About The CCRM Foundation

The CCRM Foundation is a private foundation and Canadian registered charity that will promote, advance and support the regenerative medicine ecosystem to advance life-changing therapies, in collaboration with a wide variety of partners.

Mission

The CCRM Foundation exists to support education, translational research and technologies that generate sustainable health and economic benefits. It provides strategic, impactful philanthropic investment to, and collaboration with, organizations, researchers and students at the forefront of regenerative medicine-based technologies and cell and gene therapies.

“The CCRM Foundation will have a transformative impact on regenerative medicine by funding critical research and providing resources to accelerate the development of new therapies. As an integral part of the regenerative medicine ecosystem, The CCRM Foundation will help bridge the gap between academic research and commercialization, bringing life-changing treatments to patients faster. By funding scholarships and training, it will create a pipeline of skilled employees, ensuring that the regenerative medicine field has the talent it needs to continue to thrive and make a significant impact on human health.”

– Michael May, PhD, President and CEO of CCRM, and Chair of the Board of The CCRM Foundation

Leadership

The CCRM Foundation has been working with CCRM’s leadership to build the framework and infrastructure of The CCRM Foundation, ensuring complete legal compliance and thoughtful planning. As the needs of the regenerative medicine ecosystem and our community outreach evolve, and the Board of Directors identifies innovative ways to contribute, giving priorities and programs may shift.

Approach

Through strategic philanthropy, The CCRM Foundation will engage individuals, corporations and foundations to fulfill its mission and enable its activities. Initial seed funding from CCRM has supported the start-up phase of its development.

Going forward, The CCRM Foundation will identify gaps in the regenerative medicine ecosystem and identify impactful solutions to fill these gaps using strategic philanthropy and partnerships. In particular, The CCRM Foundation will seek to fund allowable institutional, academic and other organizations that are identifying and implementing innovative opportunities through critical, but underfunded, stages of development.

The CCRM Foundation will take an innovative approach as it completes its mission, focusing on the following four priorities:

• Curating high-potential projects: The CCRM Foundation accelerates regenerative medicine discoveries into lifesaving and life-changing cell and gene medicines through Medicine by Design’s Pivotal Experiment Fund.  It fills a critical gap in early-stage translation by funding focused experiments to accelerate commercialization toward new therapies and companies that will impact human health. Read more about CCRM’s strategic alliance with the University of Toronto’s Medicine by Design in the December 2023 strategic alliance announcement news release.
• Strategic ideation to drive innovation: Advancing the frontiers of regenerative medicine by aligning the ”pull” of the market with academic invention is the basis of Venture by Design. Research programs will be designed to focus on pivotal issues by identifying high-value opportunities and corresponding bottlenecks and commercial constraints in the field.
• Preparing for a new paradigm in medicine: As we prepare health systems to implement cell and gene therapies, forums for engaging Indigenous and other equity-deserving communities will be critical. The CCRM Foundation will support and, where appropriate, co-develop community-led stakeholder forums that focus on the inclusion of all patient perspectives in the design, development and clinical implementation of cell and gene therapies.
• Training the next generation: Bridging the gap between academic research and commercial and clinical success requires talent. These individuals must be adept at research and equally well-versed in the challenges faced by government and industry in seeing innovations through to impact. Further developing and mentoring trainees will enable future executives to lead and scale new cell and gene medicine enterprises.

Partnership with Visions of Science to support underserved youth in STEM

CCRM and The CCRM Foundation have partnered with Visions of Science to support under-represented, racialized youth from low-income communities in the Greater Toronto Area with new and increased opportunities for access to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education. The commitment is for a three-year partnership that includes a CA$75,000 donation and programming support.

As the first initiative that The CCRM Foundation will support, Visions of Science was selected for its track record of excellent work in the community and for its alignment with The CCRM Foundation’s efforts to support education and training.

Learn more in the November 2023 partnership announcement news release.

You’re Full of Genes supports The CCRM Foundation