The U of T spin-off company
DVS Sciences opened a new R&D headquarters in Markham last week, a step forward in what company President and CEO Scott Tanner describes as a "significant success story" for the local innovation scene.
Tanner said the company had its origins around 2005 within U of T spin-off company
Sciex when he began research to apply mass spectrometry to biology through individual cell analysis. DVS was launched in 2009 and moved back into the University of Toronto fold, where Tanner says they were able to take advantage of "multi-faculty, multi-disciplinary" collaboration.
Since then the company has launched six instruments, and recently got a significant boost for its innovative products with the publication of a large paper from Stanford University published earlier this month in the journal
Science. "The technology has had great support already, and we had several research papers published. But this is the first big paper in the biological sciences press that people will see...Just since the paper was published, we've been getting four or five inquiries a day."
The gangbusters growth is manifesting in many ways. In addition to opening the new office, Tanner says the company has just finished a round of hiring, adding three staff in the past week. He says that the company will open a sales office in California this summer and he anticipates hiring an additional 22 or so staff by the end of the year (about 13 of them in Markham).
Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Scott Tanner, President & CEO, DVS Sciences