In January, $20 million in federal funding was pledged to establish and operate a cell therapy development facility in the MaRS Discovery District in downtown Toronto.
The Centre for Advanced Therapeutic Cell Technologies, to be established and operated by the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine (CCRM), is billed as the first cell therapy development facility in the world to use a collaborative approach between research institutions and industry to solve cell therapy manufacturing challenges.
"Regenerative medicine is the future," the Prime Minister told an audience of researchers, healthcare executives and businesspeople at MaRS. "And, not only is it the future, it's a branch of medicine that Canada, and the Province of Ontario, are actually quite good at."
UHN is a founding institutional member of CCRM along with UT, the Hospital for Sick Children Research Institute, McMaster University, Mount Sinai Hospital's Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute and the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute.