{"id":8858,"date":"2026-09-29T15:26:50","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T15:26:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/thought-leadership\/?p=8858"},"modified":"2026-10-14T18:56:34","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T18:56:34","slug":"canadas-biotech-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/thought-leadership\/ai-technology-and-innovation\/canadas-biotech-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada&#8217;s Biotech Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div\n\tid=\"tl-fpb-1\"\n\tstyle=\"background-image:url(https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/thought-leadership\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/27\/2026\/09\/Disruptors-S11-WEB-BANNER-EP4_Banner-wide-copy-2.jpg?quality=80&amp;w=4096);background-position:50% 50%;background-size:cover;min-height:500px\" class=\"tl-featured-post-banner wp-block-rbc-thought-leadership-blocks-featured-post-banner\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"tl-featured-post-banner__gradient\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;right:0;bottom:0;z-index:0;pointer-events:none;\"><\/div>\n\t\n\t<div class=\"tl-featured-post-banner__inner\">\n\t\t\t\t<a\n\t\t\tclass=\"tl-pill tl-pill--banner\"\n\t\t\thref=\"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/thought-leadership\/ai-technology-and-innovation\"\n\t\t>\n\t\t\tAI, Technology and Innovation\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\n\t\t<div class=\"tl-featured-post-banner__content\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<h2 class=\"tl-featured-post-banner__title\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/thought-leadership\/ai-technology-and-innovation\/canadas-biotech-challenge\/\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\tCanada&#8217;s Biotech Challenge\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<p class=\"tl-featured-post-banner__excerpt\">\n\t\t\t\tCanadian medical research has produced breakthrough after breakthrough. But too often, the companies behind the science scale elsewhere.\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<section class=\"wp-block-rbc-section-block  pos-rel\" style=\"border-radius:0px\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-rbc-section-inner-block  section-inner\" style=\"border-radius:0x\">\n<div style=\"width:100%;height:200px\" class=\"wp-block-rbc-rbc-iframe mar-b-hlf mob-mar-b-hlf\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.simplecast.com\/7784fa53-38f5-4a24-a0c1-6d4f38ad8d5f?dark=false\" width=\"100%\" height=\"100%\" style=\"border:none\" title=\"Iframe Embed\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"mar-t-hlf mob-mar-t-hlf wp-block-paragraph\">Listen on <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/ca\/podcast\/disruptors\/id1332711400\" target=\"_blank\" data-dig-id=\"LP-AI,TechnologyandInnovation-8858-3f78ad83\" data-dig-category=\"LP-AI,TechnologyandInnovation\" data-dig-action=\"link click\" data-dig-label=\"Apple Podcasts\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" class=\"rbc-link-format\">Apple Podcasts<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/episode\/0HAOkPa4gnBySa9uN0wL2m?si=d4_tnlojRym7IIFNOPs5uA\" target=\"_blank\" data-dig-id=\"LP-AI,TechnologyandInnovation-8858-3f78ad83\" data-dig-category=\"LP-AI,TechnologyandInnovation\" data-dig-action=\"link click\" data-dig-label=\"Spotify\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" class=\"rbc-link-format\">Spotify<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/player.simplecast.com\/7784fa53-38f5-4a24-a0c1-6d4f38ad8d5f?dark=false\" target=\"_blank\" data-dig-id=\"LP-AI,TechnologyandInnovation-8858-3f78ad83\" data-dig-category=\"LP-AI,TechnologyandInnovation\" data-dig-action=\"link click\" data-dig-label=\"Simplecast\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" class=\"rbc-link-format\">Simplecast<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Canadian medical research has produced breakthrough after breakthrough. But too often, the companies behind the science scale elsewhere, and the talent, revenue and ownership goes, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On the latest episode of Disruptors, Clarissa Desjardins, co-founder and CEO of Montreal\u2019s Congruence Therapeutics, talks with host John Stackhouse about what it will take to change that, all while AI and China reshape drug discovery.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n<section class=\"wp-block-rbc-section-block  pos-rel\" style=\"border-radius:0px\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-rbc-section-inner-block  section-inner\" style=\"border-radius:0x\">\n<h4 id=\"h-faqs\" class=\"wp-block-heading has-rbc-bright-blue-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-1\">FAQs<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-rbc-rbc-collapsible-accordion accordion\" id=\"&quot;accordionSet1\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-rbc-rbc-collapsible-panel\"><div class=\"accordion-panel\"><button id=\"accordion-title6aa0c23d\" class=\"collapse-toggle collapsed\" data-target=\"#accordion6aa0c23d\" data-toggle=\"collapse\" data-parent=\"#accordionSet1\" aria-expanded=\"false\" data-dig-id=\"LP-AI,TechnologyandInnovation-8858-6aa0c23d\" aria-controls=\"accordion6aa0c23d\" data-dig-category=\"LP-AI,TechnologyandInnovation\" data-dig-action=\"collapsible closed\" data-dig-label=\"&lt;strong&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who is Clarissa Desjardins?