The Health Innovation Roundup, sponsored by Health Cities, is written and published weekly by Taproot Edmonton to bring you the latest news and events in research, technology, companies and people changing health for the better in Edmonton.

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Here are some highlights from this week’s Health Innovation Roundup:

Headlines

        • Edmonton was listed as an ecosystem to watch on the Global Startup Ecosystem Report 2021 Life Sciences Edition. “With its educated population, high quality of life, and low cost of living, Edmonton is a magnet both to young tech talent and startups eager to hire them,” the report says. Low taxes and access to affordable tech talent were also cited as two reasons why a startup should move to Edmonton.
        • The St. Albert Gazette looked at two fundraising campaigns for diabetes research in Alberta, including the HEADing to 2022 campaign, which hopes to raise $22 million. The initiative has raised over $1 million so far, with the money going towards the work being done by Dr. James Shapiro and his team at the University of Alberta.
        • The U of A is receiving close to $27 million from the Alberta government to support 11 new research projects, developing potential treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and ALS, as well as new health diagnostic tools. Funding will also go towards investigating the impact of prescription drugs on the long-term health of mothers and their children.
        • Medical student Jesse Lafontaine was chosen as the latest Rhodes Scholar to come out of the U of A. Lafontaine co-founded the Indigenous Medical Students’ Association of Canada to increase Indigenous representation in medicine.
        • Ross Mitchell, formerly of the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, was named as the inaugural Alberta Health Services chair in AI in health, an endowed position made possible thanks to a gift from AHS and the University Hospital Foundation, in collaboration with the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute. Mitchell will be starting a new job as senior program director of AI adoption, and will be joining the U of A’s department of medicine as a professor.
        • Ceapro Inc., a growth-stage biotechnology company in Edmonton, announced it is receiving up to $480,000 in funding from the National Research Council of Canada’s Industrial Research Assistance Program. The company plans on using the funding to design the first PGX (Pressurized Gas eXpanded Technology) processing unit that will be used to generate active pharmaceutical ingredients like yeast beta glucan.

Events

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