Building biotech: How to solve the people problem in the country’s life sciences ecosystem.

The Building Biotech series explores how this country can become a global player in life sciences by streamlining the entrepreneurial path to commercialization.

Canada’s biotech sector continues to produce promising therapies, medical technologies and transformative research. The past 12 months alone have seen breakthroughs from Toronto’s AmacaThera, which licensed its drug delivery solution to global pharma firm Pacira; Calgary’s Providence Therapeutics, which launched a major clinical trial in Australia for its personalized pediatric cancer vaccine; and Vancouver’s AbCellera, which published phase 2 trial results for its potentially game-changing treatment for menopause-related hot flashes. In recent years, federal and provincial governments have also invested billions of dollars in new research facilities and biomanufacturing infrastructure to strengthen the country’s life sciences ecosystem. Yet, as more companies look to scale, many encounter the same challenge: finding people who have done it before.

“We need people who have been there and done that, and who have had success with entrepreneurship,” says Scott Bratman, an associate professor of medical biophysics at the University of Toronto and a co-founder of Adela, which is developing novel cancer detection tools. “Success breeds further success.”

That gap extends well beyond the C suite. Companies need scientists who understand how to translate discoveries into products, specialists who can operate in regulated environments, teams that have taken therapies through clinical trials and manufacturing experts who know how to scale production. They also need executives who have raised capital, navigated regulatory approvals and brought technologies to market. Those skills are built through experience. Canada has many of the ingredients needed to develop that workforce, including exceptional scientific talent, new infrastructure and a growing base of biotech companies. The challenge is creating enough opportunities for people to put those assets to work, learn by doing and carry that experience from one company to the next.

When a company scales, it does more than just commercialize a new technology — it invests resources into developing talent whose knowledge and skills strengthen the next generation of companies. For Canada, the biggest question is how to ensure the ecosystem has all the necessary components to facilitate this process.

Turning scientific excellence into industry experience

Canada’s biotech talent challenge has often been framed as a brain drain problem. The country recently came fifth globally for higher education; the University of Toronto was ranked the 7th best institution in the world for human biological sciences and the 11th for medical technology programs. The prevailing assumption has been that our universities produce exceptional scientists — but we inevitably lose them to better opportunities elsewhere. While that may have been a worrisome trend in the past, it’s no longer a given. Indeed, according to a StatsCan report from 2025, 89 percent of the 2015–2020 cohort of graduates from Canadian STEM programs were filing taxes in Canada three years later.

It has also been generally assumed that Canada’s strength in producing exceptional scientists should naturally translate into strength in biotechnology. “There is really strong access to talent, especially on the early research and development side,” says Bharat Srinivasa, co-founder and partner at Amplitude, a venture capital firm with a focus on funding precision medicine. But graduating talented scientists is not the same as building biotech talent. “The average student that comes out of a STEM program is not ready to walk into a biomanufacturing and GMP facility and actually work from day one,” says Maura Campbell, president and CEO of the not-for-profit organization OBIO, which supports the growth of early-stage life sciences ventures. “We aren’t training people sufficiently.”

Life sciences graduates recognize that scientific expertise requires continued training and specialization. The same thinking must extend beyond academia and into industry. Knowing the science is one thing; learning how to scale a process, manufacture under regulated conditions or prepare a therapy for clinical use requires a different set of skills, many of which can only be developed through hands-on experience. As OBIO’s Campbell points out, although students would greatly benefit from working on state-of-the-art equipment, universities typically lack the infrastructure, expertise and facilities to provide that option.

That is the gap organizations such as the Canadian Alliance for Skills and Training in Life Sciences (CASTL) are working to address. Through partnerships with academic institutions, industry stakeholders and government agencies, CASTL offers specialized training modules, hands-on laboratory experiences and certification programs designed to align with current industry standards. These programs aim to bridge the gap between academic education and industry requirements, ensuring that graduates are job-ready and that existing professionals can upskill to meet evolving demands.

“Hands-on training is a key component of success,” says Sidney Reid, CEO of CASTL. “It gives people a safe place to take risks and make mistakes, because doing is such an important part of competency development.”