&lt;\/strong&gt;&lt;\/strong&gt;\" action-closed=\"collapsible closed\" action-opened=\"collapsible open\"><div><strong><strong>Who is Clarissa Desjardins?<\/strong><\/strong><\/div><\/button><div class=\"collapse-content collapse\" id=\"accordion6aa0c23d\" role=\"region\" aria-labelledby=\"accordion-title6aa0c23d\"><div class=\"collapse-inner\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Clarissa Desjardins is a Montreal-based scientist and serial biotech entrepreneur, and co-founder and CEO of Congruence Therapeutics. Congruence is her fourth company. She previously founded Clementia Pharmaceuticals, co-founded Caprion Pharmaceuticals, and started her first company while completing a Ph.D.\u202fat the Montreal Neurological Institute.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-rbc-rbc-collapsible-panel\"><div class=\"accordion-panel\"><button id=\"accordion-title217108c0\" class=\"collapse-toggle collapsed\" data-target=\"#accordion217108c0\" data-toggle=\"collapse\" data-parent=\"#accordionSet1\" aria-expanded=\"false\" data-dig-id=\"LP-AI,TechnologyandInnovation-8858-217108c0\" aria-controls=\"accordion217108c0\" data-dig-category=\"LP-AI,TechnologyandInnovation\" data-dig-action=\"collapsible closed\" data-dig-label=\"What is Congruence Therapeutics?\" action-closed=\"collapsible closed\" action-opened=\"collapsible open\"><div><strong><strong><strong>What is Congruence Therapeutics?<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/div><\/button><div class=\"collapse-content collapse\" id=\"accordion217108c0\" role=\"region\" aria-labelledby=\"accordion-title217108c0\"><div class=\"collapse-inner\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Congruence Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biotechnology company that uses computational tools, including machine learning and protein-structure simulation, to discover small-molecule drugs. Its approach aims to reduce the trial and error of early drug discovery. Its first drug candidate is in clinical trials, with further programs expected to follow.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-rbc-rbc-collapsible-panel\"><div class=\"accordion-panel\"><button id=\"accordion-titlef40086f9\" class=\"collapse-toggle collapsed\" data-target=\"#accordionf40086f9\" data-toggle=\"collapse\" data-parent=\"#accordionSet1\" aria-expanded=\"false\" data-dig-id=\"LP-AI,TechnologyandInnovation-8858-f40086f9\" aria-controls=\"accordionf40086f9\" data-dig-category=\"LP-AI,TechnologyandInnovation\" data-dig-action=\"collapsible closed\" data-dig-label=\"What is the main issue discussed in this episode?\" action-closed=\"collapsible closed\" action-opened=\"collapsible open\"><div><strong><strong><strong>What is the main issue discussed in this episode?<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/div><\/button><div class=\"collapse-content collapse\" id=\"accordionf40086f9\" role=\"region\" aria-labelledby=\"accordion-titlef40086f9\"><div class=\"collapse-inner\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The episode examines the state of the global biotech industry\u2014which has seen China rapidly industrialize drug discovery and AI transform how drugs are found\u2014and Canada\u2019s place in it. Clarissa Desjardins and John Stackhouse discuss why Canada\u2019s strong scientific expertise has not translated into a burgeoning domestic industry, and what the country should do now.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-rbc-rbc-collapsible-panel\"><div class=\"accordion-panel\"><button id=\"accordion-title31aa1f14\" class=\"collapse-toggle collapsed\" data-target=\"#accordion31aa1f14\" data-toggle=\"collapse\" data-parent=\"#accordionSet1\" aria-expanded=\"false\" data-dig-id=\"LP-AI,TechnologyandInnovation-8858-31aa1f14\" aria-controls=\"accordion31aa1f14\" data-dig-category=\"LP-AI,TechnologyandInnovation\" data-dig-action=\"collapsible closed\" data-dig-label=\"Why does biotech matter for Canada?\" action-closed=\"collapsible closed\" action-opened=\"collapsible open\"><div><strong><strong>Why does biotech matter for Canada?<\/strong><\/strong><\/div><\/button><div class=\"collapse-content collapse\" id=\"accordion31aa1f14\" role=\"region\" aria-labelledby=\"accordion-title31aa1f14\"><div class=\"collapse-inner\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The biotech industry provides economic growth and national resilience. As China becomes a major source of new drugs, Canada\u2019s ability to discover, develop and produce its own medicines is increasingly a question of sovereignty.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-rbc-rbc-collapsible-panel\"><div class=\"accordion-panel\"><button id=\"accordion-title02f35f74\" class=\"collapse-toggle collapsed\" data-target=\"#accordion02f35f74\" data-toggle=\"collapse\" data-parent=\"#accordionSet1\" aria-expanded=\"false\" data-dig-id=\"LP-AI,TechnologyandInnovation-8858-02f35f74\" aria-controls=\"accordion02f35f74\" data-dig-category=\"LP-AI,TechnologyandInnovation\" data-dig-action=\"collapsible closed\" data-dig-label=\"What is changing in the biotech industry?\" action-closed=\"collapsible closed\" action-opened=\"collapsible open\"><div><strong><strong>What is changing in the biotech industry?<\/strong><\/strong><\/div><\/button><div class=\"collapse-content collapse\" id=\"accordion02f35f74\" role=\"region\" aria-labelledby=\"accordion-title02f35f74\"><div class=\"collapse-inner\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There are two shifts dominating: AI and computational tools are shortening early drug discovery, while China has built state-backed, round-the-clock drug discovery operations producing clinic-ready candidates efficiently. That changes the economics for North American biotech firms, and is pushing them toward novel technologies and harder-to-treat diseases.