杏吧原创

Vancouver

BRITISH Columbians are used to living far from the traditional power centres of Canada. After all, people in Vancouver are farther from Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa than Londoners are from Moscow. And many Vancouverites like it that way. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a bit of a frontier attitude,鈥� says Angus Livingstone, managing director of the University of British Columbia鈥檚 university-industry liaison office. 鈥淵ou actually get out there and start to make things happen.鈥�

And in Vancouver, possibly the most dynamic of Canada鈥檚 biotech clusters, things are indeed happening. Of perhaps two dozen biotech companies that are earning profits worldwide, Vancouver claims two, both spawned by research at UBC. The university leads all Canadian universities in number of research patents. And Livingstone鈥檚 office is among the best in the country at moving research into the marketplace, says Alan Bernstein, president of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the federal government鈥檚 funding agency for biomedical research.

It鈥檚 set to get even better. With support from the federal and provincial governments and private industry, the university is launching a new initiative, the Centre for Drug Research and Development. Its aim is to help academic researchers develop their discoveries to the point where they can enter the rough and tumble of the commercial world. The centre will offer lab space, experienced managers and money to develop potential drugs for clinical trials. Itself a start-up, the centre is trying to pull together the CAN$60 to 80 million (US$50 to 65 million) needed to operate for five to seven years, says CEO Natalie Dakers, an industry veteran and a founder of successful biotech firm Neuromed, a UBC spin-off.

For early-stage companies, the centre will meet a critical need. Since the biotech crash of 2001, venture capital firms around the world have been more cautious with their money, says Dakers, and many are shunning early-stage firms to invest in mature companies with products closer to the market.

Both Dakers and Livingstone expect plenty of interest from scientists aiming to commercialise their research. With the old guard now retiring, the university is undergoing a huge influx of faculty, with over 700 new faces in the last five years. These younger researchers tend to be more entrepreneurial and are more likely to test the waters with a biotech company, says Livingstone. At the Michael Smith Laboratories, UBC鈥檚 centre for biotechnology research, for example, most faculty are involved in a biotech company in some way, says Terrance Snutch, a neuroscientist at the labs and Daker鈥檚 co-founder of Neuromed.

UBC also houses the world鈥檚 largest research centre on spinal cord injury. With 55 faculty and over 300 staff, the International Collaboration on Repair Discoveries focuses on improving quality of life for people with spinal cord injuries, in parallel with trying to cure paralysis. ICORD works closely with the Rick Hansen Man in Motion Foundation, named after the paraplegic man who wheeled himself around the world in the 1980s to raise money for spinal cord research. Over the past 20 years, Hansen has raised nearly CAN$200 million in Canada alone, much of which goes to an endowment that supports ICORD鈥檚 research. Next spring, ICORD plans to break ground on a building big enough to house all its researchers and provide facilities for spinal cord patients as well.

聯Of two dozen biotech companies earning profits worldwide, Vancouver claims two聰

ICORD鈥檚 new building will not be far from Vancouver鈥檚 other research heavyweight. The BC Cancer Agency provides both patient care and research for the province. It employs more than 600 people in its research arm, which operates on a CAN$65 million annual budget covering every area from radiation and chemotherapy to cancer genetics and stem cell research.

One of the cancer agency鈥檚 biggest departments, and its most important contributor to the city鈥檚 research scene, is its Genome Sciences Centre. This is Canada鈥檚 largest genomics centre and one of the largest in the world. Much of its focus is on deciphering the genetic changes that occur as cells become cancerous. However, the centre鈥檚 director Marco Marra also collaborates on other genomics-related research, and the centre has taken on the genomes of everything from the cow to Atlantic salmon to the SARS virus, which its researchers sequenced just a few weeks after the disease surfaced two years ago.

All this research activity and buzz has many observers looking forward to a vigorous future for Vancouver鈥檚 biotech industry. 鈥淲e see the industry in a very good place,鈥� says Karimah Es Sabar, executive director of the trade association BC Biotech. 鈥淚t鈥檚 what we do with it now that鈥檚 the key.鈥�

Winnipeg

At first glance, this remote, windswept prairie city seems an unlikely pretender to the title of Biomed City, but that is the goal an ambitious group of researchers has set for their city.

Their plan is to build on Winnipeg鈥檚 present-day strength as Canada鈥檚 leading centre for research into infectious diseases. The city is already home to Canada鈥檚 National Microbiology Laboratory (NML), which features the country鈥檚 only biosafety-level-4 microbiology facility, the highest level of containment for research on highly infectious and deadly human diseases such as Ebola. It also hosts the nation鈥檚 equivalent laboratory dealing with animal diseases such as BSE and foot and mouth disease.

With the nearby University of Manitoba offering the country鈥檚 largest academic centre of disease research, the opportunities for cooperation are huge. 鈥淲e鈥檝e got a critical mass of people here now that makes it very attractive,鈥� says Frank Plummer, scientific director-general of the NML. For example, when SARS appeared in 2003, scientists at the lab worked together to lead the world in identifying the virus and extracting its genome for sequencing.

Canada鈥檚 decision a decade ago to build a level-4 facility was a controversial one, since no native diseases require such expensive, sophisticated containment. And if it was merely kept in reserve, technical skills would get rusty. But with bioterror now high on the worry list of western governments, the Winnipeg lab is well positioned to take the lead in research on anthrax and other potential bioterror agents.

Virologists and vaccine specialists at the lab have kept their hand in by working on viruses such as influenza and haemmorhagic fevers. Earlier this year, Steven Jones and his colleagues at the lab, in collaboration with the US army鈥檚 infectious disease centre in Fort Detrick, Maryland, announced they had developed vaccines that protected monkeys against three deadly viruses: Ebola, Marburg and Lassa fever. Human trials are expected within two years.

