Closing the Capital Gap: How U of T is Betting on Homegrown Biotech
The University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM) community is celebrating the announcement of the Genesys University Seed Fund — and for founders operating out of SpinUp, the incubator that marked the start of life sciences commercialization on the Mississauga campus, the timing couldn’t be better.
The early-stage life sciences venture fund is a partnership between U of T, McMaster University, Venture Ontario, and Genesys Capital, and is backed by the Temerty Group and RBC. It’s closed more than $30 million in early-stage life sciences capital, with room to grow to $40 million.
The fund is designed to close a gap that has long pushed promising Canadian biotech founders out of Ontario and towards hubs like Boston and Silicon Valley: access to capital at the earliest, riskiest stage of company-building.
“This announcement is consequential for our community here at UTM and SpinUp,” says Sherif El Tawil, Director, Partnerships & Innovation. “We’ve built a full lifecycle for entrepreneurs spinning out research from our world-class labs here at U of T, and this support will lower the barrier for researchers looking to bring their innovation to market — and to ultimately change people’s lives.”
Launched at UTM in 2024 and housed in the new Science Building, SpinUp is the first step in a U of T pipeline built to support life sciences entrepreneurs turning university research into real companies.
SpinUp gives early-stage deep tech and life sciences founders access to biosafey-level-2 lab space, shared equipment, office space, and mentorship — removing two of the biggest barriers founders face: access to lab space, and the essential wraparound support entrepreneurs need to demonstrate validation.
Mississauga was the clear choice for it. The city holds Canada’s second-largest life sciences cluster, with established companies, talent, and industry partners already in place. And with McMaster to the west and Toronto’s MaRS Discovery District to the East, the UTM campus was a natural home for founders trying to turn promising discoveries into companies that will benefit the world.
The Science Building itself is one of the most comprehensive and energy-efficient laboratory facilities in North America, also home to research labs and the Centre for Medicinal Chemistry. Together, the CMC and SpinUp form the front end of that pipeline, turning early drug discovery research into the kind of investable companies the Genesys Fund is designed to support.
“We support entrepreneurs by connecting them to the right coaching and advisory, to investors, to customers — all within the strong community we have here at UTM,” says El Tawil, who looks forward to seeing more life science founders access the capital they need to grow here in Ontario.
For SpinUp companies like Re:Pair Genomics and HDAX Therapeutics — two alumni-led ventures at different stages of their journeys — this ecosystem support is helping them turn years of lab work into growing companies.
Startup Spotlight: Re:Pair Genomics
Re:Pair Genomics uses machine learning to design components that can optimize gene therapies, making them safer and more effective for patients — cutting a design process that once took months down to mere hours.
The company was founded by Shiron Lee, Yosuke Niibori, and Luca Hategan, all from U of T. Lee holds an MSc in Pharmaceutical Sciences, Niibori is a senior research associate in the department, and Hategan is a PhD candidate at UTM working in Cells and Systems Biology.
The idea took shape while Lee was working on her master’s thesis, developing gene therapy for a rare genetic disorder alongside Niibori and an undergraduate student. Together, the team built a machine learning algorithm to solve a problem they kept running into in their own research. That algorithm became the foundation of Re:Pair Genomics.
Lee went on to do gene therapy research in the U.S. before returning to U of T, where she’s now completing her MBA at the Rotman School of Management.
“When we first started, we didn’t ask for support — we didn’t even tell our PIs. We had to start from scratch,” says Lee. “It was a huge turning point for us when we got into SpinUp. Not only do we have the lab space, but we also now have a lot more connections, and we can work with other startups as well. We were able to work with other biotech startups at U of T and access a lot of different faculty and industry members.”
For Lee, the new Genesys Fund arrives at a critical moment in the company’s development, as the team looks to graduate from SpinUp and scale.
“It’s going to be a huge advantage for life sciences companies like ours,” she says. “This would allow us to reach our next milestones — where we can reach out to more clients, expand our team, and help more people. This fund will be extremely helpful.”
Startup Spotlight: HDAX Therapeutics
This UTM spinout was co-founded by Nabanita Nawar and Pimyupa Manaswiyoungkul, both U of T PhDs. HDAX Therapeutics is developing novel medicine for the treatment of diseases driven by transport dysfunction — problems with how cells move critical materials internally — by targeting a protein called HDAC6, which plays a role in conditions ranging from polycystic kidney disease and heart failure to neuropathies.
“We had a novel, better way to go after HDAC6, and even in university research labs we could show that our molecule had the potential to be far better than what patients were getting today,” says Nawar. “It felt like a no-brainer to try to take that science towards real people and try and make a difference in their lives.”
The company spun out of serial entrepreneur Patrick Gunning’s lab in 2021, right around the time SpinUp was launching.
“It was a very natural transition from an academic lab at UTM to the SpinUp lab, where we could continue building the science and de-risking it and taking it closer to patients,” she adds. “We have had the most incredible support system at UTM, the broader U of T community, and the local and Canadian life science ecosystem as well.”
From UTM, HDAX became part of the Health Innovation Hub, UTEST, several accelerators, and incubators within the U of T ecosystem — support that helped the team build the business around the science. That work ultimately allowed them to lock down early pre-seed and seed financing and, with help from U of T’s IP office, license the technology into HDAX. The company is now developing it further, with plans to enter the clinic in 18 to 24 months.
For Nawar, those earlier stages of growth are where the new Genesys Fund can make a difference.
“It’s amazing to see interest and capital allocated for early-stage companies spun out of U of T’s academic labs,” she says. “For us, it’s been difficult to raise that early-stage capital in our local ecosystem. We’ve spent time in the Bay Area, in Boston, in New York, trying to find the pre-seed capital you need to go from academic to a real biotech company. Being able to unlock those first few hundred thousand, that first million dollars, is an extremely difficult ask. It’s wonderful to see this fund give exciting lab technology a fair shot at becoming real companies.”
Want to learn more about SpinUp?
We accept new startup applications on a rolling basis. Email our team to learn more about eligibility and membership at spinup@utoronto.ca.