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-rbc-rbc-collapsible-panel\"><div class=\"accordion-panel\"><button id=\"accordion-title549e12c0\" class=\"collapse-toggle collapsed\" data-target=\"#accordion549e12c0\" data-toggle=\"collapse\" data-parent=\"#accordionSet1\" aria-expanded=\"false\" data-dig-id=\"LP-AI,TechnologyandInnovation-8858-549e12c0\" aria-controls=\"accordion549e12c0\" data-dig-category=\"LP-AI,TechnologyandInnovation\" data-dig-action=\"collapsible closed\" data-dig-label=\"What should Canada do?\" action-closed=\"collapsible closed\" action-opened=\"collapsible open\"><div><strong><strong>What should Canada do?<\/strong><\/strong><\/div><\/button><div class=\"collapse-content collapse\" id=\"accordion549e12c0\" role=\"region\" aria-labelledby=\"accordion-title549e12c0\"><div class=\"collapse-inner\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Desjardins argues Canada should mobilize more domestic capital, take more \u201cshots on goal\u201d with new companies, and improve R&amp;D tax credits and talent attraction. She wants Canadian investors to back companies through to global scale. John Stackhouse adds that biotech belongs in Canada\u2019s sovereignty agenda, supported by policy, capital and education.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-rbc-rbc-default-collapsible\"><p><button class=\"collapse-toggle collapsed\" data-target=\"#collapse24910adb\" data-toggle=\"collapse\" aria-expanded=\"false\" aria-controls=\"collapse24910adb\" data-dig-id=\"LP-AI,TechnologyandInnovation-8858-undefined\" data-dig-category=\"LP-AI,TechnologyandInnovation\" data-dig-action=\"accordion closed\" action-closed=\"accordion closed\" action-opened=\"accordion open\" data-dig-label=\"Transcript\"><div>Transcript<\/div><\/button><\/p><div class=\"collapse-content collapse\" id=\"collapse24910adb\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-rbc-collapsible-inner-block collapse-inner\">\n<h3 id=\"h-canada-s-biotech-challenge\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Canada&#8217;s Biotech Challenge<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[0:00] Clarissa Desjardins<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We need to get our acts together or else in the future you can see the majority of our drugs coming from a place like China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[0:06] John Stackhouse<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">How much time do we have?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[0:09] Clarissa Desjardins<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We may have lost the race already on the so-called &#8220;Me Too&#8221; small molecule drugs or the &#8220;Me Too&#8221; antibodies. But there are so many other diseases to be addressed, right? We can still compete by using unique technologies and being more innovative and creative, which the Chinese have not yet become, but they certainly will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[0:28] John Stackhouse<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hi, it&#8217;s John here. You may have noticed that Canada is in the global spotlight, certainly when it comes to capital and investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A couple of weeks ago, the world&#8217;s biggest investors came to Toronto, and hundreds of billions of dollars were committed to major projects, but also some really interesting tech opportunities in Canada. AI, quantum, space, technology were all center stage, which was really exciting. But one thing was missing, and that was biotech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I don&#8217;t think that was by design, but it&#8217;s really important that we take that challenge on. How do we make biotech and life sciences more broadly a national priority for our economic growth, for our investment agenda, and for our sovereignty? There are few people in the country who are better versed in this than our guest today, Clarissa Desjardins. She is a serial entrepreneur, a scientist, and a real champion of biotech and life sciences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Clarissa, welcome to Disruptors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[1:30] Clarissa Desjardins<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Thank you. Happy to be here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[1:32] John Stackhouse<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s great to talk to you and I want to dive right into it, but first give us a sense of your own background. You&#8217;re a serial entrepreneur. You&#8217;ve had a number of successful exits. How did you go from science into entrepreneurship?