Why Canada Must Shift from Biotech Research to Real-World Impact

In the global race to harness biotechnology for economic and societal gain, Canada stands at a crossroads. The country boasts world-class research output and scientific talent, yet struggles to translate these strengths into commercial success. As Guru Singh, Founder and CEO of Scispot (a company that helps over 100 BioTechs collect, clean, and activate their data), notes, digital transformation is reshaping labs through AI and automation. Scispot offers an AI-powered platform that aggregates disconnected data into knowledge graphs, preparing it for analysis and AI, thus supercharging R&D processes. But cutting-edge tools alone cannot overcome Canada's core challenge: evolving from a research-heavy biotech culture to one focused on real-world impact.

This was the central theme of a recent episode of talk is biotech! with Guru Singh, in which he interviewed Kevin Chen – Co-founder/CEO of Hyasynth Bio and President of SynBio Canada – about Canada's biotech ecosystem. They argue that while Canada has the ingredients of a bioeconomy powerhouse, it must fundamentally rethink its approach to innovation policy, commercialization, and investment to deliver tangible benefits to society.

Singh and Chen highlight a key paradox: Canada is a prolific generator of biotech knowledge (papers, patents), yet lags in producing globally successful biotech companies and products. Canada ranks among the top 10 countries for high-quality natural-sciences research output since 2015. However, there remains a "disconnect between Canada's strong foundational research and translation into companies that capture economic benefits for Canada." In other words, Canada excels at the science, but too often others reap the business rewards. The podcast discussion pinpointed three underlying causes for this commercialization gap: gaps in policy infrastructure, an overemphasis on patents and IP versus product development, and missed opportunities in talent and resources. This report analyzes each of these factors in depth and presents a strategic framework to bridge the gap. We then outline recommendations for government, investors, and startups to better align biotech innovation with implementation and societal impact.

The Policy Infrastructure Gap: No Dedicated Biotech or AI Ministry

Despite biotechnology's growing economic importance, Canada lacks a cohesive policy infrastructure and high-level leadership for the sector. Singh and Chen point out that Canada has no dedicated ministry or cabinet-level strategy for biotechnology (or for AI), unlike some peer nations. Responsibility for biotech is fragmented across departments (Industry, Health, Agriculture, etc.), resulting in diffusion of focus. By contrast, countries with aggressive innovation agendas often designate specific bodies or leaders to champion these fields. The absence of an equivalent biotech champion in Canada signals that, at the federal level, biotech is treated as everyone's job and thus no one's job.

This governance gap has tangible consequences. Without centralized vision and accountability, national biotech initiatives in Canada have tended to be short-lived or piecemeal. Only recently, spurred by COVID-19, have policymakers refocused on biomanufacturing and life sciences capacity. Yet even the post-pandemic investments (e.g., funding vaccine production facilities and a 2021 biomanufacturing strategy) have not been guided by a permanent institutional framework. Singh emphasizes that without a clear public strategy to define goals and paths for Canada's bioeconomy, "we will not move the needle" and other countries will capture the opportunities. In essence, Canada needs consistent, top-down commitment to align its disparate efforts (research funding, regulatory oversight, economic incentives) toward the common aim of building a homegrown bioindustry.

Other nations' approaches underscore what's at stake. The United States, for example, issued a comprehensive National Bioeconomy Blueprint in 2012 and an Executive Order in 2022 backing biotechnology with over $2 billion for biomanufacturing. China and the EU have poured billions into biotech innovation with coordinated strategies. Canada risks falling behind in the absence of similar high-level stewardship. A dedicated biotech ministry or equivalent agency could coordinate R&D agendas with industry needs, overhaul lagging regulations, and champion Canada's sector globally. As Guru Singh observed, "with Canada's wealth of resources, skilled talent, and supportive government, the chance to lead the global bioeconomy is right there" but seizing it requires fervent drive from the top. Policy must not treat biotech as an afterthought; it should be a pillar of Canada's economic strategy, with clear ownership within government.

Patents Over Products: Rethinking Innovation Metrics

A recurring theme in the podcast was that Canadian biotech's success metrics are skewed toward patents and publications rather than products and revenues. Academia and funding agencies often reward the number of papers published or patents filed as indicators of innovation. However, an overemphasis on IP generation can create a false sense of progress if those patents never translate into usable goods.

