In this episode of Disruptors x CDL: The Innovation Era, hosts John Stackhouse and Sonia Sennik dive into the rapidly evolving world of life sciences, exploring how Canada can leverage its strengths to lead in global drug discovery and healthcare innovation.
The pandemic accelerated scientific breakthroughs, such as AI-assisted vaccine development, but what will it take for Canada to continue leading into the 2030s? With special guests Anne Woods (Managing Director, Life Sciences, RBCx), Sue Paish (CEO, Digital), and Dr. Christine Allen (CEO, Intrepid Labs), this episode delves into how AI, data, and interdisciplinary collaboration are driving new treatments and medical advancements.
From Canada’s storied history in medical innovation to today’s challenges in scaling life sciences companies, the conversation explores the need for a cohesive strategy, greater investment in early-stage ventures, and an openness to data-driven healthcare solutions.
Listen now to hear expert insights on the future of life sciences, Canada’s unique opportunities, and how AI can reshape the way we discover and deliver life-saving treatments.
Sonia Sennik: In today’s episode, we’re diving into the life sciences sector. The pandemic showcased the incredible speed and power of scientific Breakthroughs when paired with new technologies like artificial intelligence. When the pandemic hit in 2020, Moderna’s AI systems allowed them to prepare the vaccine for human trials in just 42 days compared to a typical vaccine that takes between five and 10 years.
But what’s next? What will it take for Canada to lead the world in new drug development and life saving treatments as we move into the 2030s?
John Stackhouse: That’s such a great way to frame this opportunity Sonia. The pandemic was brutal for so many people but [00:01:00] if something good came out of it, it was that innovation story around vaccines.
We all rely in different ways on pharmaceuticals and drugs and yet as Canadians probably don’t appreciate all that goes into their creation and so much of it right here in Canada. We actually have a storied history. Insulin was developed in Canada in the 1920s. In the 1980s, Montreal based scientists developed life saving treatments for HIV AIDS.
And just four years ago in 2020, Michael Houghton, a professor at the University of Alberta, was awarded a Nobel Prize for co-discovering a Hep C vaccine. Those discoveries don’t happen in some isolated lab. They’ve come out of Canada because of our remarkably strong network of universities, research labs, and the 2,000 companies in the life sciences space, some of whom we’re going to meet today.
But for all our creations, we seem to be lagging in terms of commercial development. Canada’s trade deficit in pharmaceuticals is big and it’s growing. And the amount we’re spending on everything to do with healthcare is getting pretty much unsustainable. So can [00:02:00] we innovate rather than spend our way out of this?
Canada has an opportunity to build on the momentum coming out of the pandemic. And establish ourselves as a global leader in drug discovery and life science innovation. Today, we’re joined by three leaders who are at the forefront of this revolution. Our first guest is Anne Woods. She’s the Managing Director of Life Sciences at RBCx, our innovation banking arm.
And she brings with her more than 25 years of experience in life sciences and capital markets. Anne’s a passionate advocate for innovation and innovation. And a trusted advisor for the next gen of life sciences founders.
Sonia Sennik: Anne, welcome to the podcast. Maybe you could share with our listeners a little bit about the focus of your work.
Anne Woods: Sure. I’m part of the RBCx division of RBC, so you can think of us as really being a team that focuses on the unique needs of the innovation economy, and that’s even more exaggerated when it comes to life sciences because there’s just even more unique needs with companies that are so heavily [00:03:00] research based.
So I joined last year to really launch a coordinated life sciences strategy across the country.
Sonia Sennik: What are some of the unique strengths and weaknesses of the Canadian life sciences ecosystem?
Anne Woods: Often I think some of the things that are our weaknesses are also our strengths. Someone said to me, and I wish I remembered who it was because it’s such a great quote, is that Canada has a reputation of being really good at digging natural resources out of the ground, sending them overseas to be refined, and then buying them back.
And we do that with our intellectual property too, whether it’s artificial intelligence or even the COVID vaccines, they wouldn’t have been possible without the lipid nanoparticle technology that came out of UBC, but all of that really, it took those partnerships with the United States to really bring them to market.
