A Life Sciences Road trip around the province Breakfast

Join us during Global Biotech Week (September 28^th – October 2^nd) for our first virtual Roadtrip around the Province. We’ll be exploring 5 specific ecosystems in Ontario to find out what the Life Sciences sector looks like in their region, what makes their region unique and what resources are available. The presentation for each day will be from 9:00-9:30am.

Registration is OPEN!

• Monday, September 28^th– TechAlliance in London

• Tuesday, September 29^th– Invest Ottawa in Ottawa

Ottawa’s life sciences sector has emerged into the global market as a center of discovery, development and commercialization. With more than 130 companies employing 6,000 highly skilled people, Ottawa’s life science landscape is founded on strong R&D capabilities and companies of every size with expertise in digital health, medical devices, and biopharmaceuticals. This includes world-leading companies such as Abbott Point of Care, Siemens Healthineers, OraSure Technologies, Boston Scientific, and Thermo Fisher Scientific, as well as local innovative companies, such as Turnstone Biologics, Spartan Bioscience, Fullscript, Evidence Partners, eSight Corporation and Clearwater Clinical – just to name a few.

With a strong combination of academic research, centers of excellences, government departments (e.g., National Research Council), world-leading hospitals including The Ottawa Hospital (TOH), and industry, the nation’s capital provides a lucrative environment for leading-edge products, technologies and innovations. Ottawa research hospitals provide a strong base for life sciences and associated R&D, with five of the top forty Canadian hospital research institutions hailing from the region. Continuing Ottawa’s long-standing history of innovation and entrepreneurship, TOH has produced nine spin-off companies and there were 978 active clinical trials in the Ottawa region on September 8, 2020. In addition, TOH has the only virus manufacturing facility compliant with European and US standards in Canada.

Sponsored by:

• Wednesday, September 30^th– Synapse Life Science Consortium in Hamilton

Hamilton Health Ecosystem

Hamilton is Canada’s leading health research and educational cluster; a launchpad for innovative life science research and commercialization. At the nexus of Ontario’s dynamic $52 billion health care industry, Hamilton possesses an unmatched network of research-intensive hospitals, leading academic institutions, globally recognized researchers and clinicians, and private-sector companies; more than 35,000 professionals work together to develop and deploy health innovations that are changing lives around the world. Hamilton’s life science ecosystem is a launch pad for innovators and entrepreneurs looking to bring their ideas from the lab bench into market.

Hamilton is anchored by the Canadian HQ of global medical device company (Stryker), the most comprehensive hospital network in Ontario and one of Canada’s leading research hospitals (Hamilton Health Sciences) and Canada’s most research-intensive academic institution and the home of evidence-based medicine (McMaster University). Health tech startups have raised more than $200M in venture funding over the last few years, while Fusion Pharmaceutical just completed the 2nd largest biotech raise in Canadian history.

From laboratory bench to market success, Hamilton offers the expertise, talent, funding, resources and assets needed by researchers and clinicians, medical entrepreneurs, earlystage start-ups and multinational giants. Collaboration is in our DNA.  Our experience and expertise is being used to solve the most pressing problems facing the healthcare industry. From researching transformative new health technologies, to testing and validating medical devices, to strategies to scale and grown your business, Hamilton is where healthcare’s future is being built.

• Thursday, October 1^st– Innovation Guelph in Guelph
  

Life Science, especially as it intersects with biotech, agri-innovation and cleantech, are a significant component of the economy in and around Guelph. Analyzing DNA to rapidly test for COVID-19, extracting nanoparticles with medicinal properties from sweet corn, and developing solar powered biofilms that eat smog—these are just a few of the fascinating companies that have their roots in Guelph.

• Friday, October 2^nd– Waterloo MedTech in Waterloo

   

Canada’s leading tech ecosystem, Waterloo Region has a track record of innovation looking to the future (ranging from the first search engine at Open Text, Canada’s largest software company to the first smartphone), and thousands of amazing new locally-grown and global companies. These businesses continue to invent the future in everything from life sciences and health technology, quantum computing, robotics, artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction. From scrappy startups, to rapidly-growing scale-ups and large global brands including about 75 companies engaged in health and life sciences, Waterloo Region is home to tech of all types and sizes. Waterloo MedTech, the Accelerator Centre, Communitech, MiX, Velocity and LaunchPad provide the infrastructure to help this growth happen. Waterloo is also home to the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University, two of the highest-ranked universities in the country as well as Conestoga College, a leading Canadian community college. Think tanks in Waterloo Region include the Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics, the Centre for International Governance Innovation and the Institute for Quantum Computing. All these organizations are attracting bright talent from around the world with their faculty and staff producing multiple exciting academic and corporate spinoffs.

** This is our first “Roadtrip” and we are unable to highlight all regions across the Province. If you want to profile your region's life sciences ecosystem on a future LSO road trip, please contact us at admin@lifesciencesontario.ca