Carl Hansen stands atop one of the five buildings his antibody development company, AbCellera Biologics Inc., occupies in Vancouver’s Mount Pleasant neighbourhood, taking in the view. He’s not looking at the mountains in the distance on this overcast day, but a teeming construction site right across the street.
A seven-storey building is nearly complete; next to it is a concrete shell that will reach nine levels when it’s done in 2026. This spring, AbCellera, one of Canada’s most prominent biotechnology startups, will start moving its hundreds of employees into the 380,000 square-foot complex.
Carl Hansen, CEO of AbCellera, at his Vancouver office in December, 2023.
With zero vacancy for lab space in greater Vancouver, the best option for a well-financed biotech is to build its own. That is what AbCellera is doing, developing the site of its new headquarters with two real estate companies, plus another 130,000-square-foot antibody manufacturing site 10 minutes away.
“We obviously have not done a great job scaling up biotechnology companies in Canada,” says Mr. Hansen, explaining that space shortages aren’t as much of an issue in biotech capitals Boston and San Francisco. “Here you literally have to bring this up from the ground.”
Two decades ago, Vancouver had a burgeoning life sciences scene led by QLT Inc. and Angiotech Pharmaceuticals Inc. By the 2010s both had foundered and the sector flatlined.
Now a group of bold companies led by AbCellera are determined to shock the local ecosystem back to life, even if they must lay the bricks themselves. They are bent on establishing Vancouver, and in turn Canada, as a major player in the US$1.5-trillion pharmaceutical industry, spurning our long-standing reputation as a country of top-notch medical researchers whose breakthroughs get commercialized elsewhere.
“I want to build a $100-billion company, but it has to be here, it can be here, and it will be here,” says Tamer Mohamed, chief executive officer of Aspect Biosystems, which occupies QLT’s former home and whose cutting-edge approach to curing diabetes landed it on Fast Company’s 2023 “Next Big Things in Tech” list. “To get there we have to be a bit un-Canadian about it.”
West
Metro
Vancouver
Vancouver
North
Vancouver
Burrard Inlet
Canary Medical
Stemcell Technologies Canada
Acuitas Therapeutics
New St. Paul’s Hospital
Clarius Mobile Health
Abdera
Therapeutics
Xenon
Pharmaceuticals
AbCellera
Vancouver
BC Children’s Hospital
Research Institute
Burnaby
Dr. Pieter Cullis lab/UBC
Gandeeva Therapeutics
Life Sciences Institute
Aspect Biosystems
BRITISH COLUMBIA
3 km
THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: OPENSTREETMAP
West
Metro
Vancouver
Vancouver
North
Vancouver
Burrard Inlet
Canary Medical
Stemcell Technologies Canada
Acuitas Therapeutics
New St. Paul’s Hospital
Clarius Mobile Health
Abdera
Therapeutics
Xenon
Pharmaceuticals
AbCellera
Vancouver
BC Children’s Hospital
Research Institute
Burnaby
Dr. Pieter Cullis lab/UBC
Gandeeva Therapeutics
Life Sciences Institute
Aspect Biosystems
BRITISH COLUMBIA
3 km
THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: OPENSTREETMAP
West
Metro
Vancouver
Vancouver
North
Vancouver
Burrard Inlet
Canary Medical
Stemcell Technologies Canada
Acuitas Therapeutics
New St. Paul’s Hospital
Clarius Mobile Health
Abdera
Therapeutics
Xenon
Pharmaceuticals
AbCellera
Vancouver
BC Children’s Hospital
Research Institute
Burnaby
Dr. Pieter Cullis lab/UBC
Gandeeva Therapeutics
Life Sciences Institute
Aspect Biosystems
BRITISH COLUMBIA
3 km
THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: OPENSTREETMAP
Vancouver is already Canada’s fastest-growing biotech centre, with 8,000 jobs added over the past 10 years, up to nearly 20,000, while the number of businesses in B.C. grew by 26.5 per cent from 2018 to 2021. The city benefits from a tight-knit group of universities, agencies, institutes, associations, funders, academics and founders working together to build startups and a supportive ecosystem – including funding to expand training, and capacity to conduct drug trials and manufacture locally. That degree of co-ordination is rare in Canada.
