Stemcell Technologies receives $50M investment from federal government

The Government of Canada has announced a $49.9 million investment into Burnaby-based biomanufacturing giant Stemcell Technologies. The funding will help support the company’s $222 million project to establish the large-scale production of the essential inputs needed to develop and manufacture the company’s vaccines, therapies, and diagnostic technologies. 

With the investment, Stemcell says it will build two new biomanufacturing facilities. Those centres will allow the company to assign the production of those specialized inputs to Metro Vancouver workers, rather than offshoring the labour. The facilities will also help the company to work on other innovative technologies, like tissue engineering, immunotherapy, and cell and gene therapies, with its local workforce. The federal government says the build will help create 460 jobs and 900 four-month co-op positions for students.

“British Columbia continues to rapidly grow its presence in the life sciences industry,” said Anita Anand — federal minister of innovation, science, and industry — about the announcement. “With this investment, our government is bolstering Canada’s life sciences industry, increasing domestic capacity for key inputs for vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostic technologies, which are needed to keep Canadians safe and healthy and to export around the world. This partnership with Stemcell will help grow our economy and create good, high-paying jobs for Canadians.”

The funding is a component of the federal government’s Biomanufacturing and Life Sciences Strategy, which aims to build a “competitive, innovative, and prosperous life sciences ecosystem that is able to protect Canadians against future pandemics and other health emergencies,”  as well as developing the next generation of medicines in the country. Since March 2020, over $2.3 billion has been invested in 41 projects across Canada to strengthen domestic biomanufacturing and life sciences intellectual property, to help citizens access cutting-edge medical technologies.

The announcement builds on the previous $45 million in government funding given to Stemcell in 2018 jointly by the Governments of Canada and British Columbia to help the company build its first state-of-the-art advanced manufacturing facility. That $138 million project was slated to take five years to build.

Stemcell was founded in 1993 by CEO Dr. Allen Eaves when he needed a way to meet the demand for his standardized, cost-effective cell culture. The company has since grown into a global biotechnology giant, building essential products for developing and manufacturing stem cell technologies, vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostic technologies. The company follows a lineage of Canadian excellence in the field, as stem cells were discovered in the early 1960s through the work of Canadian scientists Dr. James Till and Dr. Ernest McCulloch at the University of Toronto.

British Columbia is home to a thriving life sciences sector, with over 2,000 companies employing more than 20,000 people across the province. Its tech is already making a significant global impact — virtually every COVID-19 vaccine candidate that reached late-stage development in 2020, for example, used components that were initiated, developed, or manufactured by a B.C. company or scientist.

Stemcell is one of a number of Metro Vancouver-based companies putting their weight behind developing new infrastructure to support the city’s biotech sector. In 2023, Abcellera received a $701 million co-investment to help build its new facility in Mount Pleasant, which followed the $175 million from the government’s Strategic Innovation Fund to help with its drug discovery technology. Vancouver’s Abdera Therapeutics also announced in 2023 that it raised $142 million in a combined Series A and B financing round. 

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