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[1:46] Clarissa Desjardins<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sure, happy to tell you about my journey as an entrepreneur. So when I was doing my PhD at the Montreal Neurological Institute, I loved research. I had no inklings that I would become an entrepreneur. So it was an accidental discovery where I was working in the lab with a lot of radioactive peptides. So these are I 121 labeled peptides, and nobody enjoys that. Very naively, a colleague of mine and I decided that well wouldn&#8217;t a fluorescent label be better than a radioactive one? It was a very naive idea because fluorescent labels are huge and they usually destroy the activity. So anyhow it worked and we thought this is a great tool, but then the idea slowly sunk in that well if this is a great tool for us that replaces radioactivity, that is stable, that isn&#8217;t bad for the environment, you could do many more different types of experiments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Wouldn&#8217;t it be useful to other people? I felt so lucky to have the privilege to do basic research. You know, I loved it, and I thought, you know, only wealthy countries can afford to pay scientists to investigate these basic questions, whatever interests them. So if you discover something practical that could lead to economic activity, you should really try to make sure that it&#8217;s available and that someone develops it. I didn&#8217;t think that someone would be me. I thought, well, they&#8217;ll hire some qualified business people who know what they&#8217;re doing, but it ended up being me. So I patented the tool and I started a business. And I learned as I went along how to patent, you know, how to do payroll, etc. And those learnings are quite easy compared to, you know, the technical learning that that we all do in our PhDs. But long story short, this company was successful in the sense that we were selling across the world. It was incredibly rewarding. And that was the entrepreneurship bug that I then never lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[3:47] John Stackhouse<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s really interesting that you wanted to get your science to application to make it useful to a wide range of people. I&#8217;m sure most scientists want that. But you saw the private sector and entrepreneurship as the route for that. Canada&#8217;s changed a fair bit over the decades since your first company. But people may not appreciate how significant we were globally. Going back to the 80s and 70s, we were the country that invented insulin, but with Connaught Labs took it to a global level, and then Connaught was sold to a European country. We were the country that developed the science behind GLP, what people now know as the Ozempic, created in Canada, scale globally somewhere else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We&#8217;ll get into what we need to do as a country, but just curious, Clarissa, what you&#8217;ve seen in terms of those significant changes from the nineties to today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[4:40] Clarissa Desjardins<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yes, so what you&#8217;re pointing out, John, is just the wealth of knowledge creation that we&#8217;ve always had in Canada because of the high quality of our universities. So we, you know, publish more papers per capita than the US. We are, you know, the quality again of our universities and of the output is tremendous. So we can go back in history and point to all of these incredible breakthroughs that unfortunately we did not translate into commercial benefit for our society. So that that&#8217;s an issue. What has improved since the 90s a lot is first of all the culture and the attitude. When I started my business, it was frowned upon. My supervisor at the time and others were saying, you&#8217;re selling out, okay, you&#8217;re going to the dark side, you want to make money. And it really was not that. I really want felt that it was important for discoveries to generate economic activity because I thought we needed to give back for everything that we had as researchers. But people understand that now and scientists want to develop their ideas and their devices and drugs into commercializable products for that for that good reason. So there&#8217;s better culture of entrepreneurship, there&#8217;s a lot more money than there used to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The knowledge of how to develop drugs, etcetera, how to commercialize them is there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[6:03] John Stackhouse<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Tell us a bit about Congruence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[6:05] Clarissa Desjardins<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So Congruence is the fourth company that I&#8217;ve started here in Montreal. And what I wanted to do was to use the latest computational tools, both structure-based tools, but also machine learning and artificial intelligence tools, to accelerate the discovery of small molecules. This process of discovering a small molecule, which is a once-a-day pill, you know, the most convenient form of drugs, is a very arduous process. It&#8217;s shrinking now because we&#8217;re all using these tools, but it used to be, you know, minimum four to six years to go from an idea, a target that you want to develop the small molecule pill for, to four years to the development candidate. That means you&#8217;re just starting to prepare to go into the clinic, you&#8217;re two years away from the clinic. All in all, we&#8217;re talking 10 to 12 years. So this is part of the reason why I think our industry is so misunderstood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s complex, it&#8217;s long and it&#8217;s high risk and you really have to have expertise in all those fields. So I&#8217;m very proud to say at Congruence we have shrunk that time and that risk down, largely due to our platform to machine learning and AI tools that we&#8217;ve applied. We&#8217;ve shrunk that initial stage, that