On November 14th, the Globe and Mail hosted the Biomedical Innovation Summit, sponsored by Novo Nordisk. The half-day event focused on how to grow Canada’s strengths in the biomedical sector and included keynote presentations from Jason Field, President & CEO of Life Sciences Ontario (LSO) and Michael Hyatt, a technology investor and entrepreneur.
PRiME’s Director, Shana Kelley, presented during the discussion on “Leveraging Canadian Strengths: Taking Stock of Our Biomedical Assets”. With her vast experience in the U.S. and Canada, and in both academia and the start-up space, Dr. Kelley made several key points regarding critical areas for focus. These included highlighting the disparity between the volume of high-impact Canadian research in the life sciences versus the limited number of commercialization success stories. As a solution, she suggested that a sharpening of the focus on translating Canadian research, with PRiME being one example of how to foster collaboration and create a translational environment in academia.
Along with the other presenters, which included Andrew Casey, President of BIOTECanada, Kelley highlighted the lack of government funding for Canadian startups as a key roadblock limiting company creation in biotech. She highlighted one funding program that works well in the U.S., the NIH Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. With successful examples of companies with SBIR funding (eg. Illumina) and commercialization programs such as I-Corp that can provide advice to benefit early stage companies, there are many aspects of the model that could prove useful to Canadian researchers.
With speakers from Novo Nordisk Canada, Bloom Burton & Co., Zymeworks, and Lumira Ventures, the second panel discussion, entitled “Commercialization in Focus: Building blocks of a thriving ecosystem” continued to build on the themes of collaboration and investment required to grow our biotech ecosystem. Other models discussed included venture philanthropy and tax incentives for Canadian citizens who have built their expertise in the biotech area to return home and pass on their knowledge here.
With a diverse audience of over 300 including representatives from the government, investors, entrepreneurs and researchers, the Biomedical Innovation Summit provided much food for thought. A few major issues facing Canadian researchers were universally identified by the community to which the speakers provided some insightful approaches to solving.
