Acuitas Therapeutics Founders Receive Governor General’s Innovation Award

Vancouver, B.C. – The founders of Acuitas Therapeutics, Drs. Pieter Cullis, Michael Hope and Thomas Madden, have been named as Governor General’s Innovation Award recipients. This prestigious award is for their work in developing lipid nanoparticle (LNP) systems to deliver cancer drugs to tumours and to enable RNA- and DNA-based drugs to be used therapeutically. Among other achievements, their work has resulted in the LNP system that enables COMRINATY^®, the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 mRNA vaccine.

The Governor General’s Innovation Awards are given to individuals, teams and/or organizations whose innovations are:

• Truly exceptional;
• Transformative; and
• Positive in their impact on quality of life in Canada.

According to their website (www.innovation.gg.ca), the Governor General’s Innovation Awards “are not intended for lifetime achievement or innovations that have not yet demonstrated impact. Rather, by recognizing active, current innovators across the breadth of our economy and society the Awards help foster an active culture that celebrates innovation that is having a meaningful impact on our lives.”

Said Dr. Thomas Madden, who is also the President & CEO of Acuitas Therapeutics: “It is an honour to receive this award with Drs. Pieter Cullis and Michael Hope. The three of us have been friends and colleagues for more than 40 years, and it is truly exceptional to receive this award for the work we have done together over all of those decades.” He added: “What I think is truly great about this award is that it calls on us to keep innovating; to continue to contribute to the advancement of human health. It encourages us to go forward – and we are doing just that.”

About Acuitas Therapeutics

Founded in February 2009, Vancouver-based Acuitas Therapeutics (www.acuitastx.com) is a private biotechnology company that specializes in the development of delivery systems for nucleic acid therapeutics based on lipid nanoparticles. The company partners with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and academic institutes to advance nucleic acid therapeutics into clinical trials and to the marketplace. The team works with partners to develop new therapies to address unmet clinical needs based on its internationally recognized capabilities in delivery technology. Acuitas Therapeutics has agreements in place with several partners to use its proprietary lipid nanotechnology in the development of COVID-19 vaccines. These include Pfizer/BioNTech for COMIRNATY^®, which has received full approval in the U.S. and Canada and is authorized for Emergency Use in Europe, the UK and many other countries.