The provincial government is on board as well. “This sector is so aligned in what they want to do,” says Brenda Bailey, B.C.’s Minister of Jobs, Economic Development and Innovation, whose 2023 biomanufacturing and life sciences strategy was heavily influenced by industry association Life Sciences BC. “There’s something very special happening and we definitely want to keep that going and support it.”
“Vancouver probably has the critical mass of talent, companies, capital and technology to put it in the top 10 globally” of biotech centres despite lacking Toronto and Montreal’s Big Pharma branch locations, says Brian Bloom, CEO of Toronto life sciences underwriter Bloom Burton & Co. “When it comes to the true discovery biotech companies that can turn into integrated biopharmas, nothing comes close to Vancouver.”
But for Vancouver to become a global pharma capital, the challenges go beyond real estate. Most Canadian investors barely notice we have a life sciences sector. Promising domestic companies skip Canadian exchanges to list in New York, and health care accounts for a sliver of the TSX. Only a handful of Canadian venture capitalists back biotech; our institutional investors largely ignore it.
Most Canadian drug developers sell out or fail. Those with promise often hire leaders to run the businesses from the U.S. and end up looking like American companies with Canadian researchers. Consolidation has made Big Pharmas bigger, and upstarts making a run for greatness, as QLT and Angiotech tried to do, must contend with impatient investors, intrusive activists and class action lawsuits when things go awry. Foreign giants feast on our discoveries and startups: the world’s two most valuable drug companies, Eli Lilly & Co. and Novo Nordisk, built core franchises around insulin, discovered here.
“Perhaps the dream of creating a sustainable and strong biotech industry in Canada is unrealistic,” Julia Levy, former CEO of now defunct QLT, lamented in her 2020 autobiography.
But, for many, that dream is still alive.
Abi Coman-Walker beams with house pride as she gives a tour of Acuitas Therapeutics Inc.’s new office on the University of British Columbia campus. It’s a stylish 22,000-square-foot space that pays homage to the land it occupies, done up in nature-inspired blue, green and salmon colours, accented by red oak slats, mounted carved Coast Salish paddles, a mural by a local Indigenous artist and rented West Coast paintings. Lest anyone forget this is the home of a drug company, molecular designs abound, including overhead LED ring lights and lab floor patterns that look like bonded atoms.
This look doesn’t come cheap – the company put $5-million-plus into the office and lab – but its leaders wanted to impress visitors, says Ms. Coman-Walker, the chief operating officer, and a former HSBC executive who joined in 2021. “We had to have that ‘wow factor,’ to represent what Acuitas can do and the quality we’re able to operate at.”
Acuitas Therapeutics Inc. cofounder Pieter Cullis was among the entrepreneurial academics from the University of British Columbia inspired by the breakout success of San Francisco’s genetic engineering pioneer Genentech.
Four years ago Acuitas had 20 people, a smaller space in the building and no PR person. Now it has 60 and sponsors local events. Co-founder Pieter Cullis, a UBC biochemistry professor, is regularly cited as a potential Nobel Prize winner.
It took a pandemic to revive interest in Vancouver’s biotech scene. Acuitas’s lipid nanoparticle technology proved to be an essential tool to deliver Pfizer/BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine into the body’s cells, and billions of people were injected with Canadian science. Privately held Acuitas doesn’t share financial data, but it generated “more than tens of millions of dollars” in annual revenue from COVID-19, CEO Thomas Madden has said – enough for the renos.
COVID-19 also gave AbCellera the chance to put its antibody discovery technology to the test. AbCellera had participated in U.S. government programs in the 2010s to develop rapid drug responses to future pandemics. Then one came.
By February, 2020, AbCellera had obtained the blood sample of a recovered COVID-19 patient. Using its platform, which combines protein engineering, microfluidics and artificial intelligence, AbCellera quickly discovered an antibody capable of treating patients. By December, the company and partner Eli Lilly had regulatory clearance to market the drug, bamlanivimab, and AbCellera raised US$555-million in the largest initial public offering by a Canadian biotech.
