Show Notes
Andrea Ladouceur is President and CEO of the Biosciences Association of Manitoba, or BAM, a not-for-profit industry association based in Winnipeg that is focused on growing the province's life sciences sector.
In this episode, Jim Wilson speaks with Andrea about a side of Manitoba that surprises almost everyone. The province's number one export is not grain or canola, it is pharmaceuticals, with thirty percent of all medicine exported from Canada manufactured in Manitoba. Andrea explains why global pharma companies have quietly put down roots there, how the province trains twenty percent of Canada's bioscience talent, and what it will take to unlock the sector's next level of growth.
Andrea also makes a compelling case for partnership over competition, the strength of Manitoba's tight-knit ecosystem, and why she believes the province deserves a bigger seat at the national table when Canada tells its life sciences story to the world.
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Allison Brown is the site head of BioLabs University of Toronto, the first Canadian location in a global network of shared lab and office facilities spanning twenty biotech innovation clusters around the world. Located in the MaRS Discovery District, it puts her at the epicentre of innovation and commercialization in Canadian life sciences.
Trigger warning: This episode touches on themes of mental health and loss of life. Listener discretion is advised. Neil Fraser is one of the most respected leaders in Canada's medtech sector. He spent 38 years at Medtronic Canada, serving as president from 2004 to 2022, and has been a longtime advisor on health innovation policy and a director on numerous boards.
Greg Wolfond is the founder of the Give Back Health Innovation Foundation, a Canadian philanthropic network working to advance public health through innovation and technology. It tackles one of the most persistent problems in Canadian life sciences: the country does world-class research yet ranks near the bottom when it comes to commercializing it.
Dr. Michael Rudnicki is co-founder and Chief Discovery Officer of Satellos Bioscience in Ottawa, and one of the most accomplished stem cell scientists in the world. A member of the Order of Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, his work sits at the leading edge of regenerative medicine. In this episode, host Jim Wilson speaks with Michael about a life shaped by science, family, and curiosity, from taking apart the family car as a kid in Ottawa to building some of the first knockout mice at MIT's Whitehead Institute. Michael reflects on the mentors and moments that shaped his path, the founding of Canada's Stem Cell Network, and the discoveries in his lab that led to Satellos. At the heart of the conversation is the company's mission: a paradigm-shifting approach to Duchenne muscular dystrophy that treats the disease as a stem cell signaling problem rather than simply a structural one, and the hope that it could change the lives of patients living with this devastating condition.
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