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November/December 2020 – The Innovators

With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.

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NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020 BCBUSINESS 33 BCBUSINESS.CA When COVID-19 struck, AbCellera Biologics was bet- ter prepared than most. Since 2018, through a contract with the Pandemic Prevention Platform (P3) program run by the U.S. govern- ment's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ( DARPA), the Vancouver-based biotech outfit had been using its expertise in antibody discovery and immune profiling to lead the development of a rapid pandemic response. This work took place against the backdrop of the Ebola and Zika outbreaks, which had left governments and health officials scrambling. AbCellera, founded in 2012 by CEO Carl Hansen out of work at his UBC lab, has pioneered an antibody discovery platform that searches and analyzes natural immune systems to find antibodies for disease preven- tion and treatment. The company uses data science, machine learning, genomics and other methods to iden- tify new drug candidates and bring treatments to the clinic faster. In simulated pandemic responses with its P3 partners, AbCellera had shown that it could swiftly isolate antibodies capable of neutralizing Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome–caused by a coronavirus –and administer a therapeutic that completely protected rats from a lethal dose of flu virus. This January, shifting focus to what would become a pandemic, the company put its technology to work against COVID. In March, AbCellera discov- ered antibodies against the novel coronavirus with the Maryland- based National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases' Vaccine Research Center and partnered with U.S. pharmaceuticals titan Eli Lilly & Co. to develop them. In early June, bamlanivimab (LY-CoV555), the lead antibody discovered by AbCellera, became the first monoclonal anti- body therapy specifically targeting the virus to reach human clinical trials. From sample to clinic, the process took about 90 days. In September, Lilly announced the results from a Phase 2 clinical trial of bamlanivimab on about 450 patients with mild to moder- ate COVID symptoms. That trial showed a 72-percent risk reduction: just 1.7 percent of people taking the drug needed hospitalization, versus 6 percent in the placebo group. Lilly recently won American approval for bamlanivimab as an emergency treatment for certain COVID patients, and the U.S. government and Army have agreed to pay almost US$700 million for doses of the therapy. This year, 174-employee AbCellera closed US$105 million in Series B financing from investors including Lilly and Silicon Valley bil- lionaire Peter Thiel. Industry monitor Fierce Biotech recently named it to the 2020 edition of the Fierce 15 list, which recognizes promising private biotechnology companies. –N.R. B I O T E C H N O L O G Y First Resp ond er AbCellera founder and CEO Carl Hansen U.S. robot manufacturer Knightscope to Delta-based kombucha maker Bucha Brew. This year, FrontFundr saw the first initial public offering by a company that raised money on its platform when Victoria's Very Good Food Co., a plant- based meat producer, debuted on the Canadian Securities Exchange at 25 cents a share. Van Hoeken left Vancouver in 2018 to start FrontFundr's Toronto office (which now houses six of its 18 employees) and, more broadly, to expand the firm's influence. He thinks the Canadian investing market is vastly underfunded. "At the end of the day—and I've run all the numbers—the pool of capital available for investing in startups in Canada is not enough," he argues. "Angels and VCs can tell you whatever they want, but it's not enough." He points to a study by the National Angel Capital Orga- nization showing that, from 2010-18, angel investors had put just over $853 million into Canadian startups. "Compared to somewhere like the U.K. it's way, way less," Van Hoeken says. "There, 40 percent of companies raise through companies like FrontFundr, or they use them as an additional channel to raise money. If we really took advantage of crowdfunding in Canada, we could double the capital avail- able for startups." Van Hoeken, who was born and raised in the Netherlands before moving here in 2010, knows how to use a Canadian analogy to make his point: "If we look where the puck is going, we don't actually look at Canada because it's just been lagging so far behind in equity crowdfunding." –N.C. L E G A L S E R V I C E S O n the C ase Developing Clio, the leading software platform for law firms to track bill- able hours, manage cases and invoice clients, helped Themis Solutions raise US$250 million–the most ever for a B.C. startup–from two American growth equity firms last year for a minority stake in the company. But the Burnaby- based software-as-a-service provider with 500-plus staff has a loftier goal in mind. You can read all about it in co-founder and CEO Jack Newton's newly published manifesto, The Client Centered Law Firm. Newton wants to make legal services more accessible to the three- quarters of consumers who opt not to hire a lawyer in situations where their services might be beneficial. Through productivity improvements, saving on marble-accented office space and, most important, aligning the offering of legal services with what clients actually want (fixed fees, not billable hours), he hopes to bridge this access-to-justice gap. Imagine, as an example, filling out an online questionnaire to update your will for a $50 annual subscription fee. The past year has presented a golden opportunity to effect this transition. "What we are starting to see, and this has been really accelerated by COVID-19, is that law firms are looking for ways to acquire clients online, ways to deliver legal services to those clients online and ways to maintain relationships with those clients over the long term online," Newton says. –M.M.

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