stage of going from target to the clinic. So that would be about six to seven years. So we&#8217;ve reduced it down to three to four because we have our first product going into the clinic. It&#8217;s in the clinic, excuse me. The second one will be in the clinic next year and so will the third. So we did it with three products as we normally do for risk mitigation and we shrunk the time by about 50%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[7:35] John Stackhouse<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And it&#8217;s no coincidence that Congruence is based out of the Mila building. Mila is one of Canada&#8217;s great AI innovation but application centers, if I can call it that, to get AI out of the lab and into the real world. Give us a bit of a sense of how AI and biotech are dancing together to move things move things faster. And we&#8217;ll talk about the Canadian opportunity because we have strength not just in life sciences, as you said, global leading researchers. We&#8217;re a global leader in AI as well. So if we&#8217;re gonna win in one area, surely this is it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[8:18] Clarissa Desjardins<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yeah, so I mean AI is being used across the entire drug discovery spectrum where we use it at Congruence is in the early stages, as I mentioned, to generate the molecules in silico, test them in silico, such that instead of generating typically two to five thousand molecules to find the right one in a trial and error type fashion, we&#8217;re now synthesizing two to five hundred molecules before we find the right one. So it&#8217;s a lot of simulation of protein motion, a lot of simulation of the pockets where the small molecule binds. This is atomic level, you know, physics and chemistry. But AI is being used to identify patients, to discover novel targets. So a lot of the big companies that came out over the last 10 years were actually looking to kind of digitize nature, right? So those are very exciting but very expensive enterprises. A lot of them were started by the AI experts. And I have to say the jury&#8217;s still out on whether they&#8217;ve been successful or not, because when I say it&#8217;s expensive, I&#8217;m talking hundreds of millions of dollars to try to capture this digital biological information and you know, sometimes they miss the mark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So yeah, we&#8217;ve been very practical about how we use it. We use it to reduce trial and error in a drug discovery paradigm. We&#8217;re not trying to digitize biology yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[9:54] John Stackhouse<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yet. Tell us a bit about the Canadian challenge. As I said in the intro, tech was certainly at the forefront of the Canada Investment Summit, except for biotech. And I don&#8217;t think that was deliberate, but it&#8217;s also a recurring challenge for life sciences. What what are you and others up against?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[10:13] Clarissa Desjardins<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think we&#8217;re up against the complexity of our industry and just lack of public awareness. So I think people are aware of big pharma where they get their drugs, and you know, the reputation of big pharma has not been great. And people are aware of researchers that are contributing new knowledge and discovering new targets and sometimes very early stage molecules. But what biotech does, what we&#8217;re great at, taking those early stage academic ideas and turning them into drugs, that&#8217;s kind of invisible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[10:46] John Stackhouse<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One of the challenges is also venture funding. As you said, it&#8217;s really expensive. Go to the US and there&#8217;s lots of capital. Our calculations shows that there was just $273 million of venture funding in the first half of this year. That&#8217;s a pittance compared to the amount of capital in the country. What are investors missing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[11:08] Clarissa Desjardins<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I think investors are really missing first of all, the returns, the historical returns that biotech has delivered, and those are only increasing now with the increased M&amp;A activity that we&#8217;ve seen. So they&#8217;re they&#8217;re missing great returns. And it&#8217;s not on purpose, it&#8217;s because you need that expertise to understand at each stage of bringing the molecule forward, what is that worth and kind of being able to weigh the risk and the investments. As I was saying, luckily there&#8217;s a lot more Canadian VCs now. I think I might be the first biotech at Congruence to have a cap table that is dominated by Canadian venture capital. So we&#8217;re talking Lumira, Amplitude, Fonds des Travailleurs du Qu\u00e9bec, BDC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So if and when Congruence succeeds, either by selling our drug to the market or potential acquisition, all of these Canadian investors will benefit. So we&#8217;re looking forward to that day because what&#8217;s happened historically is that the US VC&#8217;s have benefited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[12:09] John Stackhouse<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And they have a lot of subject matter expertise, especially the