We’ve officially launched the first-ever Canadian cohort of the Merck Digital Sciences Studio (MDSS), right here in Québec — with the presence of Mr. Christopher Skeete, Minister for the Economy at Québec’s Ministry of Economy, Innovation and Energy. His participation highlights the province’s commitment to digital health innovation.
This global program is locally powered by our team at Collision Lab, at Centech , a key milestone in the Canadian expansion of MDSS.
Led by Merck, in collaboration with CQDM and the Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, the program offers selected startups:
- Access to Merck’s global expertise
- Mentorship from our in-residence experts at Centech
- Strategic and investment support from CQDM and Merck GHI
- Cloud credits
- Direct exposure to international networks in health tech
🎉 Congratulations to the 7 selected startups:
- Nanofacile – Accelerating RNA therapy development for biotech, CROs and pharma, by offering a first-in-class, intuitive and easy-to-use “Nanomedicine in a Box” technology platform kit.
- Simmunome – Building AI validation infrastructure for robust, safe and equitable healthcare AI algorithms that help enhance the predictability of clinical drug development to prevent late-stage failures.
- Misochip – Reducing cancer clinical trial failure rates due to poor efficacy using functional precision medicine for preclinical solutions that allow ex vivo testing on human-relevant tumor models to identify potent drivers of efficacy or resistance.
- 9Bio – Unlocking the full potential of targeted therapies by guiding antibodies to the right location and accelerating the discovery of conditionally active targeted therapeutics with an integrated methodology.
- Rime Therapeutics – Driving precision therapies powered by deep understanding of inflammation biology through a proprietary function-first target and hit discovery platform unlocks protein-protein interactions (PPIs).
- Stereo Bio – Addressing cellular heterogeneity in disease with purpose-built multi-specific pMHC-targeting therapeutics, starting with solid tumors.
- PCare+ – Transforming complex medical guidelines into actionable digital formats using AI by combining large language models (LLMs) with expert systems to extract screening recommendations, scoring systems, and decision logic from guidelines.
This launch reinforces Québec’s leadership in AI-powered health innovation. And we’re just getting started. CQDM is very proud of this major new program.
