Vancouver’s AbCellera emerged last year as a leading early stage company in the race to bring COVID-19 treatments to market when their Pandemic Prevention Platform team brought the first COVID-19 antibody to clinical trials in under 90 days.
Their herculean efforts were acknowledged when the pharmaceutical upstart was named the winner of Fast Company’s Innovative Team of the Year award.
Now according to Sean Silcoff of the Globe and Mail, their team in Vancouver is about to double.
AbCellera CEO Dr. Carl Hansen told Silcoff that the company plans to hire “hundreds of people” and eventually expand its laboratory operations in B.C. to one million square feet. AbCellera currently employs just over 200.
Hansen plans to build AbCellera into Canada’s first true pharmaceutical industry giant and after a successful IPO, he seems to be on track.
AbCellera stock tripled on its first day of trading and while the share price has come off that high in the past month, AbCellera’s current market cap is over $10 billion.
“We’re building a centralized platform people can access from anywhere in the world, but it means infrastructure, facilities, equipment and very significant growth in full time employees,” Hansen told the Globe and Mail. “The lion’s share of that will happen in Vancouver.”