The HPR-Micro Reactor comes standard with a 10 millilitre Iconel 718 reactor vessel for operation up to 10,000 psi (689 Bar / 68.9 MPa), inlet and outlet valves and a pressure gauge. Optional 25 ml and 50 ml vessels are available. Depending upon the temperature option selected, operation from -40°C to 150°C is possible. The vessel closures are the hand tight type where no wrenches are needed. The reactor is equipped with magnetically coupled stirring for optimal mixing. All high pressure components are ASME compliant designed and overall assembly is protected by a rupture disc assembly for safe operation.

The Micro Reactor is also compact and can fit into a fume hood. The Micro Reactor can be easily removed from the mounting stand and brought to a glove box for reactant and reagent loading under an inert atmosphere.

Multiple inlet ports are included for addition of solvents, reagents, or gases. An optional Reagent Injection Manifold increases versatility by providing a means to add a precise amount of reagent at anytime during course of the reaction. Standard addition quantities include 2.0, 1.0 and 0.5 milliliters.

For more information visit  www.supercriticalfluids.com.

The cell windows are made from sapphire to resist chemicals, scratching, and high pressure and from single crystal quartz for less demanding applications.

Designed to allow full contents viewing with Beckman centrifuges and other instruments, they are available wedged one- or two degrees and plano, with chamfers 0.20/0 mm x 45 degrees in two places.

Featuring an arrow scribed on their edge that projects the optic access for easy alignment, Meller Sapphire Centrifuge Windows are 19.03 mm dia. ±0.3 mm by 0.5mm thick ±0.10mm and have a 30-5 scratch-dig surface finish.  The quartz windows have a 10-5 finish with a central clear aperture of 16 mm and both types are suitable for OEM and field-replacement use.

The announcement was made at the BIO International Conference taking pace in San Diego, CA. The new entity, called the Accel-Rx Health Sciences Accelerator (Accel-Rx) will focus on maximizing new health sciences company creation, and ensuring start-ups have the resources they need to grow and become a new generation of strong health sciences companies.

In all, Accel-Rx brings together five of Canada’s leading health sciences Centres of Excellence for Commercialization and Research (CECR) to foster cross-Canadian cooperation and directly addressing the health science company creation challenge in Canada. They include:

• The Centre for Drug Research and Development (CDRD);
• MaRS Innovation (MI);
• The Vancouver Prostate Centre’s Translational Research Initiative for Accelerated Discovery and Development (PC-TRIADD);
• The Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine (CCRM); and,
• The Centre for Probe Development and Commercialization (CPDC).

CDRD Ventures Inc. (CVI) will provide the initial management to launch Accel-Rx operations, while a proposed seed funding partnership with BDC Venture Capital would be the main funding mechanism for companies created at Accel-Rx, with the intent to invest in up to three to four companies annually, with that number potentially increasing as the partnership progresses. Selected companies would each receive a $500,000 convertible note from BDC Venture Capital, which we hope will allow companies to attract similar, if not greater investments from the private sector.

“The fact is: the healthcare industry in Canada holds great promise, with over $6 billion invested in basic research annually. However, a gap exists in terms of transforming this research into commercially-viable businesses. We believe that our collaboration with Accel-Rx will help tackle this problem,” commented Jérôme Nycz, executive vice president, subordinate financing and venture capital at BDC. To date, all BDC-backed accelerators have been in primarily the digital media and ICT sectors. This proposed partnership marks their first step in expanding their support to the health sciences sector.

Natalie Dakers, president and CEO of CVI, and the inaugural Centre director of Accel-Rx added, “Together with our network of partner CECRs across the country, Accel-Rx is now supporting the next stage in the development continuum, and acting as a robust national accelerator for new company creation. With the new resources it brings to the table, Accel-Rx will provide Canada with a more well-informed, well-resourced, and effective approach to company creation; and ensure that opportunities arising from the country’s strong foundation of innovative discovery research and technology development are fully capitalized upon through the launching of a critical mass of robust companies based on exceptional innovative, pre-validated (scientifically and commercially) technologies.”