For its quick work, AbCellera earned nearly US$1-billion in royalties and net profits of US$431-million from 2020 through 2022. Now it is out to prove its pandemic hit was no fluke. AbCellera has partnership deals with 46 companies to discover antibodies for an array of ailments, including cancer and dermatitis, and is developing its own drugs.
Other local emerging stars are focused outside infectious diseases. Xenon Pharmaceuticals Inc., Canada’s most valuable publicly traded biotech, is developing a drug that reduces epileptic seizures and may work to treat depression. Cancer antibody developer Zymeworks Inc., once Canada’s most valuable biotech, is on the rebound after a few setbacks. Vancouver-founded kidney drug developer Chinook Therapeutics Inc. sold last year to Novartis AG for US$3.2-billion.
Aspect Biosystems, meanwhile, 3-D prints synthetic tissues composed of living cells and hydrogel polymers, which can be implanted in humans with impaired pancreases or livers, replacing the functions of the organs. After proving its implants could treat diabetes in rodents, Aspect signed a development deal with Novo Nordisk in 2023 worth up to US$2.6-billion.
Vancouver has two venture capital-backed startups in the hot area of radiopharmaceuticals, developing drugs that target and nuke cancer cells: Alpha-9 Oncology Inc. and Abdera Therapeutics Inc. The region also has several medical device makers, including Canary Medical Inc., led by ex-Angiotech CEO Bill Hunter, which makes AI-powered technology used in knee and hip replacements to monitor postsurgery effectiveness.
Allen Eaves, CEO and founder of Stemcell Technologies Canada Inc., which produces media and tools used to discover drugs. The company made $523-million in revenue in 2023, and has bought two companies in 2024.
The biggest of all, Stemcell Technologies Canada Inc., produces media and tools used to discover drugs. The industry supplier has 2,500 employees, made $523-million in revenue in 2023, and has bought two companies in 2024. When 83-year old CEO and founder Allen Eaves, who has never raised equity financing, is asked during a visit to his head office if he would ever sell, he replies: “I don’t need an exit strategy. I’m going to keep growing the company forever.”
All of the above, plus QLT, Angiotech and other past startups including AnorMED Inc. and Cardiome Pharma Corp., have something in common: the University of British Columbia. All were founded by professors and students at Western Canada’s largest university. No other Canadian institution comes close to playing such a central role in a regional innovation ecosystem nor has such a prolific set of academics-turned-entrepreneurs. UBC’s leaders are keen to expand upon that legacy.
“We’ve benefited from significant government funding,” says Peter Zandstra, director of UBC’s School of Biomedical Engineering. “One way that it’s our responsibility to give back is through company creation.”
Vancouver’s life sciences scene dates to the first biotech boom in the early 1980s. UBC had the key ingredient: entrepreneurial academics inspired by the breakout success of San Francisco’s genetic engineering pioneer Genentech, which went public in 1980 and created blockbuster treatments ranging from growth hormones to breast cancer drug Herceptin. Those included Dr. Levy and her QLT co-founders, Dr. Cullis, future Nobel Prize winner Michael Smith and Michael Hayden, a co-founder of Xenon.
“My main influence was Genentech,” says Dr. Cullis, a spry 78-year-old with wild white hair who is UBC’s most prolific founder, sitting in his campus office at UBC’s Life Sciences Institute. Before he heard about them, he says, he hadn’t considered that he could build startups around his discoveries.
Toronto and Montreal also produced biotechs, but Vancouver had several advantages, starting with risk-tolerant investors. B.C. offered tax credits for angel investors, and local cowboy capitalists accustomed to backing speculative junior miners saw a similar risk-reward bet in biotech. “If you think in the abstract of risk, geo-exploration is the same thing,” involving observing, drawing assumptions and “drilling a lot to test your hypothesis,” says Vancouver venture capitalist Nancy Harrison.
Mining financier Ray McLean, who knew little about biotech, wrote a $1-million cheque to QLT in its early years to keep it afloat. He made a windfall return and backed more biotechs. Vancouver’s notoriously dodgy, now defunct, Vancouver Stock Exchange was an ideal platform to finance young biotechs, including QLT.
