Can one company simultaneously work on solving the problems of Ebola, influenza, neurodegeneration, cancer, tuberculosis, and enterotoxicogenic E. coli? If you are AbCellera, a Vancouver-based biotech on the hunt for novel antibodies that can be used to fight these diseases, the answer is yes. The company has built the world’s leading platform for the discovery of monoclonal antibodies and the profiling of natural immune responses. This proprietary platform, which uses a combination of microfluidics, genomics, microscopy, and machine learning, allows for screening millions of single immune cells in a single day in order to find rare antibodies that are suitable for development as the next-generation therapeutic antibodies. Working with some of the world’s most innovative biotech and pharma companies, AbCellera is harnessing the power of natural immune responses to help develop new therapies across diseases including cancer, inflammation, neurodegeneration, viral infections, and fibrosis.
Earlier this year, the company was named LifeSciences BC’s Growth Stage Company of the Year. The company’s growth is undeniable: it has quadrupled in size over the last three years, and, having outgrown its original UBC location, has recently moved to a brand new facility on Yukon street. The company employs over fifty people, most of them homegrown, BC talent, and continues to hire and expand.
The BC REGMed team met AbCellera’s CEO, Dr. Carl Hansen, at the company’s new facility. The bottom floor, an airy, open-concept space, holds collaborative working spaces for the engineering, bioinformatics, operations, and business development teams. The laboratories, located on the floor above, are all shiny glass and still have the distinctive, plastic smell of newly unpacked equipment when we visit, a few weeks after the company’s move from UBC. We sat down with Carl to talk about how AbCellera began, the exciting projects they are currently working on, and his philosophy of success and innovation.
