Innovative Projects Realized

Medventions: Orthopedic Surgery

Medventions is a full-time 14 week paid program that allows students and new graduates to take part in physician-led, hospital-based fellowship training. Fellows come from different areas of study and will get hands on experience in a clinical setting with innovators and experienced mentors. It equips fellows to identify priority healthcare needs and develop their own prototypes to help solve pressing issues in our healthcare system. At the end of the program, the interns will present their final innovation at the Innovation Showcase, which will celebrate the interns and the work they have done over the past four months. Here, they will present their prototype and business model, and field any questions from an audience comprised of those engrained in the health innovation ecosystem in Nova Scotia.

This cohort will be comprised of 4 fellows and our academic supervisor for this cohort is Clifton Johnston from Dalhousie University. The fellows will be shadowing their clinical lead Dr. Andrew Glennie who specializes in orthopedic surgery and are expected to start in early January.

Long-term storage of sugar beet mash while maintaining the integrity of the sucrose

Sugar beets are a vital crop for Southern Alberta farmers and are the source for sugar products from the refinery in Taber, Alberta. This is only one sugar beet processing plant in Alberta, and though it accounts for 10 per cent of the total Canadian sugar production (100,000 tons of sugar per year), it has a limited amount of daily processing capacity (Alberta Agriculture and Forestry, 2017). This presents a challenge because as a seasonal crop, beets are harvested during late fall, stored in open ground piles where they freeze during the winter months and can begin to spoil upon thawing once the weather warms. Finding alternative long-term storage options and end uses for sugar beet will benefit growers and allow for the potential for production expansion in the region.

L2M – Strategic Development of Protease-Resistant ADAMTS13 as a Therapeutic for Cardiovascular Disorders and Sepsis

This project aims to develop a novel therapeutic drug aimed at revolutionizing the treatment of severe cardiovascular diseases (CVD) and sepsis. Our project focuses on the modification of the ADAMTS13 protein, an enzyme that plays a crucial role in the blood clotting process. In patients with severe CVD or sepsis, ADAMTS13 is rapidly degraded, leading to an increased risk of life-threatening complications. Our solution is an injectable form of modified ADAMTS13, engineered to be resistant to degradation even in the most severe cases.
This project aligns with the Mitacs Business Strategy Internship (BSI) program’s objectives by bridging the gap between advanced scientific research and practical market application. We aim to validate and refine this therapeutic solution through extensive market research, prototype testing, and feedback integration from medical professionals. A key goal is to establish a clear pathway from laboratory research to real-world healthcare settings, addressing an unmet need in the treatment of severe CVD and sepsis.
Additionally, the project entails engagement with stakeholders and potential partners, leveraging networking opportunities provided by the Mitacs BSI program to foster collaborations essential for commercialization. Our third objective focuses on developing a scalable commercial strategy, including navigating regulatory pathways and understanding market dynamics.
This innovative project promises significant health benefits by providing a new, effective treatment for severe CVD and sepsis patients.

What do you lose when you lose a hotel?: Assessing the impacts of hotels in rural Manitoba

This project will demonstrate how the ability to host overnight guests in rural hotels, as well as host events within these communities, truly impacts local economic revenue. By conducting key informant interviews with hotel staff and community/ event organizations, alongside written surveys with hotel guests, this project will highlight the importance of including accommodations with event facilities in rural communities. The Intern will be engaging in both quantitative and qualitative data collection, building their research skills. As well, these findings may be useful for the Manitoba Hotel Association, as they will be able to demonstrate the ways in which registered members allow for economic development across the province.

Development of Colour-Changing Indicator Label

Lunanos Inc. and Ryerson University’s School of Graphic Communications Management are seeking to collaborate on a six-month project to develop an innovative colour-changing indicator label that will be used in healthcare facilities to track the cleaning of various equipment and surfaces to reduce the frequency of healthcare-associated infections (HAI). In Canada, 1 in 10 patients admitted to a hospital picks up an infection and it is estimated that 30-50% of these cases are preventable through better infection prevention and control. In this project, Lunanos will be able to access Ryerson University’s School of Graphic Communications Management’s unique combination of expertise, experience, and equipment in modern printing, manufacturing, and post-processing methods in order to scale-up their production to produce labels with consistent characteristics needed for a planned field testing project.

Synthesis and characterization of antimony and bismuth substituted Polyoxometalates

Polyoxometalates (POMs) represent a class of inorganic compounds, which are cluster compounds that can be formally described as oxo-metal complexes. Prominent transition metals are molybdenum and tungsten from group 6 and vanadium, niobium and tantalum from group 5 of the periodic table. A popular research area in POM chemistry is the selective substitution of one or more framework metals (also called addenda metals) with various foreign metals. This changes the electronic properties of a POM in particular, such as the oxidation and reduction behavior. The knowledge that can be gained from this research represents a basis for oxidative, homogeneous catalysis. In this project, the focus is on the incorporation of the elements bismuth and antimony into the POM structure. In contrast to the existing research, this project involves main group elements. The incorporation of main group elements into the addeda position of POMs is still a newly area of research.