Another factor is Vancouver’s natural beauty. It may sound clichéd, but many academic founders came or chose to stay for that reason. When Acuitas co-founder Dr. Madden, a Brit who had multiple fellowship offers, visited in mid-1980 “I thought, ‘Oh my god, it’s a paradise,’” he says. He chose UBC, studied under Dr. Cullis and they launched several companies.
That pull turned Vancouver into an antibody hot spot. AbCellera’s Dr. Hansen moved here because his Vancouver-born wife wanted to come home. Researchers at UBC spinout ImmGenics Pharmaceuticals Inc. didn’t want to move when a California company bought their antibody startup in 2000, so the buyer built them a research facility in Burnaby and sent American executive Michael Gallo to run it. He fell in love with B.C., too, and stayed. When Amgen bought ImmGenics’s parent in 2006 it kept the B.C. facility; it is now the pharma giant’s antibody discovery centre. Mr. Gallo and early ImmGenics employee Paul Kang left in 2007 to start another Vancouver antibody discovery shop. ImmGenics co-founder John Babcook sold his next startup to Zymeworks in 2016, giving it an antibody discovery platform.
QLT’s notoriety also influenced other UBC academics. Pharmaceutical science professor Helen Burt says she heard Dr. Levy speak at a seminar “and I thought, ‘I want to be her.’” Dr. Burt later collaborated with Mr. Hunter, then a medical student, to create Angiotech’s flagship drug-eluting stent.
Dr. Thomas Madden, President & CEO of Acuitas Therapeutics, sits in his new and expanded lab space at the University of British Columbia.
UBC founded the University-Industry Liaison Office (UILO) in 1984 to help commercialize campus discoveries; by 1997 the school had spun out 71 companies and held equity stakes worth $5.6-million. That year the National Research Council found UBC accounted for more than one-fifth of Canadian university spinoffs. The Association of University Technology Managers ranked UBC in the top three schools in North America for creating companies in 1996; it stayed in the top 10 for years.
When François Bénard moved to Vancouver from Sherbrooke, Que., in 2008 to head nuclear medicine at UBC and build a radiopharmaceutical clinical program at BC Cancer, he discovered that founding medical science companies “was part of the culture and something we could do.” He later founded Alpha-9, which raised US$75-million in 2022, and says he might start another company.
UBC’s leaders embraced the school’s reputation for translating medical discoveries into businesses, including David Strangway, president from 1985 to 1997, and successor Martha Piper, who pushed the Chrétien government to direct substantial research and innovation funds to universities after vanquishing the deficit. Ottawa responded with an innovation-funding body to help universities construct labs and buildings. UBC placed first in federal funding competitions in 2000 and 2002 and second in 2004.
The ensuing building boom plus an influx of researchers financed by Ottawa transformed UBC; one of those buildings houses the late Dr. Smith’s lab, where Dr. Hansen founded AbCellera. The university’s sponsored research income expanded more than fivefold from 1999 to 2022 and it now ranks second behind the University of Toronto, up from sixth in 2000. UBC is also the top recipient of health and medical research funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
That base helped UBC’s entrepreneurial spirit endure even as the first medical spinoffs petered out. In the mid-2000s, several academics – including Dr. Cullis, Dr. Burt, QLT co-founder David Dolphin, and UILO head Angus Livingstone – founded the Centre for Drug Research and Development to provide space and support for UBC biotechs. The centre merged with Montreal’s Neomed Institute to become the pan-Canadian adMare BioInnovations, still based at UBC. It has launched 30 companies.
Still, dean of medicine Dermot Kelleher thinks UBC can do more to get researchers to start ventures. The Irish academic, a founder himself who previously led medical schools in London, Dublin and Singapore, has pushed since arriving in 2015 to bring in scientists with a knack for turning science into business.
One star recruit, Dr. Zandstra, gave up leadership of U of T’s Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering to move in 2016 to UBC. He subsequently founded UBC’s School of Biomedical Engineering and has wooed other leading academics to join – many working in areas “that are sufficiently advanced that they could also underpin new company creation,” the four-time co-founder says. The school’s sleek new $135-million building is set to open by 2025, featuring new labs and space for incubating ventures.
