Cindy,
QLT potential, IMO, is its AMD therapy (see earlier posts on this thread). Recent earnings report indicated that cancer drugs are being returned because of expiry dates. Not exactly selling like hot cakes...
Star story follows.
www2.thestar.com
West Coast biotech thriving
JEFF VINNICK FOR THE TORONTO STAR
IDEAL LOCATI0N: ID Biomedical Corp. founder Dr. Tony Holler, with Vancouver's downtown in the background, says the presence of three universities on the West Coast is an important attraction for biotech companies.
Plentiful venture capital and lots of expertise have helped British Columbia firms take root
By David Israelson
Toronto Star Business Reporter
VANCOUVER - It's Dr. Julia Levy's business to shed light on what happened to her mother, and see that it doesn't happen to you.
She believes that she has a dynamic solution.
A photodynamic solution, really. Levy's company, QLT PhotoTherapeutics Inc., has developed a form of photodynamic therapy - a drug that's activated by exposure to the light of a red laser.
It's still being tested. But had it been on the market at the time, the light-activated drug may have helped Levy's mother, who was almost completely blind when she died last year at 92.
Levy's mother suffered from macular degeneration, an age-related form of blindness caused by expansion of blood vessels across the central part of the retina.
The light-activated drug ''acts as a very elegant form of surgery for solid tissues,'' Levy explains.
The light-sensitive drug, developed right here in British Columbia, is part of a burgeoning business boom that people in the rest of Canada may not know about.
British Columbia is becoming Biotech B.C.
QLT is not working in isolation. The giant Swiss firm Ciba-Geigy Ltd. is helping QLT with development and the final stages of testing.
And there are already more than 60 biotech companies in this province, more than half of which started up this decade. Their revenues, a paltry $14 million just five years ago, are expected to climb to $115 million by the end of this year.
''B.C. is Canada's fastest-growing biotech region,'' says Theresa McCurry, executive director of the province's Biotech Alliance, an industry umbrella group.
While the Greater Toronto Area's large population gives it clout as a biotech centre, and Montreal, helped by tax incentives, has developed a strong pharmaceutical industry, no place in the country is advancing quicker in the field than B.C.'s Lower Mainland region.
Attracted by a well-educated work force, a growing population and the natural beauty of the Pacific coast, the brains behind biotech have taken root here in a short time.
''We were founded as a spinoff of the University of British Columbia in the early 1980s,'' Levy says, describing QLT's history. But by 1987, it was clear that light therapy had a promising future, ''and we've never looked back.''
The products being developed by biotech here won't all make it to market, and some will turn out to be duds. But the winners in this field can make a difference for the human race.
Biotech firms are at the cutting edge of a medical revolution that's already under way and appears to be growing exponentially. New drugs are being devised to drill into defective immune systems, to single out cancerous cells and attack, to vaccinate against infections and diseases, which are still only barely understood.
''We're working with something called 'cycling probe technology' and vaccines,'' says Dr. Tony Holler, founder and vice-president for clinical and corporate affairs at another biotech firm, ID Biomedical Corp., based in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby.
Just last week, the company announced that it's backing the development of a vaccine to beat the virus that causes AIDS. The firm has linked up with a leading researcher at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in New York City.
''We think this is the right vaccine to roll the dice with,'' Holler told Canadian Press
While other researchers are working toward a vaccine that would prevent HIV, ID Biomedical believes it can come up with a therapeutic vaccine tailored to prevent or delay the onset of AIDS in people already infected with HIV.
The promise of such discoveries should be taken with a grain of salt. AIDS researchers say there have been at least 10 previous announcements by companies of breakthroughs, and at any given time, there are several drugs involved in clinical testing.
The markets seem to agree with the cautious approach. Shares in ID Biomedical closed at $3.50 Friday on the Toronto Stock Exchange, hitting a 52-week low of $3 earlier in the week. The 52-week high has been $7.75.
QLT has had a hard time, too. In September, its share price plunged after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved only part of the company's application to sell its light-therapy drug used to treat early-stage lung cancers.
The FDA cited what it called ''flawed'' data submitted by the company. QLT's shares are off about 35 per cent from last year's values, closing at $18.55 Friday.
Indeed, analysts say the entire biotech market is lagging. It's partly due to bouncy markets, with investors looking to less risky sectors, and partly because at the end of the calendar year many investors sell losing stocks to claim a tax loss.
The sagging sector's woes may account for the fact that several B.C. biotech companies hired a public relations firm to seek out reporters and talk up their work.
No one claims that the biotech field is easy, though. ID Biomedical's cycling probe technology, for example, seeks to come up with ways to shorten the cycle it takes to develop those nasty infections that spread through hospitals and are resistant to antibiotics.
''What we're trying to do is shorten the process where it takes anywhere from overnight to seven days to develop one of these infections - to 90 minutes,'' Holler says.
''Then you can tell whether the infection is sensitive to antibiotics and get the right antibiotics into the patient to stop the infection from spreading.''
Vancouver is a particularly good place to set up a biotech company because it has several built-in advantages, Holler says. Yet surprisingly, they're not necessarily the ones you might be thinking of.
Yes, it's a cool place, with beautiful mountain scenery and beaches, tennis and skiing in February and proximity to those promising, though shaky Asian markets.
But the real advantages are more old-fashioned good universities and access to capital.
''With the University of British Columbia, Victoria and Simon Fraser, you have a lot of technical expertise concentrated in one place,'' Holler says.
QLT's Levy, still affiliated with UBC's microbiology department, says there wasn't even an alternative considered for her company. ''We all lived here,'' she laughs.
Light-activated drug therapy is simple to explain if you're a brainy biologist. But it's not that hard even for ordinary people to understand, Levy adds.
In the case of light-sensitive cancer therapy, for example, the drug is injected and reaches its target, such as a tumor. Such targets absorb more of the drug than surrounding areas. It concentrates there, and then it's zapped with a needle-sized laser, which can probe right into the body.
The light causes a chemical reaction that destroys the cancerous cells but leaves the healthy neighbours alone.
Developing these kinds of drugs is not labour-intensive. There are only 449 people working in B.C.'s biotech private sector (with another 2,000 in public institutions). But it costs a lot, and that's another reason the companies have tended to take hold in the Vancouver area.
''Vancouver has both a private sector venture capital marketplace and a public sector one,'' says Holler. The private sector consists of small, savvy firms willing to bet on hot new therapies, while the public one, the Vancouver Stock Exchange, tends to be tolerant of uncertain, upstart companies.
''We raised about $2 million on the Vancouver exchange in our initial public offering,'' he says. This is small in the corporate world, but as the company has grown it has moved on to raise funds on the more established Toronto and Nasdaq exchanges.
The companies here get no lucrative tax breaks or grants, Holler adds.
Levy's company, by contrast, eschewed the Vancouver exchange and went directly to the TSE, with its more respected reputation. It's a sign of maturity to look to the big boards, she believes.
But QLT did rely on the private venture market capital here, because it's well-versed in the ins and outs of biotech.
Investors need to understand, for example, that most biotech companies don't make any money, yet.
''Oh, no,'' Levy says. ''But we are getting revenues.''
Of the hundreds of biotech companies in North America, only seven are profitable. But that will change as the new drugs prove successful, and more people see - including those who suffer macular degeneration |