CASTL has achieved significant milestones in strengthening Canada’s biomanufacturing workforce through hands-on training, strategic partnerships and national expansion. Through one recent national reskilling program, the organization trained more than 425 people across Canada, helping individuals without industry experience develop the skills needed to enter the sector.

But that kind of training requires both infrastructure and sustained investment. Workers cannot develop manufacturing expertise without access to manufacturing facilities and equipment. Scientists cannot build preclinical experience without laboratories and projects to work on. Clinical expertise develops through running clinical trials. Contract Research Organizations (CROs) give specialized teams the opportunity to perform similar work repeatedly across different companies and technologies.

That means Canada’s infrastructure gaps are also talent gaps. When preclinical work is outsourced to CROs abroad, for example, the country misses out on both economic activity and the workforce training and technical expertise that come out of doing that work. In this context, infrastructure isn’t just about buildings and equipment — it also encompasses the places and pathways where people learn.

Successful companies are Canada’s best talent program

Universities provide a solid scientific foundation, but biotech companies are the real-world classrooms where scientists, operators and entrepreneurs learn how to move a discovery through development, navigate regulatory requirements, raise capital, scale manufacturing and ultimately bring a therapy to patients.

For Molly Shoichet, a professor in U of T’s department of biomedical engineering and founder of AmacaThera, the value of real-world experience has become increasingly clear over time. “My second company benefits so much from the first,” she says. Shoichet’s team had already navigated many of the scientific, regulatory and commercial decisions every young biotech company faces, allowing them to move “10 times faster” the second time around as a result, she says.

Former InBC Investment Corp. CEO Jill Earthy has witnessed a similar phenomenon in the British Columbia life sciences ecosystem. Established companies such as STEMCELL Technologies (founded in 1993), Zymeworks (founded in 2003) and AbCellera (founded in 2012) have become training grounds for people who can carry their experience into the next generation of ventures. STEMCELL, for instance, provides opportunities for a steady stream of UBC co-op students and grads; Zymeworks co-founder Ali Tehrani is now a venture partner at Amplitude, where he shares his previous learnings to help guide other founders. Over time, that movement creates a deeper pool of people who know how to build and scale biotech companies.

Amplitude’s Bharat Srinivasa describes the cycle this way: “Those companies generated capital and made money that allowed talent and capital to recycle. Experienced entrepreneurs, managers and teams could then go and build bigger, stronger companies.”

This is why it’s critical to keep scaling companies in Canada. “When companies are acquired or scale elsewhere, we don’t just lose the company,” says Jason Field, president and CEO of Life Sciences Ontario. “We lose the talent, the expertise and the experience that would have helped build the next generation.”

Talent is the outcome of a healthy ecosystem

Leaders across biotech often talk about creating an environment where experienced CEOs can take a risk on a startup knowing there will be another opportunity if it fails. The same principle needs to apply across the biotech workforce.

A scientist needs to see a pipeline of companies where they can build a career. A CRO needs a steady flow of ventures conducting research here so it can employ and develop specialized staff. Manufacturing talent needs facilities that are not simply built, but consistently used, allowing workers to accumulate experience in process development, quality and GMP manufacturing. The same is true for clinical trials, regulatory expertise and every other part of the development pathway.

That does not mean every company needs to become a global success or remain independent forever. “Even if a company stays for only 10 years, it makes a real difference for those 10 years,” says Molly Shoichet.

The key is cultivating enough activity across the system that the closure of a single company does not signal the end of someone’s career in Canadian biotech. The feedback loop must extend from the lab bench to the C-suite, with a critical mass of ventures progressing through different stages to ensure that people keep working, infrastructure is maintained and expertise accumulates.

Ultimately, Canada’s greatest competitive advantage won’t be found in the number of startups it creates, but rather in its ability to create a thriving, self-sustaining ecosystem where knowledge, talent and infrastructure are continuously shared and reinforced.

About this series

The Building Biotech series explores various barriers biotech startups face in commercializing their solutions in Canada. We conducted in-depth interviews with 50 experts nationwide, issued a national survey to 320 biotech companies (receiving responses from 33 firms), and held a roundtable discussion with 25 sector leaders. Find other articles in the series here.