Life Sciences

Ontario can help your company make a big difference in the world of healthcare.

One of North America's premier centres for life sciences, Ontario is the Canadian home for many of the world's most innovative companies in pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, advanced medical technologies, research and biomedical manufacturing.

We're investing billions annually in basic and applied research. Our products, technologies and systems are improving lives and healthcare delivery worldwide.

But there's much more to do.

Join us as we search for answers to some of the toughest questions facing healthcare today, and help us deliver more ground-breaking solutions to the global community.

Video: The Science of Life

Transcription:

OPENING GFX/ANIMATION 
TITLE:  THE SCIENCE OF LIFE Music up

NARRATOR:
It's an intriguing question. 
Why has Ontario emerged as a leading hub in the global Life Sciences industry?  
The numbers are certainly impressive:  More than 40,000 people are employed at over 900 companies, including international giants like GlaxoSmithKline, Roche, Johnson & Johnson, GE Medical Systems, Genzyme and Sanofi Pasteur.
And the province is also where world-leading companies like MDS, Apotex, Biovail and Trudell Medical were founded and continue to thrive. 
It all adds up to over 15-billion-dollars in annual revenues.
All of which makes Ontario one of the largest Life Sciences hubs in North America, and a major global player. (1)
So why Ontario?  Well, part of the answer can be found with a quick look back.

NARRATOR:
Ontario has a proud history of medical breakthroughs stretching back almost one hundred years.
Back in 1922, it was three researchers at the University of Toronto -  Banting, Best and Macleod - who discovered insulin, a discovery that has saved the lives of millions of diabetics.
In 1949, the world's first pacemaker was pioneered in Ontario.
The first stem cell discovery was made by James Till and Ernest McCulloch in 1963.  And the first cancer stem cell was discovered by John Dick in 1997.
Those discoveries and many, many more are part of a rich heritage.  And it's a heritage to build on. (2)

SUPER : Toronto, Ontario

SUPER : Mark Lievonen
President & CEO, Sanofi Pasteur Canada

We got our start in 1914 as Connaught Labs, and over the years we've been involved with the commercialization of insulin, the development of the Salk Polio vaccine, and more recently, combination vaccines, which involve improved ways of preventing Tetanus, Diphtheria, and Pertussis.  And in fact we have developed here in Ontario, we make it here and we export all over the world, a product called Pediacel and Pentacel which generates over a billion dollars of revenue.

NARRATOR:
Ontario remains at the forefront of vaccine development.  And if you want more proof, consider the work being done by a company called Bioniche.

SUPER: Belleville, Ontario

NARRATOR:
Bioniche is developing a breakthrough vaccine for animals that promises to save untold numbers of human lives.

SUPER: Graeme McRae:
Chairman, President & CEO, Bioniche Life Sciences

This is a bacteria called E.coli 0157: H7 that is very commonly found now in cattle. It's harmless to cattle but deadly to humans. So as few as ten bacteria can kill a...kill a child, or kill an elderly person, whereas in the cow, cows can produce millions and millions of bacteria with no ill effect. So if we can vaccinate the cattle we would protect the human population by protecting the meat.

SUPER : Guelph, Ontario

NARRATOR:
Research labs across Ontario continue to make remarkable breakthroughs and in some cases very surprising ones.  These tobacco plants, for example, are growing into important allies in the fight against cancer.

SUPER : Professor Chris Hall:
Canada Research Chair Recombinant Antibody Technology

It's ironic because, as you know, smoking tobacco causes a lot of cancer in people and now we're actually raising an antibody to help people that get cancer by using tobacco.

NARRATOR:
The antibody these tobacco plants are being tricked into producing is contained in a drug called Herceptin, a key weapon in the fight against breast cancer.

Professor Chris Hall :

It's a real saviour for women....And we're hoping to make a generic type of Herceptin actually called a biosimilar.
Plants as bioreactors are considerably much less expensive than traditional bioreactors.  So this will really reduce the cost of a lot of antibody based drugs.
And we think this technology for producing new complicated protein drugs in plants is something that we'll be doing in Ontario for the next 100 to 200 years.

SUPER : Kanata, Ontario

NARRATOR:
The study of DNA is one of the foundations of 21st century life sciences.  But collecting samples for research usually means drawing blood.  That can be a very difficult process, especially on a large scale.  Now thanks to an Ontario scientist there's a simple if somewhat inelegant solution.

SUPER : DR. Chaim Birnboim:
Founder, DNA Genotek,

You spit  'cause we're collecting the DNA from the saliva, and I will demonstrate just a little bit here.
And so we mix it like this, that DNA is starting to come out of the solution. That little blob, that's almost pure DNA.

SUPER : Ian Curry :
President & CEO, DNA Genotek,

Yah, Dr. Birnboim is an amazing guy.
And through his work there he really determined that people were gonna start doing very large scale studies to try to figure out DNA. And he realized there's really no way they're gonna be able to collect enough samples unless a non-invasive way of collecting samples is invented..
And so if you're a researcher in the UK, for example, but the disease you're studying is prevalent in Africa, you need to go to Africa to collect the samples. If you wanna go there and collect blood, you're gonna have lots of problems. If you wanna go there with Oragene you're not gonna have any problems 'cause it's easy to collect the samples, people can do it themselves, you don't need trained people, you don't need to carry around needles, you don't need to carry around refrigeration equipment, which you can imagine in Africa would be difficult.