And so I think it’s a little bit of a mindset that Canadians have that potentially holds us back.
John Stackhouse: This is not a new problem. And I’m thinking back to the great John Evans and the creation of the MaRS Discovery District in Toronto [00:04:00] that was meant to address the very challenges you’re speaking of to make Toronto a bit more like Boston.
And there has been progress made. I’m not underestimating that, but what do you think we’re missing?
Anne Woods: I think we’re maybe where Boston was 10, 15 years ago. Right now we’ve got the talent and we’ve got the research, but we maybe don’t have that critical mass or critical concentration that exists in Boston today.
And so I think we need to really have a more coordinated strategy to take that research and make sure that we are finding what’s most compelling and that we translate it into commercial opportunity.
Sonia Sennik: I’m curious if you have some thoughts on what Canada can learn from the United States in terms of funding and supporting early stage life science ventures, because it’s a very different path than a traditional early stage startup when they’re in the life science sphere.
What can we learn and what are some of the gaps we may need to fill?
Anne Woods: It might even be worth defining what we mean when we say early [00:05:00] stage in life sciences. Because I think when people think about early stage tech companies, they’re the ones that have maybe got a bit of commercial traction and are just about to be widely adopted.
Whereas an early stage life science company is probably still in the lab. And really needs to de risk their technology before they’re able to attract institutional investment. And so I think if you compare Canada to the U. S., there’s really two things that kind of jump into my mind. The lack of capital for early stage funding is, of course, important.
But it’s also that even when there is capital available for companies, it’s often spread out amongst all the different organizations that really want to help and do good things. And then these researchers and entrepreneurs end up spending so much of their time writing grants to get 500,000 a year and 500,000 a year to really get to that 2 to10 million that they need to de [00:06:00] risk their technology.
Whereas in the U.S. The NIH and the SBIR grants are kind of a one stop shop, and so that concentration allows the entrepreneurs to go back to doing what they do best, which is developing the science into a business.
John Stackhouse: As we’ve discussed, Anne, in the past, in addition to that financing, procurement is also important, and there are many who argue we need more flagship companies.
That startups can feed off of. Is it that simple?
Anne Woods: It’s not that simple, but you can see how having that concentration and that, anchor company can create both talent and capital that’s. Can spin out new companies. So even if things go badly, what you have is the infrastructure and the talent that can then go on and start new companies.
And so we’ve seen that happening, particularly in BC That BC is much more mature and really has like almost a self sustaining kind of ecosystem now where they’ve got that critical [00:07:00] mass. People move from one company to the other. I mean, as an Ontario resident, I look at them with envy.
John Stackhouse: What did BC and Vancouver specifically do to get there?
Anne Woods: I think a little bit of it is Western entrepreneurial culture. That’s something that I’ve always said BC has. If we can’t attract the big med tech and the big biotech, big pharma, we’re going to have to build it ourselves. So there’s a real united voice in BC to build an ecosystem. If you think about Quebec and Ontario, it gets a bit more complicated because you’re talking to policymakers about decisions that are great for foreign investment, but maybe not so great for local companies.
And when you’re looking at early stage life science companies and you say the commercial success is 12 years from now. Because it’s going to take hundreds of millions of dollars to invest to get there. It’s hard for policy makers to take that long term view.
Sonia Sennik: Are there Canadian life science companies that [00:08:00] you see right now are making all the right moves to scale globally?
And what are some learnings you could share with us about their journey?
Anne Woods: So if you think about Fusion Pharmaceuticals, radio pharmaceutical company based in Hamilton, it was acquired by AstraZeneca. But we all feel pretty good about that because the infrastructure and the expertise is in Hamilton. And because they put down roots there, even though it’s no longer Canadian owned, It still is going to be a Canadian company.
It is now going to be a center of excellence for AstraZeneca and radio pharmaceuticals. And so I think that’s a great success story that putting down the infrastructure really can start to create an ecosystem or a cluster. And then I think if you look to the West, companies like Abcelera and Aspect Biosystem that have done the same thing.
