OBIO Announces Successful 2019 Niagara Investment Summit
OBIO is proud to announce the success of the 2019 Niagara Investment Summit on February 20-22, 2019.
The 2019 Niagara Investment Summit featured over 30 of Canada’s most promising innovative health science companies and more than 30 US and global investors and VCs who engaged through company presentations, panel discussions and keynote presentations.
“OBIO is excited to celebrate the success of the 2019 Niagara Investment Summit,” said Gail Garland, President and CEO of OBIO. “The Summit demonstrated the incredible quality of Canadian health science companies and their leading-edge technologies. Connecting Canadian companies and global investors in a unique, curated environment will develop the partnerships that ensures we build the integrated health science economy that Canada deserves.”
Over three days in Niagara-on-the-Lake, OBIO’s 2019 Niagara Investment Summit created 165 investor introductions for attending companies with global VCs and investors from firms like ARCH Venture Partners and Forbion Capital Partners.
“The OBIO 2019 Niagara Investment Summit was a unique opportunity to come to Canada and see leading-edge Canadian health science companies and technologies,” said Sean Kendall of ARCH Venture Partners. “The high quality of Canadian companies was outstanding and represents a real opportunity for US investors. I look forward to returning and seeing more of what Canada has to offer.”
“Being Canadian but coming from a firm based in Europe, it is very exciting to see the high quality deal flow available in Canada,” said Antoine Boulanger of Forbion Capital Partners. “I look forward to coming back to stay on top of the incredible technologies and innovative companies that are being developed here.”
Canadian health science companies that presented at the 2019 Niagara Investment Summit spanned the continuum of therapeutic, medical device, diagnostic and digital health technologies.
“As an early stage company in the gene therapy space, having the opportunity to get an audience with global investors of the calibre that attended the OBIO 2019 Niagara Investment Summit is incredibly valuable,” said Roderick Slavcev, Founder and CSO of Mediphage Bioceuticals. “We're confident this and future OBIO events will bring us closer to our fundraising targets as we develop leading personalized genetic medicine. We are looking forward to further conversations and to the next investor event organized by OBIO.”
Partner organizations from across Canada supported the 2019 Niagara Investment Summit and brought their experience and some early stage companies to the Summit to gain early traction with investors and connect with later-stage companies.
“One of the biggest challenges for research institutions is to think globally from the outset and the OBIO 2019 Niagara Investment Summit was an incredible way of developing that competency,” said Gay Yuyitung, Executive Director of McMaster Industry Liaison Office (MILO). “The cross-pollination between early-stage companies and Series A and B companies, as well as feedback from leading global investors is what will help companies coming out of Canadian research institutions to grow and scale.”
The 2019 Niagara Investment Summit is supported by our sponsors – Norton Rose Fulbright, Amgen, the Cardiac Arrythmia Network of Canada (CANet) and Ontario Genomics – and partners - Centre for the Commercialization of Antibodies and Biologics (CCAB), McMaster University, Ontario Institute for Regenerative Medicine (OIRM), Ontario Brain Institute (OBI), Ryerson University Biomedical Zone, the University of Toronto, the University of Waterloo, Velocity and the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology.
The Ontario Bioscience Innovation Organization (OBIO®) founded in 2009, is a not-for-profit, membership-based organization engaged in strategy, programming, policy development and advocacy to further the commercialization of Ontario’s human health technologies positioning Ontario as a leader in the international marketplace. OBIO advances this goal through collaborative partnerships with industry, the investment community, academia, the health system and government.
For more information please visit www.obio.ca and follow OBIO on Twitter @OBIOscience.
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