North America's largest urban innovation hub, on a 1913 hospital site

MaRS Discovery District

The old Toronto General Hospital building where insulin was first clinically tested became, nearly a century later, the anchor of a 1.5-million-square-foot innovation hub.

The MaRS campus sits on the 1913 site of Toronto General Hospital, where numerous clinical and research breakthroughs happened, including the first clinical testing of insulin and the discovery of heparin. The Medical and Related Sciences corporation — MaRS — was founded in 2000 as a non-profit affiliated with the University of Toronto, built to support the commercial development of research produced by the university.

North America's largest urban innovation hub

MaRS opened in 2005, built around the hospital's original building, now known as the Heritage Building. The complex has since expanded to include an Atrium, South Tower, Medical Discovery Tower and West Tower, growing to roughly 1.5 million square feet — described as one of the world's largest urban innovation hubs, anchored on the exact site where one of Toronto's most consequential medical discoveries first reached patients.

Sources

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Frederick Banting and Charles Best, who discovered insulin in Toronto in 1921

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