And so the mindset and the ambition is really important because it is fairly easy to say, I’m going to build something and we’re all backed by venture capital firms who want that exit. So I think it does take [00:09:00] public private partnerships and ambition to say, we need a reason to put down roots here and stay.
Sonia Sennik: I do love that McMaster University example of fusion. Professor John Valiant. building the roots. So after that purchase was completed, the lab, the center of excellence will continue to be at McMaster growing in Hamilton with that Canadian talent engaged. And international talent too.
Anne Woods: I mean, it’s attracting international talent, which I think is also important.
John Stackhouse: And listening to you speak, I’m reminded of how important universities are, and we’ve got some of the world’s best in our country, but they are real anchors for this kind of innovation, whether it’s U of T McMaster, UBC, the list goes on and on. I wonder before we wrap up, if you can give us a sense of where you see the next big waves of innovation coming.
Anne Woods: In my world, it’s always going to come out of the universities because in life sciences, that’s where that basic research is done. So you’ve got the biologists and the chemists and the physicists and the computer scientists [00:10:00] all working together. And I feel like that is a uniquely Canadian opportunity because we are small still.
And so there’s a real desire to innovate and I’m really excited about that. The final piece that I’m really excited about is maybe not so much the innovation, but the innovators. I look at someone like Clarissa Desjardins, who’s a serial entrepreneur based in Montreal, who’s created her fourth company.
We just celebrated at the Bloom Burton Gala, three amazing entrepreneurs that are now reinvesting and moving on to their next projects. And so I think the innovators should be celebrated as much as the innovations.
John Stackhouse: What a great message to end on, celebrate the innovators as well as the innovations. And thanks for being on the podcast.
My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Our next guest is Sue Paish, the CEO of DIGITAL. That’s Canada’s global innovation cluster for digital technology. Sue is at the forefront of commercializing digital health solutions and leading projects that are setting new global standards [00:11:00] for healthcare.
Sonia Sennik: Sue, welcome to the podcast.
Sue Paish: Thank you, Sonia. Delighted to be here.
Sonia Sennik: Maybe we’ll kick it off with some conversation about digital. So digital is working on a range of projects, advancing the development and deployment of health technologies, including AI driven solutions. Can you share with us a bit more about some of the initiatives that have the potential to be game changers in the healthcare industry?
Sue Paish: I’ll give you a couple of examples. One is, we don’t think about wounds very much in health, but wounds actually comprise 30 to 50 percent of all health care spend. Usually, the care approach is a person comes to your bedside or comes to your home to care for your wound. You can imagine in 2020, with the onset of COVID, that created a problem.
Through our model, we brought together a number of organizations, researchers and academics, and they created a device that goes on your phone. It allows the patient or caregiver to take a 3D medical grade image of the wound, transmit that [00:12:00] to a specialist, and receive guidance in their home. either as the patient or as a caregiver, and care for that wound.
It’s proven to have 95 percent accuracy, 35 percent faster wound healing, and a 50 percent reduction on having patients with wounds admitted to hospital. Moving to another area of health data is something that we debate a lot in Canada. With our demographic diversity, and we have some of the richest health data in the world, and leveraging that health data in a secure, safe way could be a game changer in terms of reducing the costs and improving the effectiveness of our health system.
John Stackhouse: So, listening to your talk, I was thinking, I suspect Apple knows more about my health than my doctor does. They have more health data on me. Why can’t we move faster? Why can’t we move at the speed of technology when it comes to these health opportunities?
Sue Paish: That’s the 344 billion question because that’s what we spent on healthcare in [00:13:00] Canada in 2023.
8,470 per person. Do the math. We can’t sustain this. In Canada, we have a very high degree of respect for health information. It’s our most important personal information. And the curators of a lot of that health data have been resistant to sharing that data for fear that personal information would leak somehow into a public domain.
That fear is unfounded now. There’s absolutely nothing. Technologically or operationally preventing us from leveraging our health data for the betterment of individual and community health. It’s all mindset. The second thing that is blocking us is the structure of our health system that is delivered provincially and then each province divides that down into a multiplicity of health regions and those health regions or sometimes institutions believe that they own our health data.
