Don’t slack on the salmon

There's something fishy going on in Ken Stark's lab. The Assistant Professor in kinesiology develops innovative ways to uncover how much Omega-3 Canadians are consuming. He's testing not the food they eat, but the blood in their veins.

"Trying to figure out what people eat is very difficult because they lie or forget," says Stark, seeming to channel House from the hit television show. "So we use blood instead of asking questions."

“Trying to figure out what people eat is very difficult because they lie or forget. So we use blood instead of asking questions.” Omega-3 fatty acids are essential fatty acids necessary for human health and are found only in food. Health agencies encourage people to eat Omega-3-rich fish, particularly fatty fish such as salmon, mackerel, lake trout, sardines, anchovies, and albacore tuna to slash the risk of heart disease.

Traditional means of analysis can be time-consuming or unreliable, depending on the method. For instance, if a subject eats salmon one night and is asked the question, "How many servings of fish have you eaten in the past week?" the results can become skewed if that was the only plate of fish eaten all month. Analyzing blood samples, however — what Stark calls "dietary forensics" — negates the need for questions at all. Blood analysis is not only relatively quick: blood doesn't lie.

Stark's methods have caught the attention of Certo Labs Inc., a Toronto-based startup that is developing and commercializing a new device that tests food samples so nutrition labels are accurate. Stark submitted the patent with the company to make it happen.

"If I hadn't been at Waterloo, I don't know I would have pursued it," says Stark. “But I’m glad I did.”

For full article visit http://www.uwaterloo.ca

Health Technology Exchange Program

"Certo receives 'Business Investment Program' funding from the Health Technology Exchange Program at MaRs for developing high throughput sample preparation methods with the Universtiy of Waterloo"

Certo Labs is developing an automated sample preparation system for analytical and contract research laboratories. Standard sample preparation laboratory techniques are expensive, time‐consuming, error‐prone and operator dependent. Certo’s system will help alleviate the burden placed on many labs that face manual preparation for the analysis of nutrients, drugs and toxins at a low throughput of 20 samples per technician per day.

The technology is being developed in collaboration with the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Waterloo and with the Toronto‐based engineering company, Kangaroo Design and Innovation Inc.

For more information about The Health Technology Exchange, please visit https://www.htx.ca

OCE Annual Report 2008-2009

Sampling made Simpler

Certo labs advance chemical extraction Toronto-based Certo Labs has developed a device that could revolutionize the time and money spent by the pharmaceutical, environmental and food industries on extracting samples from drugs, foods and contaminated soils for analysis. Certo Labs’ Certo-Ex is a lab device that offers quantitative extraction of targeted compounds, such as nutrients, fats and other elements from solid samples like food.

Its simple concept streamlines sampling, bringing a process that has historically taken up to 24 hours for a single sample, down to 30 minutes for multiple samples. “Through OCE we were able to make the industry connections that led to the research collaboration with the University of Waterloo,” says Ameer Taha, Certo Labs’ Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer.

Martin Walmsley Fellowship for Technology

Certo Labs, founded by Ameer Taha, Ahmed Taha and Lahav Gil, is pleased to announce that it has received the follow-on year award for the Martin Walmsley Fellowship for Technological Entrepreneurship in the amount of $50,000. This honour is awarded by a special committee of the Ontario Centers of Excellence (OCE) comprised of technical and business experts, to academic innovators turned entrepreneurs.

Certo Labs is currently progressing its lead product and business with the assistance of OCE, University of Waterloo’s Ken Stark and Kangaroo Design & Innovation. Kangaroo is incubating the product development of the Certo Ex (Certo Lab’s lead product – a homogenizer of solid matrices) through in-kind services and special payment terms.

Certo Labs and Kangaroo Design & Innovation would like to thank the OCE for all the support and development activities that have assisted in Certo’s successes and progress to date. Special thanks is extended to Dr. Karen Temple, Business Development Officer for the OCE’s Centre of Excellence for Materials and Manufacturing, who has worked tirelessly to guide Certo towards a successful Walmsley Award and many other initiatives on the road to bringing the Certo Ex to fruition.

OCE Discovery Exhibition

Certo Labs Inc. showcased its first prototype at the annual OCE Discovery exhibition held on May 11-12, 2009 at the Metro Convention Centre in Toronto, ON. Certo's engineering team presented live demostrations of food extractions (such as shrimp, coffee beans and steak) and were able to illustrate the ease, convenience and significant cost savings that arise from using the Certo-Ex device as opposed to conventional extraction techniques.

OCE Discovery 2009 was held by the Ontario Centers of Excellence and featured close to 300 exhibitors, more than 2,000 attendees and hundreds of researchers, investors and entrepreneurs.

For more information about OCE Discovery, please visit http://ocediscovery.com

Youth Action Alliance

"Find your passion and follow it" was the mantra Dr. Ameer Taha drilled into the ears of more than 30 children between the ages of 2 and 13 at a Youth Action Alliance event held on March 20, 2009 in Toronto, ON. Taha, co-founder of Certo Labs Inc., was invited as a guest speaker to inspire young children into discovering their passion at an early age. "Pick something that you like, get really good at it, and you'll be surprised as to how far you can go", said Taha, who had devoted his younger years towards the refinement and perfection of his scientific talents.

This seminar was the first among a string of motivational speeches that the aspiring 26 year old entrepreneur plans to attend as a means of mobilizing emerging talent in our local communities and encouraging young students to pursue their passion and succeed.

National Business and Technology Conference

Dr. Ameer Taha, Co-founder of Certo Labs Inc, was invited as a guest speaker to present at the National Business and Technology Conference held at the MaRs Discovery District on March 20, 2009. Taha's lecture emphasized the lack of collaboration between academic professionals and commercialization partners which is crucially needed in order to transform innovative "lab" ideas into business opportunities. Taha encouraged the audience, comprised of students from an array of backgrounds, to pursue their research and development work further by attempting to identify market opportunities for their work and collaborating with industry partners who can bring their ideas to fruition. The conference was a great success with more than 100 attendees.

For more information about the National Business and Technology Conference, please visit http://www.nbtc.ca/