funds in Boston, but also on the West Coast. It&#8217;s as we&#8217;ve been discussing, this is science and you want scientists in the VC pool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What can we do differently, given the pressures on the country to move at a much faster pace and greater scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[12:30] Clarissa Desjardins<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I see more and more young people wanting to become entrepreneurs in medical device and services in drug discovery. And you know, drug discoveries is takes hundreds of millions of dollars. So it&#8217;s it&#8217;s normal that you don&#8217;t have hundreds and hundreds of these types of companies, right? So that pipeline is getting richer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We need more venture capital, more shots on goal, such that 10 years from now we could have an anchor company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By an anchor company, I mean a company that&#8217;s worth more than $10 billion, that employs thousands of people, that is selling, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars, making hundreds of millions in revenue that is kind of stable and there for decades. I think that that&#8217;s more than possible in the next 10 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[13:15] John Stackhouse<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So we&#8217;ve got plenty of seed capital, really good science. We&#8217;re getting better at the growth stage, although a lot more to do there. There&#8217;s still that big jump to global scale. As you said, we don&#8217;t have an anchor company. I&#8217;ve heard that we are the only G7 country, is that correct, that doesn&#8217;t have a billion dollar life sciences company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It should have been a wake-up call in the pandemic, when we were not able to produce our own vaccines, even though we were one of the creator of vaccines. We had to go cap in hand to other countries, including big pharma to work that out. So there&#8217;s a sovereignty issue here as well. This isn&#8217;t just about economic development. When we talk about sovereignty, health sovereignty, protecting ourselves against diseases and even pandemics is a growing part of national security. You&#8217;re in the thick of it as you look ahead, developing what you&#8217;re doing at Congruence, huge applications in areas like obesity. But you are also up against pharma giants, the Lillys of the world that can do this, but may just want to buy what you&#8217;re developing. And for many entrepreneurs, that&#8217;s a good exit quite literally and then they can invest in their next venture as as you&#8217;ve done. How do we as a country think through that challenge of helping science entrepreneurs like you grow, scale, reach that global market, and not end up as part of an international company based somewhere else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[14:48] Clarissa Desjardins<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So before I comment on the build versus buy dilemma of biotech companies once they reach a certain scale, I just want to mention that we do in Canada have several companies that could become these anchor companies, right? So we have Xenon, we have AbCellera, right? They&#8217;re they&#8217;re traded on the they&#8217;re worth $4 billion in market cap. We have Zymeworks, over a billion dollars. So we have those, and they could evolve in into that stage. I hope they do. And we&#8217;ve also had all of the multi-billion dollar exits, you know. We&#8217;ve had Chinook for over five billion with GSK, and that&#8217;s what you&#8217;re talking about. My prior company, Clementia, for 1.3 billion, Inversago, Bellus, each for 2 billion. So that just demonstrates the amount of value that can be created within these companies in a relatively short period of time, within five to six years. But it&#8217;s a shame, as you&#8217;re pointing out. Why do we get acquired? Well, it&#8217;s very hard, and I was sitting in the situation with Clementia, wanting to deliver the drug myself. So what happened is we developed a drug for a rare pediatric bone condition, and the FDA stated that the data that we had was sufficient to now go seek approval.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So you&#8217;re sitting around the board with venture capitalists that have taken the risk for the last five to seven years and they&#8217;re paying you for certainty. They&#8217;re paying you for everything going right over the next five years. And we know that in our field things don&#8217;t always go right. Sometimes a new, you know, adverse event materializes, maybe the market wasn&#8217;t what you thought. So it&#8217;s very difficult for the board to make that decision. And I did plead with my board to say, please let us market it ourselves, right? We&#8217;re gonna build an anchor company. And they said, Clarissa, we understand and we believe you could probably do it, but it&#8217;ll cost another five hundred million dollars of fundraising and it&#8217;ll take five years with zero certainty as compared to the price that they&#8217;re paying us today. That&#8217;s why it&#8217;s so difficult to say no to an acquisition that is paying you for certainty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[17:02] John Stackhouse<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I suspect those market dynamics haven&#8217;t changed. How do we navigate against that? Or do we accept that as a positive part of capital and life sciences?