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? WE ASKED ? ? ? AND YOU RESPONDED:
Compiled by Shawn Lawrence
READERS RESPOND
The countdown is on for this, the ninth Canadian National Biotech Week celebration. In keeping up with the festivities, Biotechnology Focus continues to do its part in raising awareness around the sector by turning to you, our readers, for your feedback. Like our previous surveys, most of the questions that we posed to our readers focused on the success stories in the Canadian biotech and life science sector. However, some of our questions went a step further asking what our readers thought about Canada’s place on the global biotechnology stage. In tallying your responses we wanted to keep it short and simple. Our goal really was to encourage dialogue, to see what is and what isn’t going right within the sector, and most importantly, to encourage creative lines of thinking in the betterment of the sector collectively.
Generally speaking, the feedback we received was quite positive. For starters, we posed the question to our readers what was the biggest news story in the sector for 2012. Answers varied but the big one seemed to be re-energization of our venture capital ecosystem coupled with the rebound in financing. Particularly our readers said it was great to hear about new VC funds in the marketplace, where pharma companies such as Pfizer, Merck, GSK and Eli Lilly managed to launch new funds alongside VC partners such as Lumira Capital, Teralys Capital and others. Likewise, our readers noted that Canada’s business development bank, BDC, provided $20 million of the $150 million raised by
SEPTEMBER 2012 BIOTECHNOLOGY FOCUS 9