Chen and Singh stress that counting patents is not the same as delivering impact. They "reveal the gap between research and real-world impact, urging government funding to prioritize commercialized biotech solutions over mere patents." In the current system, a university lab might patent a novel drug target and consider the mission accomplished. But if no company licenses that patent for development or if it's licensed to a foreign firm and developed abroad, Canadian society sees little benefit. In fact, studies show many patents initially held by Canadians are later sold to foreign entities. In short, Canadian innovators often hand off their IP rather than build businesses around it. This "sell early" tendency means inventions leave Canada before they ever scale up locally.

Why the focus on IP for its own sake? Part of the issue is cultural and educational.

Traditionally, academic scientists have viewed commercialization as outside their remit their job was to publish findings or patent them, not necessarily to pursue a startup. Kevin Chen himself remarked that not long ago biotech entrepreneurship lacked mainstream appeal. That mindset is changing with a new generation of scientists (many, like Chen, inspired by programs like iGEM and biotech accelerators) determined to turn research into enterprise. But incentives in the system haven't fully caught up. Universities count publications and patent filings for promotions and prestige, whereas creating a spin-off company is often an arduous personal choice rather than an expected outcome. Public grants similarly tend to fund early research, with far less available for proof-of-concept, prototyping, or other steps needed to develop a marketable product.

Correcting this imbalance calls for redefining what success looks like in biotech innovation. Public agencies could direct more grants and subsidies to later-stage development testing, scaling, and demonstration projects instead of predominantly basic research. Guru Singh suggests Canada needs its funding agencies and innovation programs to "move beyond just patents and focus on bringing innovations to life." For example, the government could expand initiatives like the Strategic Innovation Fund or NRC-IRAP to specifically back biotech startups in the "valley of death" (the translational stage where many projects fail due to lack of capital or support). Universities can promote entrepreneurship by streamlining tech transfer and rewarding faculty for startup activity (not only journal citations). The goal is a mindset shift: patents and IP are a means, not the end. The true measure of innovation should be outcomes new therapies, diagnostics, materials, jobs, and companies that improve lives and the economy. Every promising patent should be seen as a pipeline, not a trophy, and resources marshalled to help it reach a real-world endpoint.

Missed Opportunities: Talent, Resources, and the Quest to Be a Bioeconomy Superpower

Canada possesses enviable advantages that could support a thriving bioeconomy. The country has abundant natural resources (biomass, minerals, clean water), a highly educated workforce, strong universities, and leading expertise in areas like AI, genomics, and regenerative medicine. Canada actually ranks among the top OECD nations in percentage of college graduates in its workforce. These are the raw ingredients of biotech innovation. As industry reports note, "Canada has all the ingredients for a globally competitive life sciences industry." Yet those ingredients aren't fully translating into finished recipes. Singh and Chen lament that Canada has not capitalized on its talent and intellectual capital to build an equivalent share of the bioeconomy. Despite nearly 1,000 biotech companies across the nation, Canada still lacks marquee success stories that can lead global clusters.

The lack of large anchor companies is both a symptom and a cause of missed opportunities. Without anchors, Canada's best and brightest often take their talents to foreign multinationals or innovation hotspots abroad. Top graduates and scientists may move to Boston or San Francisco where biotech funding is plentiful, or join U.S. pharma companies that can pay more and offer bigger platforms. This "brain drain" means Canada effectively subsidizes the training of talent that then creates value elsewhere. Meanwhile, small domestic biotechs struggle to scale up without local anchor partners or enough late-stage capital. It becomes a vicious cycle: promising startups often sell early to larger foreign companies (getting acquired), which prevents them from growing into the next anchor. This trend represents lost economic value the jobs, manufacturing, and wealth creation associated with full commercialization occur outside Canada even if the initial invention was Canadian.

Government support has also been somewhat erratic, leading to missed chances. On one hand, Canada offers generous R&D incentives like the SR&ED tax credit and has recently invested in life sciences (for example, partnering with Moderna to build an mRNA vaccine facility). On the other hand, Canada has been slow to implement certain policies that other countries use to retain innovation. For instance, patent boxes (special low tax rates on income from IP) are used in the UK and elsewhere to encourage companies to commercialize IP domestically Canada has no equivalent regime. Strategic procurement of Canadian biotech solutions (e.g., hospitals buying from domestic medtech startups) has not been systematically leveraged to help local firms gain reference customers. And until very recently, there was no large-scale federal venture fund for life sciences a gap partially addressed by the new Canada Growth Fund and the proposed Canada Innovation Corporation, which aim to inject late-stage capital. Industry reports emphasize that to foster anchor companies, "all the links of the innovation chain must be strong, and work together", from research to regulatory to financing. In Canada, some links (basic research, scientific training) are world-class, but others (scaling capital, talent retention, streamlined regulation) need strengthening.

