Harnessing microRNA to tackle hard-to-treat infections. Storing renewable energy for when we need it most. Powering truck fleets with hydrogen to slash carbon emissions. Entrepreneurs across the country are fine-tuning novel solutions for some of the world’s thorniest problems. Here are just a few of the innovators who are poised to make great strides in 2025.
James Larsen is working to build a better battery
The challenge with renewable energy sources is storage — without a way to bank excess energy for times when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing, we can’t fully transition to a carbonless future. CEO James Larsen and his team at e-Zinc have created a long-duration system that stores energy in rechargeable batteries that can be up to 80 per cent less expensive than their lithium-ion counterparts. Plus, zinc is easily recyclable. This makes it a sustainable backup power option — a boon for data centres and hospitals, as well as places susceptible to natural disasters or remote locations that typically rely on diesel. “For applications that require a long-duration storage, we are the low-cost technology,” says Larsen.
The big build: The company completed construction on its own manufacturing and testing facility in Mississauga earlier this year.
What’s next: As e-Zinc gears up to launch its first two commercial pilots, Larsen and his team are focused on fine-tuning the technology.
Michael Midmer is working on next-generation therapeutics
Although insulin has been a lifesaver for people living with type 1 diabetes, the treatment comes with its own complications. Diabetics use the hormone to manage glucose in their blood, but taking too much of it can result in hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), which can cause dizziness, confusion and seizures — and even death, if left untreated. Toronto-based biotech firm Zucara Therapeutics is developing a preventative daily-dose therapeutic that would work in tandem with insulin to regulate blood-sugar levels 24/7. The medication targets glucagon, the hormone that releases glucose — which is compromised in people with diabetes — triggering it “to turn on at the right times and travel to the liver to release glucose that’s been stored as glycogen, bringing blood sugar levels back up,” in balance with insulin that’s been injected, explains CEO Michael Midmer.
The big raise: The company raised $20 million (U.S.) in Series B financing in 2024.
What’s next: Zucara is currently recruiting for Phase 2 trials. The team is also exploring longer-acting doses that would allow patients to administer the drug just once per week.
Mitch Debora is bringing manufacturing closer to home
For any business that makes and sells products, the entire process can be held up — or derailed altogether — if a single component goes astray. This is particularly tricky when you’re waiting on a part (even a tiny one) to be shipped in from elsewhere in the world. “Globalized supply chains are really inefficient and unreliable — and it seems to be getting worse and worse,” says Mitch Debora, the CEO and co-founder of Mosaic Manufacturing. “We want to help customers make things they need right where they need them — in their factory.” His company’s Array system, which Debora describes as a “factory in a box,” lets users 3D-print necessary parts for any machine on the spot, eliminating the need to rely on inefficient international sourcing.
The big raise: In September, Mosaic secured $28 million in growth funding.
What’s next: According to a recent McKinsey report, 60 per cent of CEOs surveyed are working to regionalize their supply chains. To meet this demand, Debora says, Mosaic is scaling up, with the aim of providing next-day deliveries to customers (think Amazon Prime, but for manufacturing components).
Sheida Shahi is making cities more sustainable
Buildings are responsible for 17 per cent of Canada’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions — and that figure doesn’t include construction, which bumps up the damage to about 30 per cent. Sheida Shahi and her team at Adaptis are working to lower those numbers. The Toronto-based startup has designed an AI platform that allows real estate owners, asset managers, developers and architects to assess a building’s carbon emissions over the course of its entire life cycle and make decisions on how to optimize new builds, retrofits and ongoing operations. Not only does this help shrink the building’s carbon footprint, it can also lead to significant reductions in energy costs. “By designing buildings for adaptability, reusability and recyclability, we can eliminate up to 60 per cent of demolition activity globally and 25 per cent of landfill waste,” explains Shahi.
Key stats: In 2024, Adaptis helped divert more than 6,000 tonnes of waste and avoid more than 108,000 tonnes of carbon emissions.
What’s next: In 2025, Shahi and her team want to smash those records. The goal? Divert four times more waste and avoid 10 times more carbon dioxide.
Evelyn Allen is keeping things cool
As temperatures rise, air conditioning is increasingly becoming more of a necessity than a luxury. But because AC units are energy intensive and require GHG-refrigerants to operate, they contribute to a vicious cycle: the more we use them, the more we contribute to climate change, which compels us to crank up the AC even more. Evelyn Allen and her team at Evercloak are working on a small but powerful way to mitigate some of that cycle. Using a proprietary graphene-oxide membrane technology, the Kitchener-based company decouples humidity and temperature control, making HVACs more energy efficient and reducing the use of GHG-emitting refrigerants. This ultrathin nanofilm could have an outsized impact: Allen estimates that it could improve a building’s cooling efficiency by 50 per cent. “By modernizing a large, legacy sector, Evercloak aims to meet growing demands for energy efficiency, environmental sustainability and enhanced control and comfort,” she explains.
The buzz: Evercloak closed a $2-million oversubscribed seed round in February and in July it won $1.1 million from National Resources Canada’s Energy Innovation Program.
What’s next: Allen and her team are preparing to deploy demonstration units in the coming months. As well, the company will be conducting tests at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Renewable Laboratory.
