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This marks our seventh Hot Button Issue and you might have noticed it looks somewhat different than past editions. For starters, in tallying your responses we wanted to keep it short and simple but more importantly we wanted to focus on the success stories in Canadian biotech. In our last hot-button survey story (March 2011), one message that caught our attention was that biotech needed to do a better job of selling itself, to dangle a few carrots at government rather than simply hounding government with its problems. As such, we placed less emphasis on the challenges the industry and the sector is facing. We found this approach to be more in line with the ideals of National Biotechnology Week. That’s not to say we didn’t include your concerns about the state of Canada’s biotech and life science sector or which areas needed improvement, but rather we focused on telling government why Canada needs to do a better job at supporting the industry. We broke our survey answers down into two different categories. In the first category, we lumped drug discovery, therapeutics, biomedical, and devices together under health sciences. In category two we combined agriculture, food, bioindustrial and environment as one.
Here’s what you, our readers, had to say:
Canada has world class facilities and personnel but the first question we asked was is Canada a world leader in your field of specialty? Despite approximately 72 per cent of respondents believing Canada is not a world leader in their field, a further 76 per cent believed Canada could, given the right support, be that leader. The majority of respondents said with the right financial support, a kinder investment climate and better business practices in general, Canada could be a global leader in their particular area of expertise.
Our readers also indicated that the biotech industry was benefitting from powerful partnerships and collaborations between universities and industry. These relationships are strengthened by government research dollars. Canada has a rich infrastructure of publicly funded hospitals, university research institutes, a network of Centres of Excellence and government laboratories which provide a strong and vibrant R&D base, and industry is starting to take advantage of these facilities. At the same time, industry is still in a state of neglect and Canada needs more progressive financing to make up for the lack of venture capital programs for Canadian biotech enterprises.
Many readers chose to focus on the areas of great success for Canada such as genomics, regenerative medicine and personalized medicine. Most agreed that Canadians are world leaders in these fields, boasting some of the world’s most prominent scientists. For example, the tissue culture media used to grow human embryonic and induced pluripotent stems cells that is currently made in Canada is considered the gold standard. In terms of regenerative medicine specifically, Canada has the infrastructure and scientific expertise as well as much of the medical expertise already in place to be a world leader. While on the industry side, companies like Stem Cell Therapeutics Corp and Stem Cell Technologies have assembled some of the most influential people in Canada to convert excellent research into products. The recent establishment of the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine should go a long way to confirming that Canada is serious about getting into the business of regenerative medicine.
As one reader pointed out, Genomics is gaining notoriety as a “critical element in the Canadian bio-economy and an essential aspect of our biotechnological prowess.” Canada is home to large-scale research and development projects in genomics that impact the life sciences. Moreover, the efforts of Canada’s national genomics organization, Genome Canada, has led to the creation of 20 companies since 2000.
Our readers agreed there is a need to continue to focus on the areas of genomics, personalized medicine and regenerative medicine because they have the greatest potential to reduce overall medical costs and improve the quality of life for patients, not to mention the potential creation of jobs.
Bioinformatics was another area our readers highlighted as a Canadian strength. In terms of bioinformatics and cheminformatics practitioners, serious inroads are being made in data management with the advancement of the Semantic Web and its relation to drug discovery. The Semantic Web (also known as the web of data) is a set of technologies used to make data available in a universally accessible format. This has become particularly popular in academia.
On the disease front, cancer remains a focal point and the need has never been greater. Diabetes, obesity and brain disease research are all also considered our strengths. There’s also great work being done in antiviral drug vaccines. Related to our strengths in therapeutics’, Canada has numerous success stories in the development of diagnostic tools.
Listing these successes reveals a telling fact, most of the success Canada is enjoying is happening at the academic level, it was a concern echoed by many of our respondents. While Canada is getting better at commercializing research and technology transfer (i.e. the development of commercialization entities such as MaRS Innovation, as well as the establishment of Centres of Excellence of Commercialization and Research such as the Centre for Drug Research and Development), more can still be done.
The Science, Technology and Innovation Council’s recently released the State of the Nation 2010 report shows that research and development performed by business in Canada is low by International standards. Many of readers felt this low ranking is due to several public policies related to commercialization of research that act as barriers to successfully transforming research into new innovative products. Essentially, Government understands how to support research but fails in understanding development. From an industry perspective, Government needs to know the role industry can play in creating jobs and value for our society. Industry champions favourable policies that will bring venture capital back to the table as well as policies that will encourage foreign subsidiaries to establish research and manufacturing centres in Canada. Moreover, because of the long product cycles and high costs of bringing new drugs and therapeutics to market (in many cases due to government regulations Health Canada, FDA, etc.), there is a definite need for more business friendly policies focused on manufacturing and the exportation of finished products.
From both an industry and academic perspective, patent protection is the most critical of all public policies, as intellectual property is the primary asset of any innovative company or scientist. Canada must ensure that it is home to a national patent protection regime that is equally as strong as those of our trading partners.
