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October 2016 Entrepreneur of the Year

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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F or Dr. Allen Eaves, it took mandatory retirement to kick- start the growth of his company, Stem- cell Technologies, into one of Canada's largest biotechnolo‹y companies. Formerly the founding direc- tor of the BC Cancer Agency's Terry Fox Laboratory and head of clinical hematolo‹y, Eaves was required under B.C. law to step down at the age of 65. "I wasn't really interested in retiring, so I just moved down the street," says Eaves, now 76. Stemcell makes a "cement-like ready-mix" for media and culture—the ingredients for stem cells—to be used in research hospi- tals, universities, laborato- ries and corporate campuses around the world. In total, the company makes around 2,000 di™erent types of tissue culture media, used in health-care research for diseases from cancer to Parkinson's. While his prod- ucts are not directly used on patients—thereby avoiding the "big regulatory cost of producing them" borne by most pharmaceutical compa- nies—they save researchers the time and money it would take to produce quality cell cultures. For Eaves, science runs in the family. His father, a botanist, pioneered controlled-atmosphere research that is used to store apples today. But it was the experience of growing up in 1950s Nova Scotia and watch- ing a neighbour die of cancer that spurred Eaves toward cancer research. After completing his MD at the University of Toronto, and a decade of cancer research, he relocated to British Columbia where he founded the Terry Fox Laboratory in 1981. Then, in 1993, Eaves was asked by the administration if he would be interested in spinning o™ the 10-employee lab into a business. Seeing an opportunity to launch a successful side busi- ness—Eaves would remain at his research position full- time for another 13 years—he took out a second mortgage on his house. Eaves would spend another decade at the head of the institution, playing a hands-o™ role in Stemcell's a™airs—at least until his retirement, at which point he shifted the bulk of his attention to the ¢edgling company. Stemcell hit its stride by 2007, growing 20 to 30 per cent a year, as Eaves came on board full-time and as breakthroughs in stem cell research put his prod- ucts in high demand. Today, Stemcell has 850 employees in Vancouver, 150 of them with post-doctoral degrees, and in 2015 had revenues of $150 million. Despite all the recent nancial success, Eaves remains a researcher at heart—and his goals for Stemcell re¢ect that. "I really have no desire to make money. I just want to make really great products that help cancer researchers do their jobs better," he says, before adding with a laugh: "Except maybe world domination." — Jacob Parry bcbusiness.ca october 2016 BCBusiness 37 Dr. Allen Eaves President and CEO, Stemcell Technologies Inc. b u S I n E S S -T O - b u S I n E S S P r O d u C T S a n d S E r v I C E S WINNER P A C I F I C R E G I O N W I N N E R

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