Pierre-Xavier Roy is making deliveries at a lower cost to the planet
Freight transportation accounts for 10.5 per cent of Canada’s greenhouse emissions — most of it coming from big-rig trucks. “Many of them not only emit when they are on the road, but also when they are stationary,” says Pierre-Xavier Roy, the COO and co-founder of Toronto-based startup Hydro Cool. As trucks carrying perishable items are being unloaded or loaded and sitting in a distribution centre, they are kept idling in order to keep their cargo chilled. Hydro Cool is developing smart, zero-carbon mobile refrigeration units that run on hydrogen and use predictive control methods AI to optimize temperatures and maximize efficiency to keep food fresh. These new units will not only offer a more sustainable method of transporting food and pharmaceuticals, they also minimize spoilage and reduce costs. “Hydrogen is important for applications that need very fast refuelling and require very long range,” says Roy, adding that when it comes to heavy-duty transport, hydrogen “is the only solution to decarbonization.”
The target: Hydro Cool is zeroing in on big retailers that have massive fleets to transport frozen goods.
What’s next: Roy and his team are preparing to launch units with a large Canadian company, and have signed agreements with two other corporations.
Jackie Hanson and Suze Mason are changing the game for family planning
In Canada, diverse pathways to parenthood can be expensive as well as emotionally and physically draining. For many, it can also be inaccessible: fertility treatments, surrogacy, sperm donors and private adoption are not covered under traditional employer-provided health plans. Sprout Family co-founders Jackie Hanson and Suze Mason are very familiar with these reproductive barriers: Hanson was born through IVF and has a brother who’s adopted. Knowing how hard the journey can be, Hanson and Mason launched Sprout Family, a digital health platform that administers benefits for reproductive care as an add-on for employers’ pre-existing benefits plan. “Rather than just covering the common things, like fertility drugs, we provide more comprehensive financial coverage that will support you regardless of the pathway,” says Mason. “This isn’t just a women’s health issue, it’s a human health-care issue.”
The big numbers: While 20 per cent of Canadians have sought some sort of fertility treatment, approximately only two per cent of Canadian employers include reproductive health in their benefits plans. It’s not just about family planning: challenges in accessing this care can result in lower job retention, lost productivity and mental health issues.
What’s next: Sprout Family plans to expand its team as the company prepares to launch its platform with several insurers across North America in 2025.
Sam McWhirter is developing a tiny tool to fight infection
Infections or injuries can sometimes lead to sepsis, a severe response wherein a person’s immune system begins to wreak havoc on their tissues and organs. The complication is notoriously difficult to treat; indeed, the only existing therapy is antibiotics, which can tackle symptoms, but “doesn’t really address the underlying immune dysregulation,” explains Sam McWhirter. McWhirter is the co-founder and CEO of NorthMiRs, which is working on a way to holistically treat heart failure in sepsis patients. The Toronto-based company is harnessing the power of microRNA, which regulates how cells create proteins, to develop “a gene therapy approach to sepsis,” as McWhirter puts it.
The buzz: In 2024, NorthMiRs was awarded a CIHR grant that will fund a second large animal study. The company also won $250,000 in a pitch competition through the Ted Rogers Centre of Heart Research, which will be used for more animal studies to complete its clinical trial application.
What’s next: NorthMiRs is meeting with potential manufacturing partners and exploring commercialization options.
Vida Gabriel is clearing the air
While lowering greenhouse gas emissions is critical to the health of the planet, dealing with all the carbon that’s already in the atmosphere has become an increasingly urgent priority. Direct air capture, which uses chemical reactions or physical filters to remove and contain ambient CO2, is a key strategy. One problem: most direct air capture technologies don’t work effectively at sub-zero temperatures. Ottawa-based TerraFixing aims to overcome that barrier by using filters made with a mineral called zeolite to absorb the carbon instead of liquids that freeze easily. “No other technologies have been gearing their developments toward cold climates,” says Vida Gabriel, the company’s COO. TerraFixing’s technology is actually more effective in cold, dry climates: those conditions make it easier to catch carbon and separate out water molecules, which in turn makes the startup’s approach more cost effective than typical systems.
The big raise: In 2024, TerraFixing closed a $1.6-million seed round and opened up two R&D labs at the University of Ottawa.
What’s next: The company is gearing up to launch a $10-million pilot project with Tugliq Énergie. The renewable energy provider is building a facility in northern Quebec that will integrate two of TerraFixing’s units. Its 20-foot prototype, which can suck up 1,000 tonnes of carbon annually, will be ready to start operations in 2025.
Ibukun Elebute wants to use menstrual blood to detect health problems
Anyone who’s had a Pap smear knows how uncomfortable this (very necessary) procedure is. So far, there is no mainstream alternative to test for HPV, cervical cancer and other life-threatening reproductive diseases. CELLECT co-founder Ibukun Elebute wants to change that. She is working to come up with a more inclusive, less invasive option that uses menstrual blood to provide health screening for women, non-binary and trans people. The early-stage startup, which is based in the Kitchener-Waterloo area, is developing a DNA collection device that integrates seamlessly into menstrual products, offering a more accessible alternative to pap smears.
The motivation: “There’s a lot of women who won’t go in for lifesaving screenings because they’ve heard bad things about it, or because of cultural barriers or trauma,” says Elebute.
What’s next: Elebute and her team are building a prototype and raising a round of seed funding.
Rebecca Gao writes about technology for MaRS. Torstar, the parent company of the Toronto Star, has partnered with MaRS to highlight innovation in Canadian companies.
