Dear Syniad Readers,

Syniad has enjoyed another productive quarter, with plenty of positive news across the portfolio. We’re noticing the pace of development – both in Syniad and its ventures – accelerate markedly in the second quarter of the year. I am cautiously confident that this trend will continue and that next quarter’s newsletter may turn out to be a bumper issue.

John Davies

CEO

SYNIAD NEWS

As we signaled in our previous update, we have now formally announced our continuing relationship with Raytheon Company and our second non-dilutive funding transaction for $5.4m. READ MORE

Martin Cronin, Syniad’s Chairman, led the Company’s attendance at CANSEC 2024 in May. CANSEC is Canada’s annual conference for land-based, naval & aerospace technologies. For Syniad, the event has become a recurring annual fixture in our corporate calendar because it provides us with a key opportunity to engage in person with our government and defense sector partners. Our forward pipeline of non-dilutive offset transactions under Canada’s Industrial and Technological Benefits policy now looks incredibly robust and we have every confidence that we will be able to announce new non-dilutive funding transactions later this year.

PORTFOLIO NEW

Having closed its oversubscribed seed capital round in April, Anodyne Chemistries has gone from strength to strength. It is now embarking on an ambitious program of pilot implementations, with opportunities being developed in Western Canada and beyond. In readiness for future rounds of funding in the not so distant future, Iain Evans and the team are also focusing a lot of attention on maturing Anodyne’s corporate profile. An important part of this work is an expansion of the board, the executive team and the advisory board. In a coup for Anodyne, Jim Rekoske has agreed to chair the advisory board. Jim has an outstanding and highly relevant bio and is warmly welcomed into his role by all at Syniad. In the lab, Anodyne filed two new patents in May, providing more depth to an already impressive pool and enabling expansion into sustainable ingredients for the beauty and haircare industries. Finally in June, Anodyne graduated from Plug and Play’s Sustainability Cohort where it was able to establish partnerships with CO2 emitters, chemical manufacturers and renewable power providers. READ MORE

We’re really pleased to be able to announce the formal launch of CataLum Technologies, in partnership with McGill University and Professor CJ Li and his team. CataLum is a photocatalysis company, that is developing an extensive patent portfolio around green chemistry production systems. Syniad supported the CataLum team for more than a year, prior to formal launch. This very early support enabled securing $1.5m in pre-launch grant funding, which has been a major boost to the research mission.

This is our inaugural venture from McGill and in the Province of Québec and we strongly hope that it’s the first of many. READ MORE

Gemina Laboratories has made outstanding progress this quarter. In Syniad’s previous newsletter we reported that Gemina had announced its first global license deal. In early July, Gemina provided an update to the market to say that the company was now engaged in discussions with a further four significant diagnostic companies. After an initial screening process over several months, these companies have now signed Non-Disclosure Agreements with Gemina to allow further evaluation of several different Gemina technologies in significant detail. As a result, Gemina has now advanced its commercial partner pipeline with companies responsible for around 25% of what Gemina estimates to be a $1.5B directly addressable revenue opportunity in lateral flow diagnostics.   It’s taken under 4 years to reach this point, since Gemina filed its original patent application and represents an exceptional achievement by CEO Brian Firth and his team.

READ MORE

Gemina hasn’t been idle in terms of developing its IP portfolio, a cluster of 34 related inventions for the diagnostics industry. This has been achieved via a mix of in-house development and judicious research collaboration with academic partners. For instance, Gemina has pioneered the use of cellulose as an alternative to nitrocellulose for lateral flow tests, with important implications on bringing down the raw material and manufacturing costs. The Company has also recently entered into a research partnership to develop improved sensor particles (with stand-alone revenue potential). And in April, Gemina announced that it had in-licensed a novel biosensor-chip architecture from the University of British Columbia after a very productive 2-year research partnership. READ MORE

As an aside for any of our readers in the USA, Gemina commenced trading on the OTCQB in June under GLABF. READ MORE

Brokkr Mineral Resources continues to make encouraging progress at the lab bench with its novel nickel bioleaching technology for sustainable mineral processing, and has validated its results with in-house and third-party laterite samples. The company has reached a point where it’s contemplating a first external round of finance, supported with several non-dilutive grants. The first of these awards has been announced – a prize from BHP’s Think and Act Differently competition – with other announcements queued for next quarter. READ MORE

Additionally, Brokkr has started to bulk up its advisory board. A warm welcome to Professor David Fowle (Department Chair, Department of Geology at the University of Kansas) and Professor Jeffrey Gralnick (Professor of Micro-biology at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities). Both Professors bring a huge depth of expertise around bio-geo-chemistry applications and are highly relevant to Brokkr’s mission. READ MORE

Patronus Technologies is now actively working on a go-public transaction. The team is targeting an RTO transaction resulting in a TSX-V listing in Q3 2023.   Junior markets have been extremely difficult since mid 2022, but Patronus takes the view that it has a unique positioning around the discovery and development of novel materials for the defense sector, using AI as an accelerant. And these themes that have both been relative bright spots in the market.

As Patronus makes progress towards its go-public goal, we will provide further updates.

Syniad has now formally launched Islay Power, our first venture sourced from a US research institution. Building on Syniad’s investment commitment, Islay is now actively sourcing its first non-dilutive grants and equity co-investment. READ MORE

IN THE NETWORK

A warm congratulations to…..

Professor Wenying Liu who has been awarded a Canada Research Chair. Dr Liu is a member of UBC’s prestigious Hydrometallurgy Group and serves as a member of Brokkr’s advisory board. Her recent reward is a fantastic recognition of her standing amongst her academic peers.

Professor Joe Salfi at the UBC Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute who has been awarded a $3.2m grant from Pacific Economic Development Canada (PacifiCan). Dr Salfi and his colleagues have partnered with Syniad with respect to the creation of Quantum Recon – Syniad’s quantum control venture. The PacifiCan grant is awarded to UBC and is a hugely supportive endorsement of the work being done on the academic side of the fence. In a similar vein, Syniad helped Dr Lukas Chrostowski secure new operational funding for UBC’s quantum computing research cluster, making the fourth time in succession that this endeavor has been funded out of UBC’s core budget.

With support from Syniad’s Hannah Evans, Professor Anoush Poursartip has been awarded a major grant from Canada’s Strategic Science Fund to support his career-long work in computational simulation of heterogenous materials. Professor Poursartip, together with his collaborator Dr Goran Fernlund, are world-leading experts in composites computational modelling and are poised to bring their expertise to Patronus in the near future.

Dr Ceri Morgan, independent director of Syniad, who helped steward the successful listing of AOTI on the AiM market in London, raising £35m. This listing – the largest on AiM since February 2022 – is one of the significant signals that market conditions for early stage technology businesses are improving, at least for really high quality companies.