And what we [00:14:00] need is a mindset change so that we as individuals are given the right to decide who can share our health data, how, and in what context. Nothing technologically is blocking that.
Sonia Sennik: Sue, what do you think is going to build confidence? There’s two innovations you’ve talked about. One is the mindset shift on how we approach data and privacy.
And two is a mindset shift or a systems wide shift on how we actually deliver care. What are the things that you think are going to build confidence in Canadians to cross that bridge?
Sue Paish: Well, I think there’s three things. One is the generation younger than me and the generations coming behind me are far more open to sharing data.
But I will say Canadians are quite comfortable sharing private data. The second thing is, If we don’t address this situation with our health system and leverage the data to improve the quality of care and reduce costs, we will bankrupt the country. It’s 23 [00:15:00] percent of tax revenue, and it’s increasing almost exponentially because our population is aging.
So we’re going to have a combination of mindset shift, forcing providers to change and systems to change. So we’ve got some early adopters, we’ve got the technology, we’re gonna get a mindset shift, we just have to move faster.
John Stackhouse: So you keep coming back to data, and data is the fuel of AI. How much of an opportunity or a challenge is AI in everything that you’re talking about?
Sue Paish: Well, AI is both the opportunity and the challenge. The opportunity is AI can actually transcribe the conversation that you’re having with your physician, interpret it and give guidance to the physician in real time on potential issues or care paths. The point that we need to make sure we’re comfortable with AI, and I think, we’ve still got a little ways to go, is the [00:16:00] accuracy of that guidance and to make sure that AI is seen as a supportive tool, not as a cure all.
We should never think of AI replacing the judgment or the expertise of a health care practitioner. AI supports the exercise of judgment and compassion by providing data driven decisions and guidance that the practitioner will then decide whether they’re going to deploy or change or not deploy.
Sonia Sennik: There’s really interesting underlying themes of trust in all the comments you’ve given us. Trust in how the data is going to be used, trust in how to make a systems wide change, trust that the AI will be supportive and augment as opposed to replace. So what advice would you give folks that are in that conversation right now trying to make those innovations, trying to adopt These new technologies on building trust with these systems.
Sue Paish: Well, the individuals and the organizations that are building these systems have built them on the basis of human interaction, [00:17:00] thousands and thousands of conversations or interactions or gathering data from real live doctors or nurses or wound care specialists. And so building trust comes from getting your data and building your models, not in a lab with your door closed, but by being.
in the community so that when the platform or the technology emerges, you actually have physicians or caregivers or nurses speaking up saying this works. This is helpful.
John Stackhouse: So we’ve talked about the challenges that Canada is up against. Where do you see the opportunities? And what do you think are great strengths that can give us a competitive edge in the world?
Sue Paish: The strengths that we have is Canada has one of the most demographically diverse populations in the world, which makes the data in the health system extremely valuable. No one has the kind of health data that we have. So that’s a real opportunity. In [00:18:00] terms of the next steps, I’ll be blunt here, we have to get out of our own way.
We have to look at the opportunities and the imperatives that our health data presents to us, that hasn’t been available in the past because we didn’t have these technologies, we didn’t have the protections that we now have around health data, and we didn’t have the ability to leverage the data the way we have now.
But we need the public policy makers to celebrate this. Not to make Canadians fearful and that’s what concerns me is that we drive a fear mindset that somehow leveraging your health data or population health data for the benefit of you personally and your family is not a good thing. It’s a very good thing.
John Stackhouse: So what a great note to end the conversation on fear. Fear can be the enemy of innovation, but mindset can be so liberating. So thank you for using that word in an inspiring way. Thanks for being on the podcast, Sue.
Sue Paish: [00:19:00] Thanks, John. Thanks, Sonia. And thank you for doing this series. It’s good for Canada.
Sonia Sennik: Our final guest is Dr. Christine Allen. She’s a world renowned researcher and leader in drug development. She’s a professor at the University of Toronto and CEO of Intrepid Labs, just one of the companies that Christine has co-founded that are pushing the boundaries of drug formulation and precision therapies. Christine, welcome to Disruptors.