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[17:14] Clarissa Desjardins<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is a positive. One of the things that I love about biotech is that employees own 15% of the stock options. This is everybody&#8217;s an owner. And so that money is recycled in Canada. So that wealth creation is fantastic. We all own 15% of the company. It&#8217;s the other owners, the venture capital owners. Unfortunately, it&#8217;s the majority in the US. But it is normal and healthy that this occur. What has to happen at one point is that our own capital providers are in a situation where they want to take the risk and they say, no, you know what? We don&#8217;t this price is a good price today, but we would like to continue to build. We have confidence in this team, we want the benefits of the anchor company for the ecosystem, and we were willing to take the chance. So I think that&#8217;s a numbers game. I think that once enough of our capital providers have been successful, once the conditions are right, those bets will be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[18:33] John Stackhouse<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We&#8217;re focusing this season of Disruptors on what&#8217;s called geotech, so the intersection of geopolitics and technology and disruption. That&#8217;s happening in biotech. I&#8217;ve seen numbers that suggest like two-thirds now of discoveries is coming out of China. Which means the world is, whether we know it or not, increasingly dependent on China for drugs including many that are life-saving, but certainly life-improving. There&#8217;s all sorts of efficiencies that go with that and benefits to the consumer, but pretty clearly creates a key vulnerability that comes with dependency. How do you think through that challenge of going up against those so-called hegemons? We&#8217;ve talked about the US, but China is becoming the hegemon in in biotech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[19:29] Clarissa Desjardins<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yeah, so what&#8217;s happened in China is really outstanding. It&#8217;s hard to believe how far they&#8217;ve come in the last six to seven years. And so it&#8217;s obviously a result of industrial policy investing hundreds of millions of dollars such that now their Western North American trained scientists are going back into fully funded labs, operating 24-7, I understand, industrializing this drug discovery process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And they&#8217;ve changed the economics for our industry. So, for example, VCs are gonna fund our company Congruence, and they&#8217;re gonna wait five to seven years to see if we get a signal in the clinic, whereas they could buy this clinic-ready proven compound for a fraction of what they would have to invest in Congruence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now, where there&#8217;s hope is that I don&#8217;t see them really on the bleeding edge of technology. I don&#8217;t see the application of machine learning AI to difficult to drug targets, to novel modalities. But I do believe it&#8217;s a matter of time, and we need to get our acts together or else in the future you can see the majority of our drugs coming from a place like China. That&#8217;s scary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[20:47] John Stackhouse<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">How much time do we have?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[20:49] Clarissa Desjardins<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We may have lost the race already on the so-called &#8220;Me Too&#8221; small molecule drugs or the &#8220;Me Too&#8221; antibodies. We&#8217;re we&#8217;re losing it. They&#8217;re so efficient, so they&#8217;re able to to sell their clinically proven early stage drugs to pharma for a fraction of what it would cost to develop them in in North America, unfortunately. That race has been lost. But there are so many other diseases to be addressed, right? So the CNS diseases, the psychiatric diseases, etc. There&#8217;s there&#8217;s a lot more to do there and we can still compete by using unique technologies and being more innovative and creative, which which the Chinese have not yet become, but they certainly will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[21:31] John Stackhouse<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So we do have a window and it&#8217;s remarkable to see how Canada has changed even in the last twelve months in areas like energy and space and defense. In some ways it&#8217;s a completely different country than certainly twenty four, thirty-six months ago. What would you suggest, Clarissa, we need to do to have the same sort of shift and focus for biotech over the next year or two?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[21:54] Clarissa Desjardins<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So there&#8217;s certainly some policy changes that would again cause, you know, more funds to be attracted, foreign and domestic. So the R&amp;D tax credit system can be improved, so that just like for every dollar you have two dollars worth to work with. There are other policy changes in terms of attracting foreign talent that we could do, tax holidays, etc., that we used to have. But fundamentally we just need to mobilize more more capital. And so I don&#8217;t know if that&#8217;s a policy change with the pension funds. I understand they&#8217;re doing very well, right? But we need more economic growth and we need more capital within our industry to ultimately lead to these anchor companies and to just generate the revenues that our country deserves by virtue of having invested in this great education and this great society where we can be creative and we can innovate, we need those returns from biotech in Canada.