David Allan, currently a member of BIOTECanada’s Emerging Companies Advisory Board and former CEO of Canadian biotech YM Biosciences has long pushed for improvements to policies relative to biotech and the life sciences. He also emphasizes that it’s more than just funds that the industry is after. He’s also questioned why there is so much red tape to implement homegrown technologies. Loosely translated, would it not make more sense to use made in Canada products as opposed to importing them? “For as long as Canada avoids public policies to foster and promote the ‘demand side’ for scientific discoveries (i.e. development), then the ‘supply side’ (basic research Canada invests huge amounts in) will be seeds thrown into a desert. Development of basic research is quantifiably a huge economic driver, providing return on the investment already made by taxpayers in basic research (currently very close to zero return); providing jobs for graduates whose education taxpayers have paid for, focusing on developing manufacturing and exports of drugs and devices and replacing imports with home grown products, should be our priority,” he said.
Our readers were quick to add the tax system is good with programs such as Scientific Research and Experimental Development Program (SR&ED), but they are still waiting on some sort of government response on flow-through-shares, or something similar to the flow-through-shares model used in the energy and mining sectors to raise funds for exploration. Industry knows that flow through shares have the potential to give biotech investors the same juicy tax breaks and opportunities for lucrative returns that they have given investors in the energy and mining industries, it’s a message that they hope one day gets through to government.
In addition of calls to fine tune policy, many readers discussed the importance of promoting our success stories through a coordinated effort to reach the public in a more meaningful way.
As one respondent explained, “We need to speak more about our successes, they need to be profiled more. People must understand
why research costs so much, to temper expectations and at the same time, what the benefits of biotech are.”
Jan-Eric Ahlfors, president and CSO New World Laboroties Inc. went a step further with his answer: “The public needs to be aware of what biotech and life sciences has achieved so far (directly and indirectly) and what it could achieve in the future. The public needs to feel that these social and economic benefits are greater than the costs involved. The public also needs to be aware that Canada has not reaped most of the economic benefits due to inadequate financial support of mid-stage biotech companies and inadequate policies and incentives for latestage biotech companies, causing most of the promising and successful companies to be sold or moving out of Canada.”
Agriculture, Food, Environment and Industrial
Canada’s greatest strengths in non-health biotechnology are in forestry, aquatic sciences, environmental and animal sciences. We have a strong international reputation especially in the areas of agricultural, food, environment and industrial biotechnology.
Our readers were somewhat divided in their opinions as to whether we are global leaders in these fields but the consensus is good things are happening in terms of agriculture, food, environment and industrial biotechnology and it’s all tied to genomics.
In both Agriculture and food, genomics has played a significant role in the production of disease-free planting material, and assistance to genetic improvement. Specifically, our scientists and biotech companies have created drought-resistant crops, vaccines against food-borne pathogens, healthier fruit, and advanced animal production techniques and we are at the forefront in developing new crops to supply food, fuel and industrial feedstocks. We were also the first country even to grow biotech crops. Moreover, Canadian farmers have led the world in the adoption of many environmentally-friendly crops that reduce pesticide use and boost yields while biotechnology crop coverage in Canada covers 17 million acres.
Thanks to genomics, Canadian biotechnology has also made significant contributions to food safety, specifically in addressing microbial hazards, removing additives such as sodium and replacing with more nutritious substitutes.
On the bioindustrial side and still relative to ag-bio we are beginning to see the commercialization of hybrid chemistry and newer generation biofuels from Biomass, particularly cellulosic or lingo-cellulosic matter, which is available on a renewable or recurring basis, including trees and forestry feedstock.
While Canada’s genomic strengths has propelled it to its high standing in each of these fields, there is concern that it is losing its place as a leader. Generally, as is the case with health sciences, there is a lack of capital to sustain the industry. Several of our readers even commented that convincing funding agencies to get out of the therapeutic only perspective has been difficult, as well as getting them to recognize the importance of these biotechnology sub-sectors.
Readers were also concerned about how each of these sub-sectors have, at times, come under public scrutiny due to misinformation that seems to spread too easily. This is complicated at the public research level by interference from government on science dissemination, in addition to the private sector being guarded with its own proprietary inventions and technology. “We know we need to educate the media so that biotech reporting is accurate and interesting but in many cases government scientists are restricted by current government communications policies. These policies add delays that reduce our presence in media with subsequent negative impact on public awareness,” stated one reader who identified themself ironically as a government scientist.
When asked what they wanted from government, respondents didn’t ask for cash or funds, but improvement to the way these sectors of biotech are regulated, “It’s a case of Federal regulators will say one thing and provincial regulators will say another and these multiple levels of regulation increase our costs and stifle innovation.”
The Big Picture
Financial gain or loss is always a powerful message to bring to the public and Canada’s biotech industry certainly has a story to tell in both regards. The responses from Biotechnology Focus’ latest survey confirm Canada has the potential to be a world leader; the conclusion, biotech needs to do a better job conveying this message.
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