Christine Allen: Thank you. I’m delighted to be here.
Sonia Sennik: So I was surprised to hear that 90 percent of drugs fail in clinical trials. What key factors do you believe are responsible for these high failure rates?
Christine Allen: Yeah, it’s actually a staggering number. I would say that it’s a multifactorial problem, but one of the key reasons is really that in many cases we’re using off the shelf formulations of drugs that are quick, they’re cheap, but they’re also in many cases ineffective.
These drugs are not entering clinical development in optimal formulations and so we’re not setting them up for success.
Sonia Sennik: Does this mean that there’s a window here [00:20:00] where new technology can enable innovations on formulation?
Christine Allen: Absolutely. I mean, there’s the real potential there to identify fit for purpose formulations for each drug.
How do we exploit the full therapeutic potential of the drug while managing toxicity?
Sonia Sennik: Christine, you’ve often compared drug formulation to a plane carrying the drug as its passenger. Can you walk us through a real world example of where the formulation played a critical role in a treatment success?
Christine Allen: The one that we’re probably all familiar with are the COVID 19 vaccines, right? Where lipid nanoparticles were used to deliver the mRNA. Without the lipid nanoparticles, the mRNA would not have been stable and it would not have been able to reach its site of action. Maybe another great example is Doxil.
Doxorubicin is a chemotherapeutic that was originally available in a conventional formulation administered to patients and would result in cardiotoxicity. You would treat the patient of the cancer and years later they [00:21:00] would have cardiovascular disease. And so it was reformulated then in lipid nanoparticles and liposomes, and this then addressed the cardiotoxicity so it could actually exert its chemotherapeutic effect without having any damaging effects on the heart.
Sonia Sennik: Fantastic. Speaking about emerging technology, I know that In your role as CEO, you’re leveraging artificial intelligence in your drug formulation process. And we know that AI has accelerated the timeline for drug development significantly. What are some of the most promising AI driven innovations that you see on the horizon for drug discovery?
Christine Allen: I think we’re still determining the highest and best uses of AI in drug development. We’ve certainly seen a lot of investment, also some in clinical development, much less so in formulation. There’s a great discussion paper that was put out by the FDA that looks at the extent to which AI and machine learning have been used in drug development, talks about discovery and clinical development and manufacturing, but actually nothing on formulation.
So a lot of running room [00:22:00] or white space there. But there’s actually some just really interesting, low hanging fruit type examples of the kind of impact that AI is making. I was at a talk with the head of machine learning of a large multinational pharmaceutical company, and they have this large language model that they’re now using to write the first draft of clinical trial reports.
And this is saving them two to three hundred million dollars a year and enabling them to run an additional phase three clinical trial. Great example, right? Low risk use of AI. It’s the first draft. It’s not the last draft. And enabling technology that’s making an impact. That’s just a simple example.
There are others, of course, but I think we’re still seeing where AI makes the most sense and the most sense right now. And of course, there’s always new advancements and that may then open kind of the extent of usage and or the applications that it’s appropriate for.
Sonia Sennik: So lots of room for innovation and creativity.
Christine Allen: Absolutely. But I do think that we need to be looking at AI critically, ensuring that the models [00:23:00] that we’re using are accurate, that we have evidence of the accuracy of those models, and that they’re able to be interpreted. So accuracy, evidence, interpretability, very key to ensuring effective use.
Sonia Sennik: At the core of the innovation engine are universities.
What role does the collaboration between universities, industry, and policymakers play in turning academic research into market ready treatments?
Christine Allen: That’s a great question. If you look at the University of Toronto, I mean, second to none in terms of the research outputs, publications, and so on. And I just think that it’s so important to take some of that creativity and those innovations and ensure that they are made available for translation and commercialization. And that’s where those partnerships make so much sense. I love to see academic researchers working closely or in discussions with policymakers to ensure that the technologies that we are developing are available for successful commercializations, that our policies are in line with that and enabling of that. Certainly [00:24:00] right now, this is an exciting time in Toronto because we are seeing multinationals, Unilever, Sanofi, Roche, and so on, investing in AI. And this is what we really need. We need small biotechs and companies. We need medium scale companies. We need multinationals as well as academics and government really working together to create this successful innovation ecosystem that will ensure these innovations that are based on AI are able to move forward for the benefit of humans, of people.
