Repost from www.univalor.ca

Allostera Pharma inc. closed $17M (CAD) Series A financing.

Allostera Pharma Inc. announced yesterday that “it has secured a Series A financing of $17 million.
Four venture funds participated: iNovia Capital, Genesys Capital, BDC Venture Capital with GO Capital, and Fonds Bio-Innovation s.e.c. The proceeds of the financing will be used for the development of Allosteramers™, a new class of drugs developed by Allostera scientists that are both highly specific for their targets and designed to be orally bioavailable. Additionally with these proceeds, Allostera plans to complete preclinical studies and begin human clinical testing of its lead Allosteramer™, APG2305, a novel drug candidate for treating autoimmune diseases like psoriasis that has demonstrated oral activity in animals. The specific terms of the Series A preferred share financing were not disclosed.”

To read the press release, please click here.

Congrats to Anne-Marie, Hélène and Marc for this great job!

Hello,

Univalor has just released the June 2009 edition of its Vector Newsletter.

Projects presented this month:
- An alternative vaccine for preventing Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome
- A system improves the study of nerve growth
- License to Research: Granting a license amplifies Dr. Céline Bareil’s research capacity.

To download and read this edition: click here

Repost from www.univalor.ca

The AUTM Better World Report illustrates the real impact of technology transfer.
In its last edition, a technology recently licensed by Univalor to the South Korean company, Dongil Rubber Belt Co. Ltd. is presented:

“Brace Buffers Buildings to Protect People and Profits” (on page 75).

One of the cool projects that I presented last week at TechConnect Summit (which by the way was a great success. Congrats to Jennifer for the organization!), is a wearable photonic colored fibers developed by Pr. Maksim Skorobagatiy at Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal.

Smart textiles are now everywhere (Frost and Sullivan estimates that in 2020, 80% of the textile will be smart!). Applications already include interactive clothing for sports, hazardous occupations, and military, industrial textiles with integrated sensors or signage, fashion accessories and apparel with unique and variable appearance, etc…

Mainly because of their commercial availability but also their low cost, photonics textile manufacturers usually use silica glass-based telecommunication fibers which cause several challenges in the textile world (How to extract the color from the fiber core? How to generate the color? How to weave them? etc…).

Here comes Pr. Skorobogatiy’s invention!

Instead of using glass-based fibers, he proposes to use photonics crystal fibers made of different layers of polymers which will act as a spectral filter. Therefore, from a single white light source, only a given color will be leaked out of the fiber.
No more need to paint the fiber or to use 3 RGB LED, the color is defined by the fiber design itself (geometry, polymers used, etc…)!

Finally, one of the cool properties of Maksim’s fibers is their ability to change color by mixing the reflected ambient light with the irradiated guided light (inside the fiber).
Under the daylight illumination, and in the absence of guided light, in the fiber is still colored. Consequently, when both the ambient illumination and guided light are present, the overall color of the fiber will be determined by mixing of the two colors in the radiation far field (ex : green + red = yellow).

Applications of this new invention include the development of variable colored uniforms or signs. It could also be used as an anti‐counterfeit label or an intelligent jewelry.

Check out the prototypes’ pictures on Pr. Skorobogatiy’s website. They’re amazing!

As usual, I welcome your comments and feedbacks! Any other idea of applications?

Thomas

Hello,

After a wonderful sunny week-end, I’m leaving to Houston to attend TechConnect Summit 2009. This year, 5 of Univalor’s technologies have been accepted.

In case you are attending, I’ll be at Univalor’s booth (# 1029). I’ll also be sending updates on Twitter #TechConnect.

Visual Cortical Implant

Developed by Pr. Mohamad Sawan and his team at the Polystim neurotechnologies Laboratory , this electrical platform allows blinds to recover vision. This system consists of a miniaturized implant connected to the cortex and communicating to a camera (which acts as an eye prosthesis). Pr. Sawan’s visual prosthesis project passed the stage of perfecting a first generation functional prototype (proof of concept). Now, in view of confirming complete validation, elaborated in vivo tests must be made in collaboration with medical research institutes in Montreal.

MR-SUB: The “Fantastic Voyage”

Because of the high number of patients diagnosed with cancer, tumor targeting, target chemotherapy and chemoembolization are of special interest for modern medicine. Nevertheless, many tumors are still out of reach to catheterization (in particular the ones that must be targeted in regions only accessible through smaller diameter vessels). Some 40 years after the release of the “Fantastic Voyage”, Prof. Martel came up with the solution. He developed a MRI based platform which enables to reach targets usually inaccessible to catheterization. Its applications include cells targeting, chemo-embolization and local hyperthermia.

Color-Changing and Color-Tunable Photonic Crystal Fiber for Textiles

“Smart textiles” are already everywhere. Essentially used for their technical performances and their functional properties, they are forecasted to represent 80 % of textiles by 2020. Current photonic textiles, usually made from conventional optical fibers (fiberglasses, usually used in telecommunications), have been shown to be limited in terms of applications since they cannot be woven and don’t provide a uniform coloration in time. Prof. Skorobogatiy proposes to use plastic fibers constituted by successive layers of polymers. From a single light source, Pr. Skorobogatiy’s fibers naturally emit a homogenous color which is controllable in real-time. Furthermore, since they are made of polymers, they can be easily woven using a common loom.

High Resolution Refractometer

In the past decades, the flow cytometry technologies became a routine test for counting, and discriminating microscopic particles in a stream of fluid. To better discriminate each cell type, these techniques require a first step of fluorescence labeling. This step makes difficult to reuse the sample for further experimentations. Using a refractometer as a detector permits to skip this step. The Prof. Yves-Alain Peter and his team introduce a low cost and high resolution refractometer. Due to its organization, it is capable to characterize a particle in a volume. All its components are fabricated simultaneously in one conventional microfabrication process.

