Chemaphor Inc. (the Company) is a federally incorporated, publicly listed biotechnology company trading on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol CFR. The company, located in Ottawa, was created on August 4, 2005, through the amalgamation of Occell Inc., a private National Research Council of Canada (NRC) biotech spin-off company founded in April, 1997, and Triumph Acquisition Corp. Inc., a TSX Venture Exchange capital pool company founded in August, 2003.
The two founders and principals of Chemaphor and the former Occell are Drs Graham Burton (Chief Executive Officer and President) and Janusz Daroszewski (Chief Scientific Officer). Dave Croucher is the Chief Financial Officer.
Chemaphor has core expertise in organic chemistry that it combines with many years experience working on multidisciplinary, biomedical projects at NRC. The Chemaphor technology and the enterprise itself are the direct result of a project initiated in the early 1990’s by Burton and Daroszewski at the NRC’s Steacie Institute for Molecular Sciences. The goal of the project was to explore a new, fundamentally different insight into the potential nutritional benefit of a class of compounds known as carotenoids, which are typified by such well-known substances as beta-carotene and lycopene. The latter compounds are responsible for the characteristic orange and red colours of carrots and tomatoes, respectively.
Although beta-carotene and some other related, but not all, carotenoid compounds are sources of vitamin A, resulting from a very specific oxidation process, Burton and Daroszewski believe all carotenoid compounds are potential nutritional sources of a diverse family of non-vitamin A carotenoid oxidation products that possess hitherto unrecognized biological activities. Many such carotenoid oxidation products are found pre-formed in plants and many of them inevitably become part of the human diet, as well as the natural diet of many animals.
The seven directors on the Chemaphor board are Graham Burton, Janusz Daroszewski, David Hankinson, Dr. Clifford Albert, Dr. Chandra Panchal, Mark Goudie and Jacques Brault. David Hankinson is chairman of the board, continuing the role he had with Occell since its inception in 1997. Dr Albert is an M.D. and leading cosmetic laser surgeon in Montreal, Dr. Panchal is the former Executive Vice-President, Business Development, Licensing & Intellectual Property, at Ambrilia Biopharma Inc., Mark Goudie is Vice-President, Finance and Chief Financial Officer at Mxi Technologies (Ottawa), and Jacques Brault is a Montreal businessman.
Chemaphor carries on and expands the enterprise initiated and managed by its two founders for 6 years at NRC and then continued under their stewardship for more than 8 years through Occell.
The Company’s goal is to commercialize a range of product applications from its technology platform targeting significant licensing revenues. In a secondary, chemical services activity, the company is generating annual revenues from the synthesis of selected specialty chemicals.
The Company’s business approach is to build strong collaborative institutional and industrial collaborations and alliances to optimize technology value and capture related new technology opportunities.
Chemaphor’s head office is located in Ottawa, and the company has two laboratories located respectively in the Industrial Partnership Facilities in NRC’s Steacie Institute for Molecular Sciences in Ottawa (Chemistry), and the Institute for Nutrisciences and Health in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island (Nutrisciences).
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