Sonia Sennik: And it sounds like the interdisciplinary approach. It’s going to take many people with many different skill sets, as you mentioned, all across the ecosystem, but what will it take for Canada to lead the world in new drug development and life saving treatments as we move to the 2030s?
Christine Allen: One of the things I think about is when we started developing the technology that Intrepid is based on, it was really built through a collaboration between my lab and Alan Aspuru-Guzik ‘s lab.
So you’ve got kind of best in class drug formulation, drug development expertise with best in class AI and robotics expertise, and that was [00:25:00] necessary to develop this technology. Then we have these young people from both labs working together, and I call some of them now unicorns, because they’re not just experts in drug formulation, or AI and robotics.
They’re experts in both and they’re working at that interface and they are needed to drive this next wave of developments, innovations, advancement. And we need to retain them in Canada. We need to retain that talent and provide them with opportunities here so they can drive that growth and they can be leaders in this space.
Sonia Sennik: But the heart of this, it would be obviously a very deep tech health related technology company. And you have those very specialized skills. The surrounding complimentary skills are also absolutely critical to help these scale. So for example, procurement or customer engagement, operations, managing teams, building processes to scale.
So what have you seen, Christine, in those types of skill sets and talent in Canada?
Christine Allen: I think we actually have a lot of talent in that space, and I would say that there are some great programs. [00:26:00] Biotalent Canada is a great program that provides support for young people that have just graduated. I know my company has tapped into their programs quite extensively to provide positions or support for young people that want to gain new skills through working with companies.
I just think we’ve got so many different experts in different areas, and it’s just about bringing them all together, sure. I’m not concerned with a lack of expertise in those areas and certainly we have excellence just with this Nobel Prize being won by Geoffrey Hinton last week. I don’t think we need to explain to anyone anymore why Toronto is the place to be for AI.
Sonia Sennik: One of the challenges in drug development also is personalization. How can new technologies make it possible to create more personalized and targeted treatments?
Christine Allen: One of the things I know that we’re doing at Intrepid is, we’re able to identify fit for purpose formulations for each drug, and you can imagine if that drug is to target a very specific patient population, then that’s absolutely critical to ensure we can fully [00:27:00] exploit the therapeutic potential of that drug while managing toxicity.
And so I see some of this AI and as well robotics and the combination of the two as enabling technologies to finally be able to implement. precision medicine or personalized medicine.
Sonia Sennik: Christine, thanks so much for being on the podcast.
Christine Allen: Thank you so much for having me. This has been awesome.
John Stackhouse: Sonia, that was a great conversation with Christine.
Both inspiring and in some ways challenging to think about all that we need to do to ensure that AI helps improve what we’re doing in life sciences and ultimately make all of our lives better. Much of that can be done right here in Canada. We’ve got all the ingredients for success in life sciences, world class research institutions, cutting edge technologies, and a strong foundation of collaboration.
But to truly lead, as we heard from our guests, we need to turn these strengths into a cohesive strategy.
Sonia Sennik: Absolutely, John. The innovation potential is enormous. But realizing that potential requires interdisciplinary collaboration across sectors and industries. It was [00:28:00] inspiring to learn from Christine about how emerging technology is creating better, fit for purpose outcomes for patients.
But what really stuck with me was Sue’s call to action. Canada needs growth, and growth is on the other side of discomfort. Thanks for joining us today, and a special thank you to Sue, Anne, and Christine for sharing their insights.
John Stackhouse: If you’re interested in how AI will continue to shape our world, From the opportunities to the challenges, stay tuned for more episodes.
Be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and tell us what topics you want us to explore next. This has been Disruptors, an RBC podcast. I’m John Stackhouse.
Sonia Sennik: And I’m Sonia Sennik.
John Stackhouse: Thanks for listening. Talk to you soon.
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