“i’m advocating for a manufacturing sector, biomedicine and vaccines.”
in addition to government, rossi said he is consulting with the university of toronto and what he refers to as the “bio-entrepreneurial community,” encouraging them to emulate the reinvention of boston and cambridge, mass., in the 1980s, or the san francisco area, which house hundreds of life science, biotech and pharma companies ranging from startups to behemoths like biogen, amgen and vertex pharmaceuticals inc.
“they’re all here for a reason, because of this biotech community,” said rossi, who has been a founder of five different biotech companies.
“canada has great science and many of the elements, but (a broader) ecosystem is very important.”
just a few decades ago, cambridge, where moderna is based, “was a wasteland of dangerous, really shady parking lots and warehouses and storage places,” he said.
but then, a crucial decision was made by governments of the day to “take this big chunk of land and try to develop it into a biotech hub,” rossi said.
the plan involved real estate developers, who got involved to transform a swathe of land close to harvard and the massachusetts institute of technology, where critical research was taking place.