How to start a company during a pandemic

This article was originally written for Genome Alberta’s Genomics Blog. The pandemic has put significant pressure on many small businesses and startups around the world. But for a group of student entrepreneurs, COVID-19 has actually opened up a lot of new doors. yOIL is a Calgary-based synthetic biology startup, which spun out from the award-winning Calgary […]
Designing therapeutics for the coronavirus on all fronts

This article was originally written for Genome Alberta’s Genomics Blog. As we enter the fourth month of physical distancing in Alberta, I’m sure many of us are eagerly waiting for the day that the COVID-19 pandemic comes to an end. While researchers in Alberta are already working hard on a potential vaccine for SARS-CoV-2, many others […]
How Alberta’s iGEM Students are Persevering through COVID-19

This article was originally written for Genome Alberta’s Genomics Blog. Normally at this point in the year, students around the world would be hard at work in the lab, getting ready for the iGEM competition. Teams competing at this synthetic biology event are trying to find ways to engineer biology to solve real-life problems. Of […]
Towards Safer Gene Therapy with Calgary Undergrads

Genetic engineering isn’t easy. Sure, modern synbio techniques are easier than techniques of yore, but there are still a lot of challenges that researchers face. Take gene therapy and precision medicine, for example. Very hot topics, because you can customize therapies to an individual person. You can account for the idiosyncrasies of an individual’s body, […]
Spotlight: Cohesic Inc.

If I were a betting man, I would say that all of you know at least one person who has been affected by heart disease. After all, the World Health Organization cites cardiovascular disease as the leading cause of death in the world. It’s no surprise then, that there are a lot of people out […]