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.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1508543
( the informer ) G O F I G U R E Goblin Mode It might be feeling a bit frightful out there in the B.C. economy, so let's lean into Halloween season and scare up a few numbers on the creepier side of local commerce by Melissa Edwards B.C. firms make up 22% of the top 50 "cannibal companies" on the Toronto Stock Exchange (a.k.a., those that have the highest share buyback ratio) In a 2022 survey, 4/10 Canadian senior managers said they had seen a rise in candidate ghosting over the past 2 years Share of Canadian companies that qualify as "zombie" firms (businesses that remain insolvent or close to it over a long period without closing): 5-7% PRIVATE FIRMS 18-36% PUBLICLY TRADED FIRMS Zombie firms lowered the country's aggregate productivity by 5% in 2019 ABOUT 20% OF CANADIAN WORKERS ARE AT RISK OF AI TAKING OVER THEIR JOB After a successful "Frankenstein moment" in a UBC lab, Vancouver's Aspect Biosystems has inked a deal worth up to $3.5 billion to collaborate with Denmark's Novo Nordisk on 3D printing human tissue 12 BCBUSINESS.CA OCTOBER 2023 READ THIS If you're a fan of political drama, former Vancouver mayor Kennedy Stewart may have the book for you. Decrim: How We Decriminalized Drugs in British Columbia is ostensibly about Stewart's crusade to decriminalize hard drugs in the province, but that road is littered with inside stories about feuds with the media and other politicians. The latter includes former premier John Horgan, who, according to Stewart's book, had little time for the mayor telling him to "f--- off" at one point and generally ignoring him. There's also a subsection simply titled "Haters." Harbour Publishing, 193 pages, softback, $24.95 £ Scientists believe that King- dom fungi contains between 2 and 5 million species, yet roughly only 150,000 species have so far been formally dis- covered and described. No stone is being left un- turned, and Kapoose Creek has history to inspire its efforts. In 1928, Dr. Alexander Fleming famously discovered penicil- lin—one of the most widely recognized and prescribed medicines in the world—almost by accident. After returning from a holiday to his lab at London's St Mary's Hospital, he noticed mould growing on a petri dish of Staphylococcus bacteria. The mould appeared to be preventing the bacteria from growing around it. This simple but keen observation led to the discovery of an anti- biotic derived from the fungus, Penicillium notatum, that would go on to prevent the spread of deadly bacteria and save mil- lions of lives. Cholesterol-fighting statins, the antibiotic cephalosporin, the migraine medication er- gotamine and the immunosup- pressive drug cyclosporine are all derived from the fungi. The stakes are huge. The sale of statins, first commercial- ized by Merck Corporation in 1987 after decades of research, now generates more than US$19 billion in revenue annually. But finding the next blockbuster drug could be like searching for a needle in a haystack. Brown would not share specifics about any promising strikes but says he's excited "about the performance of the platform in getting us bonafide hit compounds quickly." The company was founded by Sam Feldman, a well-known Vancouver entertainment mo- gul who founded the Feldman Agency and represented inter- national artists such as Cold- play and David Gray, as well as Canadian musical icons Diana Krall and Sarah McLachlan. (In 2019, the music biz entrepre- neur sold his stake in the talent agency to two of the company's senior executives.) Feldman's mushroom ven- ture launched first as Kapoose Creek Wellness with the aim of pursuing the market in hal- lucinogenic, or magic mush- rooms. In recent years there's been a surge of interest among health-care professionals in psilocybin, a psychoactive chemical compound contained in more than 200 species of magic mushrooms, for treat- ing depression, anxiety and other mental health disorders. The production, sale and pos- session of magic mushrooms has been prohibited in Canada since 1974 when it was de- clared a controlled substance under the Food and Drugs Act. Though government now makes exceptions for clinical trials and special treatment, magic mushrooms remain tightly regulated. According to Kapoose Creek board member Norma Biln, the business case for magic mushrooms wasn't there. Mar- ket uncertainty and regulatory hurdles prompted a rebrand to Kapoose Creek Bio and a pivot to drug discovery. The com- pany is now trying hard to dis- tance itself from hallucinogens. Biln is a biotech pioneer and founder of Augurex Life Scienc- es, a privately held company focused on identifying bio- markers associated with rheu- matoid arthritis. She joined the Kapoose Creek board in April and likens the search for the next blockbuster drug to a horse race. "Where are you going to get the best hits first?" she says. It typically takes 10 years to bring a drug from discovery through testing, clinical trials, Health Canada approval and finally to market-ready com- mercialization. According to Biln, AI and machine learning could slash this time by up to two-thirds. "It's faster and cheaper than conventional drug discovery," Biln says. Unlocking the therapeutic secrets of fungal biochemistry faster than anyone else is the game-changing proposition that Biln and her fellow board members hope will make Ka- poose Creek a winner. £