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The Guelph Mercury
June 21, 2004
We're repeatedly told that in a global economy, we have to be global players. However, we don't often get a chance to share the stage with our competitors, and prove we've arrived. Earlier this month, though, that's what happened at the world's biggest international convention dedicated to biotechnology.
The venue, BID 2004, drew 15,000 participants, 900 speakers, almost 1,500 displays and exhibitors, and media from all over the world to this year's locale, San Francisco.
It offered forums for news announcements from countries, or regions, with something significant to say about biotechnology.
Ontario Minister of Economic Development and Trade Joseph Cordiano called a news conference at BIO 2004 to describe how the best scientific, academic and business communities - from Ontario's 11 biotechnology clusters, including Guelph -Waterloo - are coming together "to accelerate commercialization opportunities for new technologies."
Canada has the second-largest biotechnology community in the world. Ontario, with more than 100 active biotechnology companies and 2,500 scientists, engineers and technicians, has the fourth largest biomedical cluster in North America.
Ontario has already invested more than $40 million to foster regional biotechnology clusters across the industry in areas such as environmental biotechnology and life sciences (Guelph-Waterloo), advanced robotics and vascular disease (London) and stem cells and regenerative medicine (Ottawa).
Cordiano says that's destined to grow, with the completion of a 1.3-million square foot, $300-million-plus research and development facility in Toronto that will be the heart of the biotech-intensive MaRS (Medical and Related Sciences) discovery district. MaRS is considered the "global gateway" to Ontario's biotechnology corridor.
Agriculturally, MaRS has links to our region through a separate but related initiative headquartered in Guelph, called MaRS LANDING. It's designed to ensure there's a link between health or medical technologies and agriculture, especially given how agriculture, new technologies and public health are so closely tied together.
In the research community, a lot of energy is going toward developing technologies that connect food and preventative health. strategies, in areas such as nutraceuticals and the environment. It's a direction that is only going to grow.
One of the keys to the MaRS initiative is that it's attracting venture capitalists, those who'll put money into new technology development.
For the most part, that's been a missing link between the diverse and enviable science capacity in our area, and actual product creation. New technologies are costly, and having firms willing to put venture capital into them is a big plus.
Cordiano says the key to success is getting Ontario's bio corridor to network and act as a single, complementary unit, rather than a series of competing regions.
"Collaboration is the watch word for this industry, "he says. There's some overlap in the regions, but for the most part their individual strengths - and their ability to draw expertise from each other - makes Ontario virtually unmatched. The same can't be said if the regions act independently.
We've seen how working together has helped the agriculture industry, by creating "value chains" involving farmers, processors and retailers. Cordiano is convinced biotechnology is the industry that will drive the future prosperity of the province.
Many know that too, and are likewise trying to position themselves as the place to invest. But by working cohesively and exercising the entire biocorridor's strength, Ontario can blow the doors off the competition.
