Banting and Best Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship Banting and Best Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship The Banting and Best Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship is an initiative of the University of Toronto which facilitates business mentorship and the development of commercially viable innovations. The goal of the Centre is to foster start-up companies by supporting new ideas as they are developed and then during the incubation phase on through commercialization. The centre was launched in September, 2012, in the Banting and Best buildings on College Street, Toronto. The 50,000 square foot Centre was named after Frederick Banting and Charles Best, co-discoverers of insulin, a treatment for diabetes
Frederick Banting In 1923, the Canadian Parliament granted him a Life Annuity of $7,500. In 1928 Banting gave the Cameron Lecture in Edinburgh. He was a member of numerous medical academies and societies in Canada and abroad, including the British and American Physiological Societies, and the American Pharmacological Society. In 1934 he was knighted as a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) and became an active Vice-President of the Diabetic Association (now Diabetes UK). In May, 1935 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 2004, Banting was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.