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[22:56] John Stackhouse<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Maybe you can leave us with a future state, Clarissa, something to shoot for. Ten years from now, if we get this right, what&#8217;s your vision of what Canada can be?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[23:07] Clarissa Desjardins<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s possible, if we get this right, that ten years from now we could triple the number of startup companies in medical devices, drug discovery services, and that would lead then to more, you know, billion-sized companies, and that would lead to anchor companies being developed, because they wouldn&#8217;t all be acquired, and that would change the whole ecosystem where all of the brilliant scientists that we have now studying in universities would find a place to work in Canada. They wouldn&#8217;t have to go to San Francisco and Boston where we have the brain drain and where the revenues from these great drugs that are solving serious societal problems are coming back to us in Canada. So that would move the needle on our GDP and just make this great industry benefit us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[23:56] John Stackhouse<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What a great ambition to shoot for and one that is within reach, as you&#8217;ve shown over and over and over again, with your companies and also with your leadership on the national stage. Clarissa, thank you for being on Disruptors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[24:10] Clarissa Desjardins<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Thank you, John. My pleasure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[24:17] John Stackhouse<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Like so much of the world, Canada is having a moment, and it&#8217;s a moment, even a reckoning, on that word sovereignty. We&#8217;re trying to figure out how we can produce more of what we rely on and also what our allies depend on. Yet in all those sovereignty conversations, biotech tends to be left out or comes at the end of the sentence. We all know the pandemic was a wake up call that we need to find better ways to produce vaccines, yes, but a whole range of medical and health technologies that literally save our lives, but also build our sovereignty. Clarissa Desjardins has been a voice in a bit of the wilderness for decades on this, and yet she&#8217;s stuck at it, building company after company and quietly helping to build a Canadian ecosystem that is ready to take on the world. But as she made clear, we all have a role to play in that through public policy, through capital mobilization, through the education of future generations to ensure that we have the scientists and entrepreneurs who can build biotech, but also biotech sovereignty for Canada.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That will be critical to keeping Canada healthy and secure for generations to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m John Stackhouse, and this is Disruptors, an RBC podcast. Thanks for listening.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<style class=\"advgb-styles-renderer\">@media (min-width:782px){#tl-fpb-1 .tl-featured-post-banner__gradient{background:linear-gradient(135deg, #070707, #00356300 100%);opacity:1;}}@media (max-width:781px){#tl-fpb-1{background-image:url(https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/thought-leadership\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/27\/2026\/09\/Disruptors-S11-WEB-BANNER-EP4_Banner-wide-copy-2.jpg?quality=80&w=4096)!important;background-position:50% 50%!important;background-size:cover!important;min-height:400px!important;}#tl-fpb-1 .tl-featured-post-banner__gradient{background:linear-gradient(45deg, #070707, #00356300 100%);opacity:1;}}<\/style>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Canadian medical research has produced breakthrough after breakthrough. But too often, the companies behind the science scale elsewhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":89,"featured_media":8891,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"disable_focal_point":true,"featured_image_focal_point":{"x":0.56,"y":0.51},"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","tl_feed_thumbnail":0,"tl_feed_thumbnail_focal_point":{"x":0.5,"y":0.5},"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[125],"tags":[],"rbc_tl_platform":[131],"rbc_tl_newsletter":[],"rbc_tl_content_type":[132],"rbc_tl_author":[179],"class_list":["post-8858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai-technology-and-innovation","rbc_tl_platform-disruptors","rbc_tl_content_type-podcast","rbc_tl_author-rbc-thought-leadership"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v28.2 (Yoast SEO v28.2) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Canada&#039;s Biotech Challenge - RBC Thought Leadership<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Canadian medical research has produced breakthrough after breakthrough. 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