29 June 2014

The Ontario-Québec Life Sciences Corridor, to which Sherbrooke Innopole is associated, distinguished itself as one of the five most significant life sciences clusters in North America.

Created in 2011 by Biopolis Québec and Life Sciences Ontario, the Corridor stands out for:

• The complementarity between academic and industrial expertise;
• The presence of centres of excellence in research;
• Cutting-edge capabilities in technologies.

According to the report published by the two organizations as part of the Interconnexion event held at the BIO 2014 convention, the association of the two provinces opens the door to any project at any stage of development (fundamental research, clinical research, development, manufacturing, etc.).

“By focusing on complementarity, we become a destination of choice for businesses looking for a one stop shop. This is especially true of the integrated cardiometabolic research network. A bank of patients, experts, infrastructures, and technologies are all accessible in a single territory. Therefore, it becomes even more important for Quebec and Ontario to continue developing joint and complementary projects that capitalize on the strengths of the two provinces,” said in a communiqué Michelle Savoie, CEO of Montréal InVivo, on the behalf of Biopolis Québec.

Biopolis Québec is the association of the three regions of Quebec that are active in the fields of life sciences and health technologies:  Montréal InVivo, Québec International, and Sherbrooke Innopole.

Additional $3 million

Simultaneously, an investment of $3 million was announced by the Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) and Ontario Brain Institute (OBI), in partnership with the Québec Consortium for Drug Discovery (CQDM).

The amounts are intended to support two interprovincial programs aimed at accelerating the discovery and development of drugs.

Thanks to an investment of $500 000, the OCEs are financing Ontario’s share of the 2014 edition of the Explore program, now open to Ontario researchers for the first time, in addition to Québec researchers.

For its part, OBI is contributing $2.5 million to the new “Focus on Brain” national initiative, in partnership with CQDM and the Brain Canada foundation.

Sources: Biopolis Québec and CQDM