Why these B.C. companies are at the forefront of therapeutics

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Local scientists and life sciences companies are helping to advance a significant evolution in drug development.

B.C.’s life sciences sector is growing faster than other such clusters in the rest of Canada, and it is rapidly becoming a hub for what some are calling the fourth-generation of therapeutics.Industry insiders tend to agree that the initial generation of medicines were small-molecule drugs – chemical-based compounds that could block signals, such as pain. Aspirin, created in the late 1800s, is one example of this kind of drug.

Executives, such as Aspect Biosystems CEO Tamer Mohamed, say this new evolution in drug-making is a significant evolution and is one where B.C. is excelling. “The goal would be not necessarily to rebuild that organ, but to provide a remote functional tissue in another place in the body that’s essentially supplementing, or replacing, the missing function of the organ,” he tells BIV.

Cell therapies use immune cells as drugs. Those who have cancer have cells that are not effectively fighting off cancer. Healthy people, in contrast, have immune cells able to fight cancer, Main says. Cures long ago were created to treat diseases that are simple to address, he says. The diseases that remain without cures are more complex and have multiple elements that need to be contemplated, he says.

“That money was designed to last three to four years so we’re just now starting to think about the next financing,” Main says. “Pieter Cullis’ work at the University of British Columbia has spun out the companies that have built the global lipid-nanoparticle business, delivered COVID-19 vaccines, and are now designing lipid nanoparticles for the targeted delivery of therapeutics for cancer and other diseases.”

The method is somewhat like a security team transporting an important dignitary through a crowd of rowdy protesters to a key destination. He co-founded his first company, Lipex Biomembranes, in 1985. Through the years he also co-founded Canadian Liposome Co., Inex Pharmaceuticals and Acuitas Therapeutics.

Radiopharmaceuticals are another next-generation therapy The next generation of therapies includes more than just tissue printing, cellular therapies and lipid nanoparticles. It also includes radiopharmaceuticals. Lipid nanoparticles, such as the ones that Cullis engineered to be able to enter specific cells, are like this, but much smaller than full lipids.

Amplitude in the spring of 2021 led a financing round worth an undisclosed amount that was in the tens of millions of dollars, she says. “The similarity is in the targeting of tumour cells more selectively,” Pimstone said. “The difference is in how the technology delivers to the tumour.” Recent corporate success is important because the province needs anchor companies and growing life sciences niches to entice people to move to B.C. to work in the industry, she says.

 

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