Ep. 347: British Columbia’s World-Class Life Sciences

Guest: Wendy Hurlburt, LifeSciences BC

Let’s start with a quiz. What are life sciences and why should you care about them, especially if you live in British Columbia?

We know, it’s not a topic on the tip of your tongue nor is it top of mind. But maybe – just maybe – it ought to be. Not just because we’re past the one-year mark of a global pandemic that desperately needs life sciences to vaccinate and treat COVID-19 and all of its variants.

Life sciences are the disciplines that study the sciences of biology, biochemistry and biomedicine – cell biology, genetics, molecular biology, botany and more.

Why you should care is because British Columbia is home to more than 1100 life sciences companies that employ more than 18,000 people, all of them with well-paying jobs. And at the university level, more that 22,000 students are studying life sciences in BC.

It all adds up to a tariffic shot in the arm to the BC economy. $5.4 billion in revenue, $1.6 billion in GDP and more than $500 million in exports. While the resource sector in BC remains at the core of the province’s economy, life science success stories like Stemcell Technologies and Zymworks are forming a centre of excellence here that is growing.

All good news, until you realize most emerging life sciences companies run into an age old problem in BC – capital. The investment money that is needed to push these companies onto the world stage is hard to come by. In fact, of the more than 1100 companies in the sector, most have fewer than 50 employees.

Stuart McNish invited Wendy Hurlburt, the President and CEO of LifeSciences BC, to join us for a Conversation That Matter about the remarkable intellectual assets we have in BC and why we need to support them to the benefit of all of us.