So, can Canada still become a bioeconomy superpower? The consensus in the podcast was yes if it fully leverages its assets and addresses these gaps. Canada's competitive advantages (rich natural resources for bio-based products, strong public institutions, diversity of talent, and a reputation for quality) give it a platform to build upon. What has been missing is integration: connecting the lab breakthroughs to industry needs, and providing the support to take innovations "the last mile" to market. In Guru Singh's words, "Canada has all the right ingredients to become a bio-manufacturing powerhouse", but it needs to better integrate research, industry, and policy to "turn groundbreaking science into tangible solutions." The next section presents a framework to visualize this integration challenge essentially mapping the path from idea to impact and identifying where Canada must bridge the gaps.

Bridging the Gap: From Research to Real-World Impact (A Framework)

To understand where Canadian biotech falters, it's useful to visualize the innovation pipeline from idea to impact. Figure 1 below illustrates a simplified "innovation funnel" at the top, a wide funnel of research outputs, narrowing down through stages of IP generation, startup formation, and finally commercial products at the bottom. In an ideal ecosystem, a healthy proportion of ideas successfully flow through each stage. In Canada, however, the funnel currently narrows too quickly, with significant drop-off as we move toward later stages.

Figure 1: The Drop-Off from Research to Impact in Canada. In Canada's biotech innovation funnel, abundant research outputs (top) yield a moderate number of patents/IP, but far fewer startups and even fewer scaled products emerge. (Illustrative proportions are shown for conceptual purposes.) This "funnel leakage" often termed the valley of death highlights the gap between discovery and commercialization. Strengthening support in the middle stages is critical to improving throughput to real-world impact.

Several choke points are evident in this value chain:

Research → Patents: Not all scientific discoveries are patented or made commercially ready. Whether due to misalignment with industry or lack of patenting support, many ideas never become protected IP they remain in papers rather than prototypes.

Patent → Startup: Of those inventions that are patented, relatively few spawn Canadian startups or products. Often the IP is licensed out to established (often foreign) firms or simply left on the shelf if no funding is found. Studies indicate that many Canadian-invented patents end up owned by foreign companies, indicating that the step of forming a domestic company to exploit the IP is frequently skipped.

Startup → Scaled Product: Even when startups form, scaling them to sustainable, market-leading companies is challenging. Canada has many small biotech firms, but as noted, essentially no large anchor firms yet. Companies often struggle to grow beyond the startup stage due to capital constraints, talent shortages (e.g., experienced executives, specialized skill sets), or being acquired by larger players early. This results in fewer homegrown products reaching global markets.

The net effect is a value capture gap: Canada innovates, but others often commercialize. The country thus misses out on much of the economic value (jobs, manufacturing, profits) and sometimes even the public health benefits (e.g., local supply of vaccines or therapies) that come from full commercialization. Bridging this gap requires interventions at each stage of the funnel, but especially in the middle "translation" stages where the drop-off is steepest. Singh and Chen advocate for a more integrated approach one that treats the journey from lab bench to market as a continuum to be actively managed. This could include: targeted translational research grants, incubators and biofoundries to help validate technology, mentorship and entrepreneurial training for scientists, and incentives for investors to fund scale-up. Essentially, building a sturdier bridge across the valley of death so that more Canadian innovations survive the journey to real-world impact.

The federal government's recent moves, such as creating the Canada Innovation Corporation and boosting venture funds, hint at a recognition of this issue. Likewise, initiatives like adMare BioInnovations and provincial programs (e.g., the Ontario Life Sciences Strategy) are aiming to nurture scale-ups and anchor talent in Canada. However, these efforts need to be coordinated and scaled up significantly to make a macro impact. The framework above can guide stakeholders in identifying where to focus: strengthen the flow at each stage and plug leakages (for instance, by supporting projects through prototyping, helping startups access growth capital, and creating conditions for firms to remain and grow in Canada). With a more seamless value chain from a supportive policy environment to vibrant labs, active tech transfer, available risk capital, and receptive markets Canada can turn its scientific prowess into a robust bioeconomy.

