Panel Abstract:
Panelists will share their perspectives on the intellectual, social and economic impacts of federal investment in biotechnology research and engage delegates in discussion around the opportunities and challenges facing researchers and entrepreneurs pushing the development and introduction of new technologies, training the next generation of scientists and business leaders, creating and growing companies and improving health care for Canadians. Organized by the Canada Research Coordinating Committee, the panel invites discussion of the role that research funding agencies, academic institutions, business incubators, venture capital and the health care system play in the research-to-impact continuum.

The panel discussion focused on the challenges and opportunities in biotechnology to translate world-class Canadian scientific discoveries into domestic economic and social prosperity.

Summary of Conversations

The conversation centered on leveraging the nation’s world-class foundational research capabilities and talent in biotechnology to achieve better economic, social and health outcomes. Participants highlighted a significant gap in support for development between initial discoveries, such as those in genomics and gene-editing technologies, and successful domestic commercialization, resulting in the loss of Canadian intellectual property and opportunities for Canadian companies to scale up and create real benefits for the country. A key theme was the necessity of sustained, catalytic investment across the entire innovation ecosystem, from the lab bench to clinical trials, company formation and growth within Canada.. Related themes included the need for a cohesive national strategy, a cultural shift rewarding entrepreneurship,  increased venture capital pools, and better governance, collaboration, and data management to de-risk investment and foster public trust.

Take Away Perspectives / Current Status of Challenges

• Persistent Technology Loss: Canada sometimes acts as an “off-balance-sheet pipeline” for talent and technology for international companies, resulting in world-class discoveries being commercialized abroad, yielding limited residual economic or health benefits domestically.
• Critical Funding Barriers: There is a significant and consistent lack of cohesive, sustained funding for expensive downstream development, clinical studies, and commercial scale-up, which acts as a profound barrier to building anchor companies in Canada.
• Fragmented Ecosystem: The life sciences sector is fragmented across regions and organizations, hindering the development of homegrown, globally competitive pharmaceutical giants.
• Cultural Disincentives in Academia: The academic system is often geared toward rewarding individual success through publications and grants while viewing entrepreneurial activity as a “risky behavior” that is not sufficiently supported, celebrated, or formally credited by institutions.
• Lack of Scale-Up Capital: Domestic pools of venture capital are insufficient for the crucial “scale-up” stage of emerging companies, creating opportunities for foreign investors that reduce the country’s financial benefits and decision-making authority over its own intellectual property.
• Absence of a National Vision: The ecosystem suffers from the lack of a single, unifying, and consistent national strategy that spans the entire value chain, resulting in siloed government initiatives that fail to provide the long-term, predictable policy environment required for industry confidence.
• Fragmented Health Data: A further challenge is the lack of a cohesive national framework for managing and linking fragmented genomic and clinical data essential to fully realize the potential of AI and biological data for precision medicine.

Opportunities

• Implement a National Strategy: Establish a clear, unifying, and long-term national policy and vision that provides strategic, comprehensive support for the entire value chain—from basic discovery through to biomanufacturing and commercial impact.
• Sustain and Grow Investment: Significantly increase the overall funding “pie” with sustained, consistent support for the high-cost stages of development, including dedicated, ample funding for clinical trials and scale-up activities.
• Incentivize Domestic Scale-Up Capital: Introduce policies to incentivize institutional investors, such as pension funds, to dedicate a percentage of their assets for investment in domestic science and technology companies to foster scale-up and ensure  financial, employment and health benefits for Canada.
• Foster Cultural Change in Academia: Encourage a cultural shift within universities to formally recognize, reward, and support entrepreneurial activity and commercialization with the same institutional value as traditional metrics like publications and grants.
• Mandate Ecosystem Collaboration: Promote collaboration and alignment across the ecosystem—including academia, industry, granting councils, and provinces—to de-risk investment, leverage collective strengths, and move toward value-based, rather than zero-sum, competition.
• Create a Business-Friendly Environment: Create a stable, predictable, and business-friendly environment, utilizing financial and regulatory tools to incentivize industry investment and anchor manufacturing and commercial operations domestically.
• Address Public Procurement and Regulations: Modernize public procurement processes to better integrate domestic innovations into the healthcare system; and review policies to attach “financial hooks” or equity interest to early-stage government R&D funding to ensure a direct return on public investment.
• Modernize Health Data Infrastructure: Establish a comprehensive national data strategy to govern, link, and utilize fragmented genomic and clinical data, to  accelerate discovery and realize the promise of converged biology and AI.