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E N T R E P R E N E U R O F T H E Y E A R 2 0 2 1 52 BCBUSINESS SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021 W I N N E R Carl Hansen D I R E C T O R + C E O A B C E L L E R A B I O L O G I C S n They may not know it, but thousands of people who escaped death from COVID-19 owe a debt of gratitude to Carl Hansen and AbCellera Biolog- ics. "Last year, we had the opportunity to show the world the power of the technology that we had been working on," Hansen says of his Vancouver- based company, which special- izes in discovering antibodies for drug therapies. AbCellera deployed that technology with blazing speed. In March 2020, it obtained the first blood sample from a U.S. patient who had recovered from the novel coronavirus, Hansen says. Within six weeks, AbCellera had screened all of the cells to analyze hundreds of antibodies, choosing one that partner Eli Lilly & Co. turned into the first mono- clonal antibody therapy for COVID to reach clinical trials. Pharmaceuticals titan Lilly won regulatory approval last fall to offer that new drug to U.S. patients as an emergency treatment. "From obtaining the sample to starting clinical testing, that whole path was achieved in about 90 days," says Hansen, noting that it would normally take well over two years. So far, the drug has helped more than 600,000 patients and saved tens of thousands of lives, he adds. "That was a proof point for the technology, the team and also for the business model." Hansen grew up in Edmon- ton, where he and his identical twin brother were the eldest of four children. His mother and father, a schoolteacher and a lawyer and farmer, respec- tively, shared an enthusiasm for science and technology. Among his formative influ- ences: watching Star Trek or Carl Sagan's Cosmos over dinner. "That just seemed, as a kid, adventurous and excit- ing," Hansen recalls. "And so I think that probably impressed upon me early an interest in science and math and physics." After earning a degree in engineering physics and math- ematics from UBC in 2000, Hansen attended the California Institute of Technology for a PhD in applied physics and biotechnology. At Caltech, he began working on technology development for biomedical research. "That was this fusion of engineering and computa- tion and modern molecular biology and cell biology," he says. "So that's when I shifted gears out of physics and into life science, but always with a lens on technology." Hansen became a professor of physics and astronomy at UBC in 2005. There, he started an academic lab focused on building tools to enable bio- logy research. "Much of that was not aimed at commercial products but really funda- mental discovery," Hansen recalls. "Could you better understand cancer? Could you better understand stem cells? Through that process, we built up a suite of technologies, and I built up a really unbelievable team of people who knew how to work at that interface." Among them was AbCellera co-founder and COO Véronique Lecault, who began working W H AT WA S YOU R F I R ST S U M M E R JOB ? The summer job that stands out was in my first year of university. I was a tree planter for three months, living in a tent in northern B.C. Pretty much everything after that was easy NA M E ON E T H I NG T H AT P E OP L E WOU L D B E S U R - P R I S E D T O L E A R N A B OU T YOU I spent about seven years studying ballet as a kid W H AT BU S I N E S S - P E R S ON D O YOU MO ST A DM I R E ? The one that pops to mind is Peter Thiel, who is a member of our board. For me, he embodies some of the things that are really important in business: indepen- dent thinking, the courage to stand apart from the crowd and an almost religious-like faith in the power of technol- ogy to push progress toward something that is better in the future with Hansen almost 15 years ago, when he was her PhD mentor and adviser at UBC. "He's such a great entrepreneur because he has the ability to connect very complex ideas across multiple disciplines," Lecault says, "and find where new value can be created by having people collaborating and looking at those ideas from multiple angles." Lecault also describes Hansen as an empathetic leader who brings out the best in people. "He's so good at articulating the vision and also the path to get there. We have no other choice but to want to follow along because he's such an inspiring individual." When AbCellera launched at UBC in 2012, Hansen and his small team were technolo- gists, not drug developers, he stresses. Searching natural immune systems looked like the area where their work could have the biggest impact. "We thought this was the killer application for the types of technology we were building," Hansen says. Then the team looked at the existing industry platform and saw how dated it was. As a drug type, Hansen observes, therapeutic antibodies is only about 30 years old. Although companies had solved some of the easy problems, every- thing was based on frame- works that predated artificial intelligence, data science and modern microbiology. "That seemed like a fundamental opportunity to refresh the industry," Hansen explains. "We ultimately crafted the business model so that it would match that emphasis on technology." That meant skipping the F U N FA C T S