Maclean's July 2023

I bought my modest semi-detached house in a central Toronto neighbourhood in 2008. My husband and I had moved back to Canada with our toddler son after a year living in Brooklyn, New York, and we spent most of 2007 looking for a property to buy. Prices were skyrocketing—at least by the standards of the day—and we had trouble finding anything we could afford. Over many months we lost out on several bidding wars and fell in love with houses far outside our budget. Then the market crashed. It was the beginning of the Great Recession, and homeowners panicked. We found a listing for a three-bedroom in a leafy neighbourhood near a good public school. The couple who had lived in it for 29 years believed Canada was heading toward…

IF YOU BELIEVE the early hype, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan rolled off her parents’ couch in Mississauga, Ontario, and into a star-making lead role in Netflix’s hit high school rom-dram Never Have I Ever. It was 2019, and a friend sent the tweet announcing Mindy Kaling’s casting call. Ramakrishnan, then 17 and tired from a long day at real-life Meadowvale Secondary School, went, so it goes: Eh, why not? In truth, Ramakrishnan, now 21, has always had big plans. Okay, maybe “preferred manifestations.” She hadn’t banked on besting 15,000 other young girls to play the now-iconic teenage try-hard Devi Vishwakumar. Acting wasn’t her first dream; she wanted to be an animator. Later, she was cast as Priya Mangal, an (animated) South Asian tween, in Pixar’s Turning Red. Things have a funny way…

READ MORE ONLINE AT HEALTHINSIGHT.CA Canada currently ranks among the top hubs in the world for health and biosciences. Our world-class universities and research hospitals have led to breakthrough discoveries and trained a highly educated workforce. Yet Canada is also experiencing a talent gap in the life sciences sector, particularly at the executive and managerial levels, and equity-deserving groups are under-represented. To transform Canada’s life sciences sector into a truly innovative and globally competitive hub, we must take steps to build a more inclusive and diverse life sciences sector. A new report, “Status of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility (IDEA) in Canada’s Life Sciences Sector,” conducted by Shift Health and Life Sciences Ontario (LSO) and supported by adMare BioInnovations and Pfizer, identifies opportunities for Canadian life sciences organizations to embed…

Canada’s scientific community has a rich legacy of success. Those of us in the regenerative medicine field are especially proud of Drs. James Till and Ernest McCulloch, whose discovery of the stem cell in the 1960s was the foundation for the flourishing cell and gene therapy industry that exists today. Cell and gene therapies have the promise to cure — not just treat — cancers, heart disease, diabetes, and more. Already in Canada, products have been approved in these disease areas: mantle cell lymphoma (2021); multiple myeloma (2021); spinal muscular atrophy (2020); inherited vision loss (2020); blood cancers (2019, 2018); and graft-versus-host disease (2012). This is exciting news for Canadian patients. With more than 2,000 clinical trials, globally, testing the safety and efficacy of these treatments, there’s huge demand on…

The cell and gene therapy (CGT) sector in Ontario is rapidly gaining momentum with the transformative potential of CGT for healthcare and medicine and McMaster Innovation Park (MIP), the pulse of Hamilton’s life sciences ecosystem, is accelerating the growth of life sciences and biomanufacturing ventures through purpose-built space and venture support. “Every innovator, researcher, entrepreneur, and venture has slightly different requirements depending on their background and where they are in their journey,” says Ty J. Shattuck, Chief Executive Officer of MIP. “There’s no one-size-fits-all solution. We’re that one door that they can knock on to get whatever they need for whatever stage of growth they’re in.” The research park’s focus on building a CGT cluster is a testament to its commitment to partnerships and collaborations. By leveraging the strong relationships…

Time is the enemy of people living with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease. ALS is a relentlessly progressive neurodegenerative disease caused by motor neuron death in the brain and spinal cord. A diagnosis quickly leads to deteriorating muscle function as the disease takes away a person’s ability to walk, speak, eat, and breathe. ALS is fatal and the most common cause of neurological death in Canada. And despite this disease’s rapid progression (the average life expectancy from symptom onset is two to five years), innovation in ALS has historically been slow and riddled with failures. That’s kept Amylyx Pharmaceuticals co-founders and co-CEOs, Josh Cohen and Justin Klee, up at night since the company’s early days a little over 10 years ago, when the two…