Eventually, Plummer hopes the lab鈥檚 high profile will draw biotech companies to the city. To boost the process, last year the University of Manitoba, together with the provincial and federal governments, launched the International Centre for Infectious Diseases. This non-profit corporation is intended to help commercialise Winnipeg鈥檚 infectious-disease research.

Certainly, researchers elsewhere are paying attention to what is happening in Winnipeg. In the past three months, Plummer has hired seven PhD scientists, including two wooed from the US. And many who come to Winnipeg are pleasantly surprised by their new city鈥檚 low cost of living and laid-back lifestyle. 鈥淧eople drive under the speed limit here,鈥� says Tim Booth, director of the lab鈥檚 viral diseases division, who moved to the city from Oxford. 鈥淭he weather鈥檚 awful in the winter,鈥� he adds. 鈥淏ut the summers are marvellous 鈥� you don鈥檛 want to miss a minute.鈥�

Montreal

Montreal is often described as the most European of North American cities, where hard-nosed commercialism is tempered by a distinct taste for the good life. 鈥淢ontreal has always been the crossroads between Europe and North America,鈥� says Paul Fortin, acting executive director of the Biotechnology Human Resource Council in Ottawa. 鈥淎 lot of European companies interested in breaking into North America find that Montreal is an ideal location.鈥� And American companies looking to expand internationally have long used the city as a bridge.

The result is a conurbation where Big Pharma鈥檚 footprints sink deep. Merck, Pfizer, Wyeth, Abbott, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Schering and Novartis, among others, all have research facilities, production centres or both here. Merck is the largest and employs over 1600 people in its research and production plant. The province of Quebec provides a powerful incentive to keep companies there: the medical-care system will pay for brand-name drugs for 15 years after their introduction, even after their patents expire and cheaper generics become available.

Many drug companies in Canada and the US look to Montreal for the early stages of clinical testing of new drugs, during which a company must verify that the drug behaves as expected in the human body and is not toxic. Most such tests get farmed out to contract research organisations that maintain their own quasi-hotel, quasi-hospital research compounds. Several large contractors, such as MDS Pharma Services, operate in Montreal, and Quebec boasts almost a third of all early-stage clinical research beds in North America.

With four universities and 27 public hospital research centres, Montreal also hosts a booming public research sector in life sciences, with over 9000 employees. McGill University鈥檚 Montreal Neurological Institute anchors a world-class neuroscience research community. At the University of Montreal, the Institute for Research on Immunology and Cancer and the nanotechnology research group have attracted several prominent researchers from around the world. And the federal government鈥檚 Biotechnology Research Institute focuses most of its attention on biomanufacturing medical research, such as sequencing the genome of the pathogenic yeast Candida albicans and working out the structure of several bacterial virulence factors.

Although Quebec has been aggressive in promoting a 鈥淔rench-first鈥� language policy for businesses in the province, few seem to see it as a problem within the biotech research industry. 鈥淭he language of science can be pretty international,鈥� says Fortin. 鈥淚n the cafeteria you鈥檒l hear people speaking in Mandarin, English and French.鈥�

Toronto

Biotech companies tend to gravitate to suburban industrial parks where rents are cheaper and space is plentiful. Not so in Toronto, where the hottest action is in the heart of the city. 鈥淲e鈥檙e right in the downtown core, wedged between the University of Toronto and the financial district, almost beside City Hall,鈥� says Greg Hines, CEO of Tm Bioscience, a maker of DNA-based diagnostic tests including one for cystic fibrosis, the first-ever genetic test for a disease to win marketing approval in the US. Careful planning has kept his rent costs at suburban levels, yet his company enjoys all the benefits of being in the midst of Canada鈥檚 financial centre.

鈥淲hen I want to raise $5 or $10 million, I don鈥檛 even have to get into a car,鈥� says Hines. 鈥淚 can throw my laptop over my shoulder, walk out the front door, and go visit virtually all the institutional investors.鈥�

That accessibility is a big plus in today鈥檚 tight capital markets, because venture capitalists like to keep a close eye on the companies they invest in, especially in risky industries like biotech. 鈥淚t matters now more than it used to,鈥� says David Shindler, former CEO of Milestone Medica, a venture-capital firm based in Toronto.

Downtown offers other attractions as well. The University of Toronto, Canada鈥檚 largest research university, and six of Toronto鈥檚 nine teaching hospitals are all there. Builders are at work on over half a billion dollars鈥� worth of biomedical research facilities, including the new Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research, scheduled for completion next year.

Just across the street, the first tenants are moving into the new Medical and Related Sciences (MaRS) Centre. Designed by a partnership of government, university and industry as an incubator for fledgling biotech companies, the building will contain not just the companies鈥� labs and offices, but also patent lawyers, venture capitalists and pharmaceutical representatives 鈥� in short, all the expertise a nascent company needs to be successful. 鈥淭hat provides a very, very critical missing link for the Toronto community,鈥� says Matt Buist, manager of biotech business development for the city.

聯When I want to raise $5 or $10 million, I don鈥檛 even have to get into a car聰

Buist and other industry watchers are hoping that MaRS will help Toronto match its research prowess with a comparable ability to spin off new biotech companies, something the city has failed to do so far. 鈥淚t鈥檚 providing a culture of innovation for Toronto,鈥� says Shindler. 鈥淭oronto has a really mighty R&D capacity. This is a way of helping to focus that.鈥