The Value of ACAD
The Market Gap
There has been a large bolus of emerging new technologies in the pathogen diagnostics sector (which applies to a wide range of applications beyond SARS-CoV-2) that require access to specialized project space, equipment, and performance testing centres that can accommodate infectious disease work.
Currently, Alberta does not have any dedicated BSL-2 compliant infrastructure in the pathogen diagnostics sector to transition Alberta-grown technologies towards the validation and commercialization process. Without this support, Alberta-based technologies will either not be developed or will flow out of Alberta to locations that can support this demand.
What is ACAD?
The Alberta Centre for Advanced Diagnostics (ACAD) provides state of the art facilities and technology resources that enable the rapid development of early stage diagnostic technologies towards commercialization. ACAD enables access to Alberta’s world-class healthcare infrastructure and will make Alberta companies more competitive in the $60B global diagnostics market.
Key objectives
Diagnostic tests are a cornerstone of medicine, playing a role in >70% of treatment decisions and representing a $60B global market. Infectious disease diagnostics are one of the fastest growing segments of this market (>$21B globally, growing 7% annually). Despite this, new tools face major cost, time, and logistical barriers to commercialization that place small companies at a serious disadvantage when competing against large multinationals.
Alberta’s consolidated healthcare system, if properly leveraged, could drastically accelerate the research and development pipeline and could give Alberta-based companies a significant edge in competing for a segment of the rapidly growing infectious disease diagnostics market.
The primary objective of this program is to help tap this opportunity by establishing the Alberta Centre for Advanced Diagnostics (ACAD), a fully integrated ecosystem containing all of the physical infrastructure and partnerships needed to prototype and validate new diagnostic tools and connect them with Alberta’s end-users. These resources will include:
extensive fabrication and analytical resources
access to patient specimens
laboratory space for performance trials
feedback from Alberta’s healthcare end-users
a path to pan-Alberta implementation and potentially global uptake.
-Dr. Ian Lewis, Principal Investigator, Lewis Research Group
“The ACAD ecosystem will shorten the time and expense required to develop diagnostic technology.”
ACAD unites over $50 million in precision medicine diagnostics expertise and infrastructure from multiple partners spread across the Calgary-Edmonton innovation corridor.
Our Partners
Alberta Centre for Advanced Diagnostics (ACAD) unites over $50 million in precision medicine diagnostics expertise and infrastructure from multiple partners spread across the Calgary-Edmonton innovation corridor.
ACAD partners include:
