When Dr. Pieter Cullis arrived at UBC as an undergraduate physics student in 1964, he had no idea he would one day help develop a scientific breakthrough that would protect billions of people worldwide - or that his work would help fuel British Columbia's booming biotech sector.
"I've always believed that if you want to solve big problems, you need to keep good people working together long enough to make real progress," says Cullis. "That's what drove everything."
Today, Cullis is known globally for his innovative work on lipid nanoparticles, the drug delivery system that made mRNA vaccines - like the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines - possible. He is part of a generation of UBC researchers - innovators like Dr. Michael Smith, Dr. Julia Levy, and Dr. Carl Hansen, among many others - who helped create B.C.'s thriving biotech sector that continues to grow today.
Cullis' entrepreneurial drive helped launch more than a dozen UBC spin-off companies and inspired hundreds of students to pursue careers in biotech. He and others set in motion a life sciences ecosystem that now includes more than 2,000 companies across B.C., employing more than 20,000 people.
That's just part of UBC's broader economic impact. To date, UBC discoveries have been the basis of more than 270 spin-off companies and at the heart of products, services, and treatments that have generated an estimated $13 billion in sales across multiple sectors.
