Sure. I'll start with a great example in Newfoundland, since we're here. In the health area, a genomic study funded by Genome Canada about four years ago was able to identify a defective gene in Newfoundland families. Males between the ages of 40 and 45 were just dropping dead of heart failure. Now, because of this work's real impact, there is a defibrillator in the chest of over 100 males who are walking around in Newfoundland and whose life is being saved. In fact, all of these defibrillators have been activated over the last year or so.
These are the types of things we will see more and more of, in the cancer area and in the area of adverse drug reactions. There is real, tangible benefit coming out of these studies.
In terms of economics and real job creation you were talking about, those are nascent. As I said, we have now created 24 companies. A lot of them are based on the technology area, for things like new diagnostic tools, new machines for doing high-end mass spectometry, or machines for isolating DNA from different sources, including, for example, the oil sands. You wouldn't naturally link genomics with oil sands, but in fact the microbial communities that live in the oil sands, if manipulated correctly—and this is not genetic manipulation but just understanding how those communities work from a genomic standpoint—can facilitate the extraction of oil from the oil sands.
Also on the remediation side, there are a lot of projects on the bioremediation of mining sites. This is big environmental stuff, and I believe a lot more companies will be created on these interfaces between the environmental studies and the genomics area. It's at these interfaces that new companies are going to be created. We've started. We've created 24 companies. We've done over 25 licensing agreements with larger companies. Companies are coming forward, and I'm very interested in this public-private sector divide we have in Canada. I'm very interested, because I believe we can play the role of that interface.
Our job is designing programs. We can design programs that bring the public and private sectors together and get this innovation pipeline to correct the deficiencies that exist. Everybody in Canada today knows that we have great science but there is a lack of the innovative pipeline, which is something we need to change.