Private sector tapping into Ontario's research strength in medical imaging

GE Healthcare first multinational to invest

Ontario's deep expertise in medical imaging research has attracted two major investments that aim to bring new technologies to market and position the province as a leader in the rapidly expanding medical and assistive technologies sector. The January 26th announcement of the GE Global Pathology Imaging Centre of Excellence (GE-PICE) follows the awarding of federal funding for the Centre for Imaging Technology Commercialization (CImTeC) late last year. The two initiatives secured nearly $45 million in public and private financing with the potential for more to come if the GE centre attracts additional funding partners.

The GE global research centre has secured $17.2 million, including $7.75 million through Omnyx, a joint venture between GE Healthcare and the Univ of Pittsburgh Medical Centre (UPMC). Also contributing is the HTX — the Health Technology Exchange ($2.25 million) through its Ontario Flagship Program (OFP) which aims to attract multinational companies to the province for advanced-stage product development.

An additional $7.2 million is lined up through planned collaborative R&D partnerships — an amount that's expected to grow once the centre is established. A planned opening in the heart of Toronto's medical research cluster is slated for Spring 2011.

The GE centre marks the largest healthcare investment the giant multinational has made in Canada and the second under a memorandum of understanding signed with the province of Ontario in 2009. GE plans to exploit intellectual property it developed jointly with UPMC with Toronto the site of its first centre for pathology imaging. While many areas of medicine have embraced digital technologies, the area of pathology is seen as a comparative laggard.

The GE proposes to develop technologies and processes that will allow the digitization and transfer of large slides throughout the medical community and commercialize those technologies and best practices worldwide. In the longer term it plans to develop specific tests for various disease types based on a greater understanding of the genetic expressions of cancer.

Ontario's healthcare system is also proving to be a major drawing card for private sector investment.

"There's a lot of first mover advantage for Ontario," says Peter Robertson, VP and GM for GE Healthcare Canada. "There's a tremendous interaction and aligned thinking in the area of pathology and all kinds of research synergies. A number of other agreements will append this centre."

For HTX, the GE investment is a major breakthrough which it plans to exploit to attract other foreign-based firms to the province. HTX recently secured $21.4 million over five years from the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation to encourage partnerships between small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), multinationals, health providers and research institutions to develop medical and assistive technologies for global markets (R$, May 21/10).

"The GE investment is a validation of previous investments in the sector … we're now talking to three or four other multinationals and we're hopeful they will come on board within a year," says John Soloninka, HTX's president and CEO. "A receptive local market is critical to SMEs but not to MNEs (multi national enterprises) but when you look at the assets in the province and the way in which the health care system is organized, GE felt it could do great development here.

Soloninka, who replaced founding HTX head Dr Mickey Milner last July, says Ontario's status as the third largest concentration of medical research in North America means the province can be "the petri dish for new GE technologies". HTX funding is split between supporting SMEs at up to 50% of project value and MNEs, which are eligible for up to 15% of project funding.

"Once our $21.4 million is allocated, it will have attracted between $70 million and $80 million in investment. That's fantastic leverage," he says. "We have the ability to develop and commercialize great technology and do excellent field testing and clinical trials leading to regulatory approval."

Further bolstering Ontario's research capacity in the area of medical and assistive technologies is CImTeC, which secured $28 million in financing, including $13.3 million over five years million via its success in the latest competition of the Centres of Excellence for Commercialization and Research (CECR) program. Headquartered at the Univ of Western Ontario's Robarts Research Institute , CImTeC received another $14 million from UWO, the Ontario Centre for Cancer Research, Sunnybrook Hospital, HTX and GE. Dr Aaron Fenster, director of UWO's Biomedical Imaging Research Centre, is also the director of CImTeC, which plans to hire 30 people including software developers, engineers and managers.

"The CECR application and the GE centre were all done in the same room. It's a dual strategy. We developed an academic program and one for the clinical interface," says Dr Tom Hudson, president and scientific director of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR). "This is the pay-off for Canada's long-term investment in research … It would not have been possible without these funding opportunities."

In addition to finalizing lease arrangements for its GE-PICE, GE/Omnyx is in discussions with the University Health Network and OICR on potential collaborations, with announcements pending in the coming weeks. UPMC will determine the overall direction of the research while the Toronto centre is expected to contribute key research in the areas of image display and analysis as well as change management processes that will occur as a result of deploying the new technologies.

MRI's role in the agreement to establish the centre included providing an inventory of the province's science base underpinning digital imaging. UWO and the UHN are home to two of the largest imaging centres in Canada and are among the best equipped globally, thanks to coordinated investments from the Canada Foundation for Innovation and Ontario Research Fund. GE/Omnyx's due diligence discovered a wealth of R&D with considerable commercialization and knowledge translation potential, leading to the decision to invest in the new centre.

"There are tremendous intersections between the life sciences and imaging in the province but the thing we need to solve is commercialization. We have to exploit this resource base," says Robertson, adding that GE will likely increase its investment as the centre grows.

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