Taking ideas to impact – The Globe and Mail

A dedication to innovation – the translation of ideas into impact – is driving powerful benefits at McMaster University (Mac) in Hamilton, Ont., as part of a vision for bolstering economic growth and community well-being through Made-in-Canada solutions.

Already recognized as a global leader in industry and research impact, McMaster’s intentional approach to amplifying outcomes includes the Made-at-Mac campaign, which is designed to strengthen the entrepreneurship and commercialization ecosystem, says Leyla Soleymani, a professor in the Department of Engineering Physics at McMaster University who holds a Canada Research Chair in Miniaturized Biomedical Devices and was recently awarded the prestigious Dorothy Killam Fellowship.

“I’ve built my career around rapid diagnostics and health monitoring related to clinically relevant problems,” says Dr. Soleymani. “What got me interested in commercialization and entrepreneurship was receiving the never-ending question from patients, asking, ‘When can we use this?’ I wanted to be involved in making these solutions a reality.”

The quest to combine scientific excellence with a strong focus on real-world applications – to ensure life-saving innovations can be effectively integrated into health-care systems and made accessible – requires an important catalyst: collaboration, she explains. “McMaster is a collaborative space that’s very plugged in with the wider innovation ecosystem. This focus on collaboration is Mac’s superpower.”

What is required is an “entire continuum that brings together the scientists with the vision, the trainees who advance the technologies, and people with expertise in business development and on the regulatory side,” Dr. Soleymani says. “Then, there are the company partners and investors.”

In the area of health technology innovation, partnering with diagnostic companies that already have market access and relationships with clinicians and insurance companies offers substantial advantages, she proposes. “It can help get the technology into the hands of the people who need it most. [Partner] companies also benefit from the unique technologies we build at McMaster.”

Dr. Soleymani’s new company, Aptech Health, which she recently launched with Mahla Poudineh, an electrical and computer engineering professor at the University of Waterloo, is based on “detect-and-deliver technology,” a platform utilizing wearable devices capable of detecting biomarkers and delivering therapeutics in response using a closed-loop system.

While Aptech aims to start with detecting glucose and insulin levels and delivering targeted therapies in real time for people with diabetes, the technology holds promise for a much wider range of interventions: it could predict heart attacks while they are still reversible, detect cancer recurrence early enough to prevent metastasis, and empower individuals to monitor the effects of their diet and exercise with unprecedented accuracy.

“There is a lot of excitement around wearable technologies and the next generation of health sensors,” says Dr. Soleymani, who adds that the urgency of implementing technology solutions to improve health outcomes is inspiring a range of efforts at McMaster.

Another example comes from Gerry Wright, professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences at McMaster and Michael G. DeGroote Chair in Infection and Anti-Infective Research, who leads a team looking to tackle the global health challenge of antimicrobial resistance.

“About 4.5 million people die every year due to antibiotic-resistant infections, and our old drugs are becoming less and less effective,” says Dr. Wright. “[We discovered] a new molecule with a new mode of action. It’s a big leap forward.”

Dr. Wright and his team identified a strong candidate for challenging some of the most drug-resistant bacteria on the planet: a new class of antibiotics called lariocidin. The molecule, a lasso peptide, has a new way of binding directly to a bacterium’s protein synthesis machinery, inhibiting its ability to grow and survive.

In addition to its unique mode of action and its activity against otherwise drug-resistant bacteria, lariocidin checks a lot of the right boxes: it is not toxic to human cells; it’s not susceptible to existing mechanisms of antibiotic resistance; and it works well in an animal model of infection, says Dr. Wright. “The initial discovery – the big Aha! moment – was astounding, and now the hard work begins. We’re working on ripping this molecule apart and putting it back together again to make it a better drug candidate.”

Such efforts attest to McMaster’s strengths in health innovation and have attracted wide recognition, including the Killam Prize, which Dr. Wright received in 2024, and the Killam Fellowship, which went to Dr. Soleymani in 2025.

“Advancing novel health innovations and technologies to revolutionize health-care systems and patient outcomes – from discovery through to diagnostics – is central to our mission,” says Andy Knights, acting vice-president research. “In addition to leading research that has the potential to be game-changing for Canadians, Dr. Wright and Dr. Soleymani epitomize our collective commitment to ensuring that the impact of our work drives Canada’s economic growth.”

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