With 1,500 interns in 2018 and 20 years together, the UBC-Mitacs partnership continues to drive innovation and improve lives.

The future of healthcare is changing for the better with novel medical technologies emerging at a record pace. One such technology developed by a UBC startup in recent years has made remarkable strides in bridging the gap between research and commercialization. UBC’s Institute for Computing, Information, and Cognitive Systems (ICICS) and entrepreneurship @UBC (e @UBC) helped make it happen.

You might already hold the cure for flu or dementia. How? Your body makes billions of unique antibodies and one of these could be the basis for a treatment. But, how do you find that one rare therapeutic antibody buried in the proverbial haystack?

Melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, is diagnosed in more than 130,000 people globally every year. Now, work is being done on a tool to help in its early detection: a simple, compact laser probe that can distinguish between harmless moles and cancerous ones – in a matter of seconds.

The moment of anxiety is undeniable as you pull up your sleeve and hear the constricting tourniquet go snap! You can’t help but look as the hypodermic needle approaches. While modern medical needles may be wonders of minimalist function, their shape entering the skin’s surface like a good-willed mosquito is, for many, a terrifying sight.

Many vaccines must be kept at temperatures between two to eight degrees Celsius or they may spoil, but storing them in that narrow range of temperatures can be a challenge in remote areas with limited refrigeration. A redesigned cooler developed at the University of British Columbia could help address this problem.