Another prominent arrival is structural biologist Sriram Subramaniam, who came from the U.S. National Institutes of Health. His research involves photographing proteins at an atomic level and building “molecular glues” to bond them into drugs.
Dr. Subramaniam was itching to be both an entrepreneur and academic as he searched for his next posting six years ago. He considered several offers but says “not one had the vision that UBC had” to support his dual ambitions. His $42-million research chair package included funding to buy and install a giant cryogenic electron microscope on campus. Dr. Subramaniam’s Burnaby-based startup Gandeeva Therapeutics raised US$40-million in 2021.
Other UBC academics who have eschewed the commercial realm are coming around. That includes Megan Levings, a childhood disease researcher at the BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute and faculty member at Dr. Zandstra’s school. Patenting discoveries wasn’t on her radar when she arrived in 2003. Now “it’s part of our academic mandate,” she says.
Dr. Megan Levings in her office at the B.C. Children’s Hospital Research Institute in Vancouver. Dr. Levings' research focuses on immune cells called regulatory T cells that are central to immune tolerance.
Her work focuses on genetically modifying white T blood cells that prevent autoimmune responses and applying them to transplants so they won’t be attacked by the immune system. Dr. Levings licensed out her first patented discovery a few years ago but she’s been frustrated by the company’s clinical strategy. If she makes another patentable breakthrough – the team is trying to create an off-the-shelf regulatory cell therapy – “it’s highly likely” her lab will spin out a company, Dr. Levings says, though she’s unsure if she would lead it.
Enabling UBC academics to think commercially is the goal of UBC’s Academy of Translational Medicine, created at Dr. Kelleher’s behest in 2019. His choice to lead it was intentional: celebrated UBC researcher Poul Sorensen, who discovered a gene mutation in 1998 linked to cancer.
“When we made the discovery we weren’t thinking about intellectual property” or that it could beget lucrative products, Dr. Sorensen says at his office at the BC Cancer Research Institute. He only realized it when Bayer AG offered to fly him business class to give talks about his discoveries in the 2010s. At the time, the company was co-developing a drug to target the gene defect and shrink a range of tumours, which it expects will generate €750-million in yearly peak sales.
All those flights “have been good for my Aeroplan,” he says drily. “If I had thought about it earlier I would have staked a claim. I thought, ‘Next time I do this, I’ll be smart.’”
His academy’s goal is to get ideas out of labs and into clinics via entrepreneurship. “We’ve realized a lot of academics aren’t clear on when something will be of interest” to the market, he says. One initiative is to teach academics what goes into filing investigational new drug applications with regulators. About 90 have taken the course.
“We’re really good at discovery science in Vancouver,” Dr. Sorensen says. “All the pieces are in place. Now, how do we up the game?”
Dr. Lana James, Co-founder & Senior Vice President, Operations and Innovation at Abdera Theraputics in Vancouver.
You couldn’t pick a better microcosm for Vancouver’s life science opportunities or challenges than Abdera Therapeutics Inc. Its founding story is a testament to UBC’s circular, collaborative environment. It was created at adMare by executives from other UBC spinouts. AbCellera then helped it discover antibodies suitable for delivering radioactive drugs to cancer cells, receiving equity and future payments in return.
Abdera secured former AbCellera lab space, but co-founder Lana Janes, QLT’s former chief patent officer, worries other startups left behind have nowhere to go. “Admare only has so much space.”
Real estate is a roadblock for many Vancouver biotechs. There is basically no move-in ready lab space – which costs more to build than other commercial real estate because floors must accommodate heavy loads and ceilings need to be tall for equipment and ventilation.
Property developers plan to build 2.9 million square feet of lab space in Greater Vancouver, nearly doubling the current amount and adding more such real estate than is planned in most other North American centres, according to real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle. That includes a new life science lab building at UBC and Lab 29, a similar project from developer Low Tide Properties in False Creek Flats where other life sciences projects are planned. And there’s also a new research centre slated to be built next to the new St. Paul’s Hospital, with B.C. covering more than half the $638-million cost.
