AbCellera, born at the University of British Columbia, is an anchor company building biotech in BC. AbCellera is breaking the barriers of conventional antibody drug discovery to bring better medicines to patients, sooner. It was started just a decade ago by six entrepreneurial founders and is now a global company of ~500 employees.
AbCellera and its partners are working together on more than 100 programs to discover antibody medicines to treat indications such as cancer, neurodegeneration, autoimmune disease, pain, and more. To date, eight of those programs have reached human clinical trials.
This relatively young company is already making significant contributions to human health. During the pandemic, together with Eli Lilly and Company, AbCellera co-developed two antibody treatments for COVID-19, including the first to be authorized by the U.S. FDA and Health Canada.
AbCellera's COVID-19 antibody treatments have been used to treat more than 2.5 million patients, and are estimated to have saved tens of thousands of lives.
AbCellera is also making significant investments in BC: it is building its Vancouver headquarters, including a campus in Mount Pleasant and a Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) facility to make clinical-grade antibodies.
The GMP manufacturing facility will be the first facility of its kind in Canada, strengthening Canada's ability to respond to future pandemics and enabling new antibody medicines that are discovered in Canada, to be manufactured here for clinical trials.
AbCellera's campus will be a creative hub where leading machine learning, software development, scientific research, and clinical manufacturing talent contribute to improving the discovery and development of antibody-based medicines and empowering trainees to take the next steps in their careers here in Canada.
AbCellera is forging the way for the next generation of biotech companies, helping to build the life sciences ecosystem and knowledge economy in Vancouver for the benefit of patients in BC and around the world.