SUPER : Mississauga, Ontario

NARRATOR:
Bringing new biopharmaceuticals to market is a complex process and some may not have the resources to develop these new drugs.  Now, one Ontario company is offering them a unique solution.

SUPER : Thomas Wellner:
President & CEO, Therapure Biopharma

For our clients, we provide services that range from formulation development, process development services, analytical services, all the way through to filling, finishing, and actually putting their product into a container and then into a box and then distributing it to wherever it is they need it.

NARRATOR:
Ontario is at the leading edge of a broad range of new and promising treatments, not just pharmaceuticals.  Take prostate cancer for example.  It's estimated that 1 in 7 men will develop prostate cancer during his lifetime and that one in 27 will die from it. (3)

SUPER : Toronto, Ontario

NARRATOR:
Fortunately, it's often treatable if caught early.  But standard treatments can cause unfortunate side effects.

SUPER : Paul Chipperton :
CEO, Profound Medical

What's unique about Profound's technology and the procedure is we're able to treat prostate cancer non-invasively and we do so using a modern imaging technique.
Being able to do it non-invasively I'm sure is extremely exciting for the patients. When you understand and appreciate that the typical technique is a 3-hour fully invasive radical prostatectomy surgery, then yeah. What we're trying to do, which is a 30-minute non-invasive treatment of the same organ is obviously somewhat appealing to both investors, clinicians, and very much so the patients.

SUPER : Kingston, Ontario

NARRATOR:
Any doctor will tell you that the better the diagnosis the better the treatment they can offer.  This is particularly true with brain injuries and strokes.  This robot offers unique insights into a patient's brain that can help locate damaged areas.

SUPER : Dr. Stephen Scott :
Chief Researcher, BKIN Technologies

I'm about to be wheeled in to the KINARM Exoskeleton. This is our original robot that has been used extensively for basic research, but we are also going to use it to study sensory motor function of stroke subjects. It's a good application for it. Because of their problems with strength, the robot supports their limbs so that they're able to perform lots of different behaviors and we can quantify that.

SUPER : Anne Vivian-Scott :
President & CEO BKIN Technologies

We think that this has great potential to be, you know, really critical instrumentation in the management of neurological disease and injury.

NARRATOR:
Ontario boasts a network of 20 world-class universities where thousands of bright young minds are producing some astounding ideas and innovations.

SUPER: Waterloo, Ontario

SUPER : Andre Hladio:
Partner, Avenir Medical

Three of us were classmates at the University of Waterloo in the mechatronics program. And we were thinking about what to do for our fourth year project,
and that’s how.. that’s how this whole thing began.  The literature says that over 2% of all the hip replacements that happen, the patient has to come back within 90 days of the procedure because something went wrong in the surgery.  And 2% you might say is, you know, not a very big number - and that's true. However, in North America and Europe, a million hips get replaced every year so these numbers add up.

SUPER : Richard Fanson:
Partner, Avenir Medical

In total hip replacement surgery, what the surgeon is going to do is he's going to remove the femoral head component and also replace the cup component of your hip with prosthetic components that look like this.
So if this angle isn't quite right, the way that it meshes with the femoral head component of the patient will lead to more dislocations. 
This is where our technology comes in. What we have got here is simply sensorizing the surgeon’s tool so it allows him to see the exact angles of this tool in relation to the pelvis so that when he installs that cup component, it's in at the exact right orientation.

SUPER : London, Ontario

NARRATOR:
Another area of bio-engineering where Ontario researchers are at the forefront is the creation of artificial soft tissue.

Dr. Leonardo Millon :
President & Chief Researcher, LifeLike BioTissue

My project for my PhD was trying to come out with a polymer, or a material, bio-material that would behave exactly like the tissues it's replacing.

NARRATOR:
Right now, Millon's polymer cardiac arteries are being used to train surgeons and one day they may be implanted in humans and save the lives of heart patients around the world.

Those are just a few of the answers to the question, why Ontario?
Here a few a more:

Super :Mark Lievonen :

So when we bring in people from other parts of the world, we bring them here to Ontario, and they're able to enjoy and see what we have here. The first thing that most people see is the diversity and the multiculturalism in all respects, and that's usually very impressive.

SUPER : Dr. Leonardo Millon :
 
It's amazing the type of support that I'm getting, and it's sort of like everyone wants you to succeed. So, you know, it's something that has been great.

FADE TO BLACK/MUSIC OUT/END

Life Sciences

Life Sciences

Invest in Ontario

Why Ontario

Sites & Communities

Ontario Sectors

Business Immigration

Case Studies and Testimonials

Resources

Media Room

Tools

Explore Ontario

Contact Us

Connect With Us

Site Help

Notices