A 3D printed scale model of the new St. Paul's Hospital currently being built in Vancouver. A new research centre is slated to be built next to the hospital, with the B.C. government covering more than half the $638-million cost.
But builders here are risk-averse and typically won’t start until projects are largely leased. U.S. builders often construct on spec. Projects take four years to complete, beyond the typical three-year funding cycle of startups, says Chris O’Neill, associate vice-president with Vancouver real estate advisory firm Floorspace. “Almost every developer I chat with asks about the life sciences ecosystem and what they can do to better attract companies,” he says. “My answer is: ‘Build it and they will come.’” Lab real estate, he says, has not kept up with demand and “we’re making it easier for decision makers to look south to invest and expand.”
With its real estate issues solved, Abdera may seem like a shining light of Vancouver biotech. But on closer inspection, it’s not a Vancouver company at all. Ms. Janes oversees drug discovery here but the rest of the seasoned senior team is in the San Francisco area. That includes CEO Lori Lyons-Williams, an ex-Allergan executive who had a strong profile in the U.S. and secured US$110-million in venture capital for Abdera.
“Our ambition was to hire the best CEO we could,” says adMare CEO Gord McCauley. “It’s a universe of maybe a dozen people. There were a couple of Canadian candidates but not of Lori’s calibre.”
Abdera’s later stage development and clinical trials will happen in the U.S. “given the amount of talent there to recruit from,” Ms. Janes says. Abdera even officially moved in 2023, reincorporating in Delaware.
Abdera is typical for a Canadian biotech: a cross-border blend, with discovery work done here while most leaders are in the U.S., where funding and clinical trial, manufacturing and go-to-market resources are plentiful. Canada lacks experienced executives who have led drug developers to market because few companies have made it. There are a lot of seasoned Canadian industry executives – but most have made their careers in the U.S. or Europe.
The biggest investors are U.S. venture capitalists. They hire who they know from their U.S. networks, says Dr. Benard, whose Vancouver company Alpha-9 has a Boston-based CEO. They’re not driven by a higher ideal to build Vancouver’s ecosystem but to make a return and hire people who can achieve that. Boston and California have plenty of those. “There’s nothing inherently wrong with having a Canadian CEO,” says Ms. Janes. “It’s finding the person with that experience. The only way to get it is to have done it. We’re in a bit of a circle.”
Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal are all strong medical research centres. But the big economic impacts happen when drugs come to market. That will continue to benefit other countries if our biotechs keep looking like Abdera.
Jerel Davis has thought a lot about how Vancouver could become a pharma hub. The American venture capitalist moved here with his B.C.-born wife a decade ago to work for San Francisco-based Versant Ventures. He made a big return on Chinook – which also had a U.S. CEO – and has backed Abdera.
“The biggest issue,” he says, “is a lack of leadership talent that knows how to pull these stories together and get them financed. That’s the most critical thing to building an ecosystem. Vancouver is at a crossroads. It either loses its footing and goes back to not-as-robust an ecosystem, or harnesses this moment and becomes something greater than Vancouver has ever been. I believe in the latter. There’s never been this number or quality of strong companies and entrepreneurs.”
Dr. Allen Eaves, CEO of Stemcell Technologies Canada, examines a petri dish containing brain organoids grown from stem cells.
That crop – led by AbCellera, Acuitas, Aspect, Xenon and Stemcell – seem determined to build executive capacity here. Most of their leaders are based locally and some have recruited talent from across Canada, the U.S. and Ireland. Aspect and AbCellera are keen to manufacture locally, as Stemcell does already. The federal and B.C. governments have provided funding and other supports to build biomanufacturing capacity.
There are many hazards that could halt Vancouver’s growth as a biotech hub: a lack of talent, funding, physical capacity and the gravitational pull of the U.S. What isn’t lacking is a will to win.
Carl Hansen was a researcher with an idea 12 years ago. Prospective investors told him his startup wouldn’t work. Now he’s convinced AbCellera can be Canada’s first pharma giant.
