Founded by three former Queen’s students, Spectra Plasmonics is growing while keeping its roots in Kingston.
The year 2022 is shaping up as one to remember for the three young entrepreneurs behind Kingston’s Spectra Plasmonics, the makers of a portable drug-testing technology that can be used by public safety organizations as well as medical clinics and safe-injection sites to test the composition of street drugs on the spot.
and Tyler Whitney. Photo courtesy of Spectra Plasmonics.
In February, they received the first US patent on their technology, an important outcome following a rigorous process led by the Patent Team with Queen’s Partnerships and Innovation (QPI).
“In our space, the tech or biotech industry,” says Eade, “having an actual granted US patent is a pretty big deal. It can influence discussions with investors in a really positive way.”
That’s just one of this year’s milestones for the company that he helped found along with Tyler Whitney and Christian Baldwin when they were Queen’s students in the summer program at the Dunin-Deshpande Queen's Innovation Centre back in 2017. This May, they attended a major conference in Washington D.C., on the opioid crisis in the United States, called Breaking the Stigma and Ending the Addiction Cycle. The goal was to look at alternative ways of dealing with the addiction crisis in the United States.
The American attitude to the crisis is changing, says Whitney, drawing closer to the Canadian emphasis on harm reduction rather than law enforcement. This conference drew together groups working in that world in the United States, so they could meet and learn from one another and discover how they can gain access to funding to help them.
“Malcolm actually got to sit on the harm reduction panel at the conference,” says Whitney. “That was kind of exciting, to be the Canadian voice on the panel talking about how there’s definitely new ways to combat the crisis that America hasn’t been using.“
“It was an ideal fit for what we’re actually currently doing,” says Eade, “and we now have a pretty good relationship with the group that hosted the conference, which is probably the first of several over the course of the next few years. And there was really good attendance from organizations across the country which may eventually be customers or strategic partners of ours.”
The trip to Washington represented a pivot of sorts for the firm.
“A lot of our work now is focused on the US,” says Eade. “We’re doing a lot more business development and outreach there.” In 2021, they had the opportunity, as one of four companies supported by QPI, to take part virtually in a seminar in Boston organized by the Canadian Technology Accelerator there to help firms to meet potential partners and investors in that city’s flourishing health sciences sector. “We made some pretty good connections in Boston from that, and we actually recently reconnected with them since we’re doing a lot more US business development.”
Their focus is paying off. In September, their testing technology will be undergoing a month-long field trial with a potential US customer.
“They really understood right off the bat what our solution could offer,” says Eade. They can’t say much at this point, but says Eade, “success with this group should lead to a lot more deployments and recognition across the US.”
The American emphasis isn’t surprising. As Eade points out, “the population of Canada is just around the population of California, so there are a lot more opportunities in the US,” but that doesn’t mean that they are neglecting Canada. This summer also saw three community health centres in Ontario, adopting their drug-testing technology to provide drug testing for the users of their safe injection sites.
The technology that any potential customers or partners are looking at has changed, too.
“We’ve revamped the product we were piloting last year,” says Malcolm. “There’s a brand-new look to the hardware, and it performs significantly better. We’ve had an increase in signal sensitivity that allows us to detect things at even lower concentrations, and there’s many more things we can detect as opposed to last year.”
Installing their technology in a safe injection site would allow front-line workers to analyze the drugs people are using and determine whether they were potentially fatal – a common problem with opioids bought on the street. Not only is their technology now better – it’s cheaper, too.
“We had a few specific requests from customers,” says Eade. “And one of them was around price. We need to make the upfront costs more suited to the organizations we are selling to.” Eade hopes that their revamped technology will set the “performance standard,” as he puts it, for the drug testing and harm reduction worlds.
Whatever the changes and wherever they grow, they maintain an eastern Ontario focus.
“We continue to do a lot of work with Queen’s,” hiring students and post-docs there and recently from St. Lawrence College as well. “Our patent agents are still at QPI,” says Eade,” and we’re in QPI’s space at Seaway Co-working [in downtown Kingston] as well.”
The company is also working with QPI’s Advisor on Regulatory Strategies, has recently been accepted into QPI’s High-impact Mentorship program, and is receiving software development services from the Centre for Advanced Computing at Queen’s. Additionally, the team continues to receive guidance and support from Launch Lab and the Southeastern Ontario Angel Network.
“We’re all Queens alumni, and still very much a Kingston and Queen’s company. We are grateful for all the support we receive from the local ecosystem,” says Eade.
The programs and services referenced above are enabled with support from Queen’s and funding from the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario under the Health Innovation Kingston (HI YGK) Project, which is led by the City of Kingston and includes Queen’s as a local partner, and the Scale-Up Platform Project, led by Invest Ottawa in eastern Ontario, which includes Queen’s, Launch Lab, and St. Lawrence College as regional partners. Queen’s Partnerships and Innovation offers a selection of programs and services under its HI YGK Growth Catalyst program to eligible startups and small to medium enterprises that are advancing health innovations in the Kingston region, and to technology- or science-based entrepreneurs, startups, and SMEs under its Queen's Startup Runway program and Go-to-Market Scale-Up services.