Breviro, Soricimed win NBIF’s R3 Innovation Challenge

By Peter Moriera – Entrevestor.com | link to original article

Breviro Caviar Inc. and Soricimed BioPharma Inc. are sharing the top award in the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation R3 Gala’s Innovation Challenge.

The winners will each receive $50,000 worth of research and development services at a New Brunswick post-secondary institution or a research organization, $5,000 in legal services from Cox & Palmer and $5,000 in accounting from Deloitte. R3 stands for “recognizing research results’’ and is designed to encourage young companies to collaborate with researchers in the province.

Based in Pennfield, Breviro Caviar produces caviar from sturgeon in the St. John River, and began to sell its product last year. It’s no mean feat given that the species was considered endangered in the wild not long ago, and each fish must be four to seven years old to produce the roe. The company has proposed an aquaculture system and technique that would help the sturgeon to mature more quickly so they can produce caviar faster.

Moncton-based Soricimed is developing a drug that kills cancer cells by depriving them of calcium. Led by Paul Dunn, the company is using its leading drug to better deliver chemotherapy drugs.

The other three finalists were: Lamda Guard Canada, which is developing a thin film that can intensify the brightness of LEDs ; Gagnon Ornamentals Works Ltd., which is developing equipment to collect methane from cow manure; and Dizolve Group, which is developing innovative dish detergent.

The contestants were established businesses with revenues of less than $20 million that needed help in researching a marketable idea.

The R3 Gala Wednesday evening also honoured three applied researchers with the R3 Innovation Award for Excellence in Applied Research: John Spray of the Planetary and Space Science Centre at the University of New Brunswick; Jacques Gagnon of the Coastal Zones Research Institute in Shippagan; and Pandurang Ashrit, director of the Université de Moncton’s thin films research group.