“We have the best shot there’s ever been,” he says. His stock is down from its post-IPO peak and AbCellera cut 10 per cent of staff last fall. AbCellera won’t see anything close to its COVID-19 bounty for years; drug development usually takes a decade and chances of success are slim. But its COVID breakthrough made AbCellera an industrial darling: it is the top Canadian recipient of Ottawa’s Strategic Innovation Fund, receiving $400-million to date, plus $75-million from B.C. It has built a platform to solve problems others can’t. Its partnered drugs could deliver revenues if they work, and it is advancing its own drugs which, if successful, would be “worth multiples” of AbCellera’s value today, Mr. Hansen says.
“I don’t think we start nearly enough really great companies in Canada that begin with a big idea that could scale globally,” he says. “If you set it up to be a single, you’ll only hit a single. If you set it up to hit home runs, you have a chance of getting those. You can do this here.”
Clarius, Canary, Kardium lead class of promising Vancouver medical device makers
Greater Vancouver is not just home to many of Canada’s most valuable drug developers but also several promising medical device companies:
Dr. Oron Frenkel examines the shoulder of Mike Fraser with the Clarius HD3 Portable Ultrasound machine.
Clarius Mobile Health Corp. makes a portable, hand-held wireless ultrasound reader that looks like a cross between a smartphone and an electric razor, and incorporates artificial intelligence. It’s not sold like traditional heavy, expensive medical equipment to hospitals, but instead marketed directly to medical professionals as a pocket-sized, affordable personal tool they can take everywhere, like their stethoscope. The 150-person enterprise puts an emphasis on digital advertising, selling the device online for US$3,600, plus US$600-a-year to access its software.
Clarius makes the machines at its east Vancouver headquarters, enabling it to keep quality control high (returns amount to just 0.15 per cent of the 23,000 machines sold to date). Clarius was founded by French-born entrepreneur Laurent Pelissier in 2014, a year after he sold his previous ultrasound technology startup. It is led by veteran medical device industry executive Ohad Arazi. Revenue is running at an annualized rate of $40-million.
Kardium Inc. aims to disrupt the US$6-billion-plus market for treating atrial fibrillation (AF), an irregular heartbeat disorder and cause of strokes and heart failure. It combines existing approaches that treat different aspects of AF into an all-encompassing device that saves time and improves results. The key component is a 3 centimetre-diameter globe that looks like a miniature disco ball, with 122 golden, individually controlled electrodes. To start a procedure, the sphere is flattened, sheathed and inserted into a patient’s femoral vein. It is threaded up into the left atrium, where it is expanded to sphere form and maps the heart in high definition to pinpoint where the bad signals originate. It then zaps the problematic cells with high voltage pulses, which creates scar tissue that doesn’t conduct electricity, solving the problem.
The 17-year-old Burnaby, B.C., company was co-founded by former top executives of local printing technology company Creo Inc., and raised US$115-million in 2021 from Fidelity Management and Research and T. Rowe Price Associates. Kardium generated positive results from a clinical study of 69 patients in Europe and expects to complete a 200-patient study next March. The 350-person company hopes to get U.S. regulatory approval for sale of its devices later in 2025 to treat the most common form of AF, and intends to go public about a year after that, president Doug Goertzen says.
Canary Medical Inc. is the third venture for Bill Hunter, a pioneer of the local life sciences sector best known for founding heart stent maker Angiotech Pharmaceuticals Inc. Canary makes internet-connected medical devices, which are inserted in knee replacement hardware made by leading manufacturer Zimmer Inc., a minority investor. Canary’s devices collect data using sensor technology and transmit feedback digitally to patients and doctors about the recipient’s mobility and mechanics post-surgery. Canary’s device draws so little power they can collect and send 20 years of data before the battery runs out. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted Canary “breakthrough” status in 2021 for use in knee replacements (and for hip and shoulders a year later). Canary is gathering data from thousands of patients implanted with its technology, which it will use to build algorithms to make it more effective at identifying complications from the procedures including infections.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story misspelled the name of UBC researcher Poul Sorensen. A previous version also identified Dr. Pieter Cullis as a chemistry professor; he is a biochemistry professor. In addition, Life Sciences BC was incorrectly referred to as a lobby organization. This version has been updated.
Sean Silcoff