is an expert at teasing out viable DNA where others could not find it. He believes DNA that is 1 million years old might be recoverable – under the right conditions. He and others think it might even be possible – setting aside the question of ethics – to clone an extinct animal, such as the Pleistocene-era mammoth. “The only thing that limits us is the preservation state ... and this is really linked to the local environment in which it was preserved,” the renowned paleogeneticist says in his modest McMaster University office. Hot and dry is good. So is cold and dry, as in permafrostridden regions. In those environments, DNA tends to remain more stable, sometimes remaining intact for hundreds of thousands of years. The DNA from the Siberian mammoth is estimated to be about 30,000 years old. But why study ancient bones and dessicated feces? What can organisms or animals with centuries of lineage possibly tell us? Turns out quite a bit. The technology window into the deep past – McMaster’s Ancient DNA Centre uses $1 million in ultra-high throughput DNA sequencing equipment – allows scientists to see “evolution in action.”

They can compare the genomic codes of long-gone animals with those of today’s likely successors. Such comparisons can shine a spotlight on the timelines of extinction and maybe why some animals disappeared. (Poinar was involved from the start in an international effort to decode the genome of the Siberian mammoth but difficulty in scoring research monies and other factors later meant that American collaborators carried on with the work.) By studying the DNA of flora and fauna, scientists can draw out past climatic patterns and the migration patterns of birds, animals and humans. By peering into poop, molecular evolutionary specialists can determine the genetic “relatedness” of Archaic humans and Neanderthals. They can pinpoint the health and diets of Paleoamerindians. They can also plot the vectors of disease pathogens over time. This involves molecular anthropologists working with other scientists in learning how disease organisms evolved and survived. The detective work can help basic science to develop vaccines and other treatments. Poinar is particularly interested in the many strains of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS, its transmissibility pathways, and why some areas of the world are less devastated than others. For example, some European populations have been able to resist HIV infection. They may well be descendants of people who survived the Great Plague and bear the mutated CCR5 gene, delta 32. Many scientists believe the delta 32 resistance was a key to surviving the Plague, whether it was caused by a bacterium or a a viral hemorrhagic fever. And they believe the same delta 32 prevents HIV-1 from binding to the immune system’s white blood cells.

Niagara as bioproducts hotbed Niagara is ready to sell itself as a bioproducts hotbed, an area keen to attract bioindustry companies and investment. The region has hired a consultant to assess existing development strengths and opportunities and to assess that base against generic factors that define successful bioproducts clusters. Consultant Amy Lemay, of Vista Science and Technology, said the study will look at bioproducts, functional foods and nutraceuticals, biopharmaceuticals, enviro-products, and other industry elements. The bioproducts-cluster study, expected to be ready by December, is eligible for funding under the Canadian Investment Strategies Program.



An expert in the house Looking for that expert in your corner to help grow the business? We’ll have an extra edge

Events listing

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to assist your innovative company when the Golden

Innovation Café Series

Innovation Night: Share your Passion

Silent witness: Identity through DNA detection

Date: Wednesday, October 1, 2008 Time: 7:00 p.m. - 9:30 p.m. Location: Slainte Irish Pub City: Hamilton For more information: visit www.innovationnight.ca

Date: Wednesday, September 24, 2008 Time: 6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.  Location: Mohawk College, North Cafeteria City: Hamilton, Fennell Campus For more information: visit www.ghbn.org Future dates: October 29, November 26, 2008 National Biotech Week

Dance ‘N Action in the Park Date: September 25-26, 2008  Location/city: Gore Park, Hamilton Location/city: Metro Square, Toronto For more information: visit www.ghbn.org

Horseshoe Biosciences Network begins our entrepreneur-in-residence

Research to Receptor Series

Food and Health Innovation in the Local Market Date: October 8, 15, 21, 23, 2008 City: London, Guelph, Hamilton, Kingston For more information: visit www.ghbn.org

eHealth Technology Showcase Date: Tuesday, November 18, 2008 Location: Burlington Art Centre City: 1333 Lakeshore Rd., Burlington For more information: visit www.ghbn.org or, www.bitnet.ca

program. Our mentor will be available to help with business plans, help develop strategies and line up capital, as well as work opportunities. Part of the Business Mentorship and Entrepreneurship Program, this free

In the news

on pitches and partnership

service is designed to meet the needs

n AllerGen leads $12-million study

n The ‘other’ oil in the news

McMaster University scientists are among top researchers in a $12-million study to investigate the genetic and environmental factors behind asthma and allergies in children.

While oil at the pumps has gained world headlines, it is vegetable and seed oils that have made the news at Bunge Canada’s new $60-million refinery. The nation’s largest oilseed processor and largest manufacturer of edible oil products opened its Hamilton plant earlier this summer.

Co-funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and AllerGen NCE Inc., the CHILD study will follow 5,000 Canadian children from pregnancy through early childhood. It will look at indoor and outdoor environmental exposure factors, infections, nutrition and genetics in the development of asthma and allergies. Study researchers hope to help innovate new therapies and medications as well as prevention and management strategies to control the chronic illnesses. n

and develop the skills of start-up and early-stage science

Bunge Canada, part of a huge multinational operation with more than 20,000 employees, turns out salad oils, margarines, shortenings and oils, and meal for animal food. Sited at the former CanAmera complex on Burlington Street East, the Hamilton operation takes in canola seeds and soybeans, among other products, and refines and blends the oils. n

and technology companies. Contact

Golden Horseshoe Biosciences Network McMaster University, Michael G. DeGroote Centre for Learning & Discovery 5105-1200 Main Street West, Hamilton, Ontario, CANADA L8N 3Z5

n Ana Paredes Office Administrator/Incubator Assistant – Tel: 905-525-9140 Ext. 26602 Fax: 905-528-3999 n Darlene Homonko Executive Director – Tel: 905-525-9140 Ext. 26609 Web: www.ghbn.org 

GHBN News is a quarterly newsletter published by GHBN. Director and editor: Darlene Homonko Writer: Mike Pettapiece

Graphic Design: Nadia DiTraglia