“Over the last seven years, the CECR program has demonstrated its value as a pan-Canadian engine, greatly improving the commercialization prospects for biotechnology assets in this country,” said Dr. Raphael Hofstein, MI’s president and CEO. “Creating companies around these most promising early-stage technologies allows for investment and is a crucial step in advancing them to market. This collaboration between Accel-Rx and BDC Venture Capital will provide new opportunities to address seed-stage funding rounds for health sciences companies prior to Series A financings or other strategic alliances. We at MI look forward to providing opportunities to Accel-Rx for new company creation.”

In all, Accel-Rx will deliver five key Program Pillars: Business Planning and Investment Strategy Development, Funding, Technology Development Planning, Mentorship, and Access to Infrastructure (through preferred partnerships with the five founding CECR organizations noted above).

Brad Bolzon PhD, the managing director of Versant Ventures, and co-founder Peppi Prasit, are hopeful that Inception Science will encourage the translation from scientific discoveries to biotechnology enterprises.

“We have recognized a real opportunity in Montreal, and across Canada, where both world-class academic research and drug discovery talent are prevalent,” said Bolzon.

Inception Science joins Versant’s other Canadian programs, Toronto-based biotechnology incubator Blueline Bioscience and Inception Science Vancouver. By establishing new scientific research initiatives in three Canadian life science hotspots, Versant believes it has the potential to replicate its previous American and European successes.

Dr. Poirier announced his findings as the annual Alzheimer’s Association International Conference was taking place in Copenhagen. This large-scale study identified naturally occurring genetic variants that provide protection against the common form of Alzheimer’s disease, with the goal of identifying specific biological processes amenable to pharmaceutical interventions.

“We found that specific genetic variants in a gene called HMG CoA reductase which normally regulates cholesterol production and mobilization in the brain can interfere with, and delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease by nearly four years. This is an exciting breakthrough in a field where successes have been scarce these past few years” says Dr. Poirier, whose previous research led to the discovery that a genetic variant was formally associated with the common form of Alzheimer’s disease.

“These latest genetic results from Dr. Poirier’s team are an important step forward in the understanding of Alzheimer’s disease neurobiology, and also the use of genetics to identify an interesting new molecular target that is amenable to therapeutic development” added Brigitte Kieffer, scientific director of the research centre of the Douglas Mental Health University Institute.

Over the past two decades, research efforts around the globe have focused on identifying genetic and environmental factors responsible for causing or accelerating the progression of the common form of Alzheimer’s disease. However, little was known about possible protective genetic factors that can delay or even prevent the disease onset in humans. It is well documented that a subset of older individuals who happen to be carriers of predisposing genetic factors for the common form of Alzheimer’s manage to escape the disease and live long and productive lives without any memory problems until their 90’s.

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) announces it will match funding from BRI Biopharmaceutical Research Inc (BRI) for a total of $750,000 over a three year industry partnered collaborative research grant. This money will enable ongoing research collaborations between Dr. Yuzhuo Wang’s laboratories at the BC Cancer Agency and Vancouver Prostate Centre (VPC), and BRI to develop new state-of-the-art experimental cancer models.

These models, which closely resemble patients’ malignancies, will help researchers discover and develop anti-cancer drugs that improve the treatment options for cancer patients. Dr. Wang and his team at the BC Cancer Agency and VPC are recognized internationally for their pioneering work in the field of prostate cancer modeling, and are responsible for creating a novel method for establishing transplantable xenograft models.

This same method will be applied to establish a new panel of patient-derived cancer models. “This type of patient-derived xenograft model will provide a realistic and practical approach for testing the effectiveness of new anti-cancer drug therapies,” said Dr. David Kwok, president and CEO at BRI.

Dr. Wang’s work on patient-derived xenograft models was recently published in Cancer Research. His research standardizes a bank of transplantable patient-derived prostate tumor xenograft models that, for the first time, capture the diverse biological and molecular heterogeneity of primary prostate cancer.

Located in Saskatoon, SK at the Innovation Place research park, Quantum Genetix applies genetic information and livestock management to the beef industry, providing customers with genetic technology in order to improve animal production and value. Their core products include Q-sort, Q-link and a suite of performance enhancing SNP’S.

As part the deal, Quantum Genetix will acquire the GenServe name, along with the livestock portion of its services. Quantum Genetix says it will continue operating GenServe with minimal changes to its daily operations. SRC will retain the crop portion of GenServe’s testing suite and will continue to provide these services to the agriculture industry.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The promise of discovering potential treatments for catastrophic diseases like autism and schizophrenia is being explored by Karun Singh at McMaster University’s Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute (SCC-RI).

