Gilead Alberta's Edmonton-based team develops and manufactures active pharmaceutical ingredients for research and commercial programs around the world. (Supplied)
Edmonton's life-saving innovations are hiding in plain sight
SponsoredA message from Life Sciences Week:
Edmonton is known for energy, festivals, and artificial intelligence. Its contributions to the medicines used in hospitals around the world are less familiar.
"The thing most Edmontonians don't realize about life sciences is that it's involved in almost everything they touch in their daily lives," said Andrew MacIsaac, CEO of Applied Pharmaceutical Innovation.
One example emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic. At its facility on the east side of Edmonton, Gilead Sciences scaled up production of the active pharmaceutical ingredient in remdesivir. The antiviral, sold as Veklury, became the first treatment for COVID-19 approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
"That's a big, huge, massive thing that happened in the world that Edmonton played a vanguard role in," MacIsaac said. "It's that type of stuff that people don't realize."
Life Sciences Week offers a rare chance to see that work up close. Tour Gilead Alberta! takes visitors inside the Edmonton facility, where 350 scientists and technical staff support research, clinical trials, and commercial production worldwide.
The city's pharmaceutical story began long before the pandemic. Ronald Micetich, a medicinal chemist and former adjunct professor at the University of Alberta, founded Edmonton-based SynPhar Laboratories. Among the company's patented discoveries was tazobactam, which helps antibiotics overcome bacterial resistance and work more effectively. It went on to generate more than $1 billion in annual sales.
Edmonton researchers are also pursuing the next generation of life-saving products. Sir Michael Houghton, who shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of the hepatitis C virus, is chief scientific officer at API and director of the University of Alberta's Li Ka Shing Applied Virology Institute. His team is developing a preventative hepatitis C vaccine that it hopes will eventually be manufactured in Edmonton and delivered around the world.
During Life Sciences Week, Houghton will join Cytiva for Is Alberta on Its Way to Becoming a Global Life Sciences Leader?, a conversation about what Alberta needs to turn research excellence into life-changing therapies.
Life Sciences Week begins today and runs through Sept. 25. The free, community-led event offers tours, discussions, pitch competitions, and networking opportunities across Edmonton and Calgary. It brings together researchers, entrepreneurs, investors, students, policymakers, and members of the public to make an often unseen sector more visible.
"There's lots and lots of stories like this that you don't really realize have come from our own backyard," MacIsaac said. "I think that's something that should be exciting to people."
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