Recommendations: Aligning Innovation with Implementation

To capitalize on these insights, we propose a set of strategic recommendations for key stakeholders government, investors, and startups/entrepreneurs to better align Canada's biotech innovation with real-world implementation and societal impact. These recommendations synthesize Guru Singh and Kevin Chen's discussion points with broader industry best practices:

Government (Policymakers): Set a national vision and clear the path to scale.

Establish a high-profile Biotech Strategy (akin to an "Industrial Strategy" for biotech) with a dedicated office or Minister to coordinate efforts. Increase funding for translational research and commercialization for example, expand grant programs for prototypes, pilot plants, and clinical trials (not just basic science). Introduce innovation-friendly incentives such as patent boxes or innovation tax credits to reward companies that keep IP development and manufacturing in Canada. Streamline regulatory processes to be "fast and agile" for emerging technologies so startups aren't discouraged by red tape. Use public procurement and challenges to pull innovation (for instance, have health authorities pilot homegrown biotech solutions). Finally, support talent retention through visas and training so that human capital stays and grows within Canada.

Investors (Venture Capital and Industry): Double down on later-stage funding and ecosystem building.

Canada's VC community and institutional investors should step up funding for scale-up rounds (Series B and beyond) to ensure promising biotechs can grow at home. This might involve partnering with government on matching funds or incentives to de-risk larger investments in Canadian firms. Encourage patient capital investors who are willing to forego quick exits in favor of building the next anchor company. The formation of consortia or syndicates specifically targeting biotech scale-up could help pool resources. Additionally, investors can contribute beyond capital by building networks and expertise around companies bringing experienced mentors, connecting startups with global markets, and facilitating partnerships. By fostering an ecosystem mentality (not just individual deals), investors can help create the dense web of relationships that anchor companies typically have. An ask to industry: global pharma and tech companies operating in Canada should also increase their collaboration with local startups (through incubators, licensing deals, etc.), which can keep more innovation activity on Canadian soil.

Startups & Entrepreneurs: Forge partnerships and focus on real problems.

For biotech founders, one lesson from Chen's journey is the importance of strategic resourcefulness "don't rush in full-time; leverage programs to learn and build key components" as Chen advises new founders. Aspiring biotech entrepreneurs should tap into accelerators (like IndieBio which helped launch Hyasynth), government seed programs, and academic incubators to systematically de-risk their ideas. It's wise to find strong mentors or advisors as Guru Singh analogized, every founder needs a "guru" or guide in unfamiliar territory. At the company strategy level, startups should stay problem-driven: focus on pressing real-world needs (e.g., therapeutic gaps, sustainability challenges) where your technology can be uniquely applied, rather than technology in search of a market. This increases the odds of product-market fit and societal impact. Build collaboration early partner with academia for research validation and with industry for co-development or early adoption opportunities. Finally, adopt a global mindset but a local commitment: plan to compete internationally, yet strive to keep your intellectual property, headquarters, or manufacturing anchored in Canada as you grow. This not only contributes back to the domestic ecosystem (through job creation and spin-offs) but can also leverage Canada's supportive environment (e.g., R&D credits, talent pool) as a competitive advantage.

Conclusion

Canada's biotech sector is at an inflection point. The conversation between Guru Singh and Kevin Chen makes clear that the country has world-leading scientific innovation and the latent capacity to be a leader in the coming "Bio Century" but realizing that potential requires concerted action to bridge the gap between invention and impact. Recent industry reports underscore that Canada must develop "as many potential anchor companies as possible" to achieve a self-sustaining life sciences ecosystem. In other words, we need to translate our rich research base into real businesses and solutions on Canadian soil. This will entail breaking silos: aligning academia's goals with industry needs, ensuring policies incentivize domestic commercialization, and cultivating an environment where entrepreneurs can thrive. The payoff is enormous. A vibrant biotech industry would not only boost Canada's economy, but also enhance health and sustainability for Canadians from new medicines and diagnostics to bio-based materials and clean technology.

As Guru Singh concluded in the podcast, Canada's moment to lead in biotech is here and now but it must be seized with intent. By updating our policy infrastructure, redefining success metrics towards impact, and doubling down on our talent and resources, Canada can shift from being a biotech research powerhouse to a bioinnovation superpower.

The path forward will demand bold decisions: nurturing the first generation of anchor companies, steering more research out of the lab and into the market, and perhaps most importantly, believing that Canadian biotech can indeed change the world. With the right alignment of vision and action, the next breakthrough discovered in a Canadian lab might also be developed, produced, and delivered from Canada a full bench-to-bedside triumph fueling both societal progress and a flourishing bioeconomy.