A neuroscientist and the institute’s newest recruit, his pioneering research is concentrating on uncovering underlying genetic defects inside the brains of people with these, and other neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer’s.

These are significant conditions as autism impacts one in 88 Canadian children, schizophrenia, a serious brain and mind disorder, affects 300,000 Canadians, and more than 500,000 Canadians suffer from Alzheimer’s disease.

Autism – and most psychiatric disorders – have a genetic component, and his research will search for clues by studying specific genetic mutations associated with these diseases, said Singh, assistant professor of biochemistry and biomedical sciences.

“Starting there, we will eventually try to model it in a derived brain (neural) cell. This will allow us to probe what is wrong and how that mutation gives rise to a defective brain cell,” Singh explained.

Once he has uncovered what is abnormal, he plans to work to discover drugs that correct the defect. Singh’s research is a comfortable blend with investigations already underway in the institute, said Mick Bhatia, director of the SCC-RI.

“Karun was an ideal recruit and fit for SCC-RI and sits in the pocket of where we strategically plan to go towards discovering new drugs for brain disorders that include Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.”

Singh grew up in Hamilton and received his first science degree at McMaster. Most recently, he was a postdoctoral associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; where he investigated how psychiatric disease risk genes affect brain development and neural circuit formation.

Simon Fraser University molecular biologist Lynne Quarmby’s adventures in pond scum have led her and four student researchers to discover a mutation that can make cilia, the microscopic antennae on our cells, grow too long. When the antennae aren’t the right size, the signals captured by them get misinterpreted. The result can be fatal.

In a newly published paper in the science journal Current Biology, the researchers discovered that the regulatory gene CNK2 is present in cilia and controls the length of these hair-like projections.

This discovery is important because cilia, or flagella, dangle from all of our cells. Their ability to propel some cells, such as sperm, and allow molecular communication in others, for example cellular responses to hormones, determines how we develop from embryos and how our bodies function in adulthood.

When cilia are too short or too long they cause various human hereditary diseases and deformities, such as too many fingers or toes, blindness and Polycystic Kidney Disease, which affects one in 600 people.

Quarmby and her doctoral student Laura Hilton—senior and lead authors, respectively, on this paper—are among the few scientists globally who study cilia-disassembly as opposed to -assembly.

A crucial part of all cells’ lifecycle is their cilia’s disassembly before cell division and assembly after it. The gene LF4 is a known assembly regulator, and, prior to this study, scientists thought that assembly speed controlled cilia’s ultimate length or shrinkage. But Quarmby and Hilton have discovered that disassembly speed is also important, and that the regulatory gene CNK2 plays a key role in controlling it.

Similar to how a balance between water pressure and gravity determines the height of a fountain’s stream, a balance of assembly and disassembly speed determines cilia’s length. When growing and shrinking happen simultaneously cilia length remains constant.

Pond scum’s algae make good lab models for analyzing this because they reproduce quickly, and they have cellular structure and cilia that closely parallel ours. Quarmby and Hilton have been mucking about with pond scum for years and recently started studying algae cilia with defective CNK2 and LF4 genes.

After discovering that cilia with either defective gene are abnormally long, they created an algae cell with four cilia, instead of the normal two, with two of the four engineered to glow green.  Along with two SFU undergrad students and a University of Toronto undergrad, Quarmby and Hilton watched as the fluorescent green tag began to appear at the tip of the untagged pair of cilia.

“We were able to deduce how the mutations affected the cilia’s assembly and disassembly by measuring how much and how quickly green fluorescence appeared at the tip of the untagged cilia,” explains Quarmby. “We knew that we had something important when we saw that cells bearing mutations in both CNK2 and LF4 had the most extraordinarily long cilia. They were unlike anything anyone had ever seen before.

My student Laura ran this experiment and oversaw our undergrad researchers. It gave us unique insights into the potentially key role disassembling cilia have in deciding the tails’ length. Further investigation will help us understand how ciliary malfunction causes a progression of diseases.”

The SFU undergrads working with Quarmby and Hilton were Kavisha Gunawardane and Marianne Schwarz. The UofT student was Joo Wan (James) Kim.