Human-centered Shared Control of an Intelligent Powered Wheelchair

Exponential growth in the number of older adults (over 65 years) worldwide is expected to occur over the next half century. While physical mobility plays a crucial role in the quality of life and in the ability of independent living, it decreases with natural aging. This research project aims at developing a solution to reduced mobility by providing an assistance system to wheelchair navigation. A novel shared control approach will be designed, which allows a human and an assistance system to collaboratively steer a wheelchair. The involved institutions are the Universite de Sherbrooke and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Both institutions possess expertise in human-centered control, with the former having detailed knowledge in the practical development of intelligent powered wheelchairs and the latter owning expertise in shared control and identification of human two-player and stochastic behaviour. Both institutions are expected to benefit through the thematically closely-linked collaboration which will be a foundation for future research collaborations in the field of mobility aids for older adults, cobots or socially assistive robots.

Plasmonic nanoparticles for sensing strains

In the context of an aging population, it is becoming more and more important to develop novel innovative kinds of sensors, able to detect early health changes that could potentially affect people’s health. Within this Globalink Research project, we intent to develop plasmonic based sensors, small, cheap and easy to deploy, which will be used for two types of microsensing, namely strain/stress microsensing for biomedical application. This project will be made in collaboration with experts in biomedical engineering who develop artificial biocompatible ligaments in Paris.

Artificial photosynthesis: red-light absorbing metal complexes for hydrogen evolution

Molecular artificial photosynthesis is a promising solution to achieve independence of finite fossil fuels and provide an environmental and climate-benign energy supply. In this context, molecular hydrogen is a powerful fuel and consequently the development of molecular photocatalytic systems for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), half-reaction of the water-splitting process, is one of the great challenges for the scientific community. The HER’s photocatalytic activities are generally studied on a three-component system, consisting of a photosensitizer, a sacrificial electron-donor and a proton-reduction catalyst; in this regard, the project is focused on the photosensitizer. Recently, the Hanan group developed a Ru-photosensitizer that exhibits greater efficiency compared to what has been reported in literature. To enhance the photocatalytic performance of the HER system, the project is dedicated on the steric and electronic optimization of the Ru-photosensitizer. The goal is to develop an improved photosensitizer that can then be linked to the Co-catalyst subunit, resulting in a more efficient supramolecular system.

Agnostic benchmarking through Quantum Amplitude Estimation

Quantum technology is advancing rapidly, particularly Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum (NISQ) systems. With their increasing accessibility and industry interest, there’s a need to measure their performance, especially in the presence of non-Markovian noise. Currently, error correction methods are in development, and information on Quantum Processing Unit (QPU) performance is scarce. Our research addresses this by exploring “agnostic benchmarking.” We assess various quantum hardware platforms using a specialized technique. We focus on the Quantum Amplitude Estimation (QAE) algorithm, relevant in finance. By testing it on different quantum hardware, we track indicators like Kullback-Leibler divergence and Grover iteration fidelity as complexity grows, facilitating fair comparisons. We also study how different hardware affects QAE performance, providing insights into circuit design’s influence. Our goal is to develop benchmarking techniques for informed decisions on quantum hardware and algorithm deployment.

Differential Splicing and Processing of mRNA Resulting From Pharmacological Perturbation of CLK Activity

The Takeda Pharmaceutical Company has recently developed a new drug to reduce the level of RNA processing that takes place within a cell. This project will look at the molecular effects of this drug at different doses in order to obtain an understanding of how cellular biology changes when RNA processing is suppressed with increasing intensity. Analysis undertaken during this internship will also provide BCCA | BCCRC and Takeda with detailed information regarding the activity and effectiveness of their drug. The resulting knowledge obtained will be useful in the development of future therapies that target RNA processing

Examining the current state of live-in intensive treatment programs in Ontario for pregnant and parenting transitional aged youth and their children

The Ontario Association of Young Parent Agencies (OAYPA), via Abonia Centre, requested a study to examine 1) available treatment programs available to pregnant and parenting transition aged youth (TAY) and their children, in Ontario; 2) demographics of TAY who access these programs; 3) literature on promising practices for treatment programs for TAY. This study will highlight strengths, challenges, opportunities, and recommendations for LIT and day programs across Ontario to best serve TAY and their children. The study includes: 1) a rapid review of literature; 2) a study involving surveys and interviews with TAY program staff at treatment programs; and 3) a detailed environmental scan of all LIT and day programs for TAY and their children, across Ontario.