Direct Writing of Freefrom 3D Microstructures

Many methods allow the fabrication of microscopic pieces. However, because of technological limitations, they have been confined to relatively thin device architectures (a few layers) and are limited by materials constraints. To overcome these limitations, Prof. Therriault proposes a radiation-assisted direct-writing approach which allows manufacturing in a straightforward manner and in ambient conditions 3D functionalized microstructures.

The April 09 edition of the Vector Newsletter is now online.

Featured in this edition:
- A virtual Reality System
- The TRIP technology
- New Designs of Robotic Hand
- Univalor’s technologies at BioTransfer

Hello;

Space Codesign Systems, one of Univalor’s startup companies, is hiring a new Senior Software Developer.
If of interest, feel free to contact me. Cheers, Thomas

Job Offer:

Senior software developer in the field of System Design to join a startup in Montreal

Space Codesign Systems is a supplier of system level design software. Its first product, SpaceStudio is a system level development environment and tool suite that allows hardware/software architectural exploration and partitioning, design, validation, simulation, performance analysis and integration of mixed HW/SW embedded systems.

What we are looking for?

We are looking for a hands-on software developer with experience in the field of System Design.

Why join us?

We are a fast growing company where you will be able to directly influence the technology and product roadmap.

Qualifications:

· Senior engineer with over 7 years of EDA technology experience, ideally with hands on experience in designing EDA (ESL) tools

· Strong communication skills

· Experience designing and managing project plans, reporting progress and mitigating risks

· Excellent understanding and hands on experience with C/C++, VHDL, Verilog and SystemC

· Experience in Embedded Software development

· Hands on experience with products from one of the big tree (Mentor or Cadence or Synopsys) and FPGA tools (Xilinx or Altera).

· Hands on experience in with IC design flow, development and verification

· Entrepreneurial mindset with a history of startup experience

The facts:
- Nearly one-third of all software projects are cancelled.
- Two-thirds of all projects encounter cost overruns of more than 200%, and over 80% of all projects are deemed failures.
- The cost of maintenance amounts to at least 50% of the overall cost of object-oriented programs.

The main reasons behind these gloom statements is that programs too often have poor quality characteristics and, in particular, a poor maintainability. This poor maintainability arises as a consequence of (implementation of) architectures with low quality.

Here comes Ptidej!

If many solutions try to help developers in their tasks, most of them do not explore the real structure of the program.

Over the last years, Yann-Gaël Gueheneuc (Professor at Université de Montréal and now at École Polytechnique de Montreal) has been analyzing the architecture of object-oriented programs. He later came up with Ptidej.

Ptidej understands the structure of any object oriented programs, detects its flaws (based on a set of rules), and suggests a correction.

In a metaphor, one could compare Ptidej to the grammatical corrector of MS World while currently available products could be more associated with its spell checker.

How it works? Yann and his team develped a proprietary language that allows anyone to define an error to detect (The current version detects the most reported ones: blob, spaghetti code, etc…).

What’s next? Offering free beta tests in return for feedbacks
A free beta version of Ptidej is availble on Flintbox. It allows you to test your own program (in Java) and identify potential flaws.
It is, of course, our intention to commercially deploy Ptidej. In the meantime, we are welcoming any feedbacks and/or partnerships with companies, investors or entrepreneurs willing to collaborate with us to bring Ptidej to market.

Please feel free to contact me if you require more information.

Cheers,

Thomas

Further info about Ptidej:
Demo version
Video
Presentation in the Vector Newsletter

sources:
1: William J. Brown, “AntiPatterns: Refactoring Software, Architectures, and Projects in Crisis”
2: Jussi Koskinen, Software Maintenance Costs
3: Bennet P. Lientz, Problems in application software maintenance

Hello,

A few weeks since my last post. I then have many news to share with you.

First, probably the most important one, you may know that Didier left Univalor. After 5 years at Univalor, he is joining MSBi Valorisation (equivalent of Univalor for McGill, Sherbrooke and Bishop’s Universities) as the General Manager. I had lots of fun (and learned a lot!) working with him. Just hope, we’ll be able to collaborate soon on some exciting projects! Thanks and Good Luck Didier!

Since we came back from Photonics West 09, we have been very busy working on new projects from Université de Montréal (Equipment for transporting thermolabile products), École Polytechnique (software for condition based maintenance, software for writing analysis) and Hopital Sainte-Justine (Quantitative clinical postural assessment Tool). Of course, as soon as our analysis is completed, I’ll give you more details here.

We have also been working with ScisWave to prepare Capital Innovation. ScisWave is one of the 9 selected companies and will be presenting at the 2009 edition (Montreal – March 25).
This year, Guy Kawasaky, Founder and CEO of Garage Technology Ventures, will be Keynote Speaker! If you don’t know him yet, I recomment you read “The Art of the Start“, the best book I have ever read on start-up creation (Thanks again Didier for recommending me to read it!).

I’m now preparing my next two trips:WBT late March, 3 projects selected, and, TechConnect Summit early May, 5 projects selected. If you’re going, I’d love the meet you there!

Last News? The February 09 edition of the Vector is now available! Check out the progress of Ptidej on page 3.

Cheers,

Thomas

PS: Don’t forget to stop by Univalor’s new website

Univalor continues on it ways to promote business opportunities related to technologies developed within its various institutions (more info at Univalor).

Right now, and there could be more announced soon, 3 technologies have been accepted to be presented at WBT Showcase and 5 for Techconnect Summit.

If you plan to attend these conferences, we look forward to meeting with with in Dallas and Houston and if you want to hear about these technologies in particular or any other in our broad portoflio, please contact us at thomas.martinuzzo@univalor.ca or didier.leconte@univalor.ca

Didier