BREAKING: Trudeau, Ford announce AstraZeneca is making a major investment in Mississauga
Pharma giant AstraZeneca announces investment in Ontario Life Sciences Centre in collaboration with Prime Minister Trudeau and Premier Ford.
The president of AstraZeneca has announced that it will create 500 highly skilled jobs in the Greater Toronto Area through a joint initiative with the provincial and federal government.
Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca (AZ) and it’s subsidiary Alexion have announced the development of a new Life Sciences Centre hub in Mississauga.
“It will be a global clinical hub for cancer, biopharmaceuticals and rare disease research,” Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie relayed with excitement, after a land acknowledgement. The announcement was relayed from behind a podium that read “Keeping Canadians healthy & creating good jobs.”
Kristen Combs, president of AZ, says that this is a major global investment to advance the development of rare disease treatment.
WATCH: Trudeau says health data is important, and that's why it must be shared across the country.
— Rebel News Canada (@RebelNews_CA) February 27, 2023
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AZ CEO Pascal Soriot says there are three medical revolutions on the forefront of this kind of research and development.
The first is a revolution of biology. Soriot says that the goal is to understand the biology of cancer and develop technologies and products to address it.
The second revolution is how technology and digitization affects the pharmaceutical industry, to utilize technology and data to deliver “the right diagnostic techniques to the right patients,” he said.
Our plan to attract new investments and good-paying jobs is working.
— Doug Ford (@fordnation) February 27, 2023
Ontario is quickly becoming a hub for innovation and research in the #LifeSciences sector. With @AstraZeneca's investment, we'll see 500 new jobs created and faster development of life-saving treatments. pic.twitter.com/qVBIUhiHMk
Artificial intelligence (AI) and data are the third revolution.
Soriot intends to harness those three revolutions to transform medicine, which he says will offset the carbon footprint of health-care services.
“Health-care services produce 4% of carbon emissions in the world. In advanced countries like the United States and likely Canada too, 8% of carbon emissions come from health care and hospitals so keeping people out of hospital and curing them quickly will affect societies in a big way.”
AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot says that healthcare services and their carbon emissions need to be reduced.
— Tamara Ugolini 🇨🇦 (@TamaraUgo) February 27, 2023
Investing in biopharmaceutical R&D will achieve this goal.
Stay tuned: https://t.co/UhWFdM2qP6 pic.twitter.com/AgSyJqSW2P
Prime Minister Trudeau notes that this announcement comes one day before Rare Disease Day. “Data is a cornerstone of health systems for the future,” he says before elaborating that more than half of the provinces and territories have committed to the federally proposed new health-care deal that will “make real improvements [to healthcare] that Canadians deserve.”
PM Trudeau announces that a majority of provinces, including an agreement reached in principle with Alberta today, have signed on to health-care agreements with the federal government.
— Rebel News Canada (@RebelNews_CA) February 27, 2023
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He elaborates that Canada is a world leader in AI and that applying it into the pharmaceutical industry is “key” to the intersection of quantum computing. “The amount of computing power required to even begin to simulate clinical trials in a way that’s going to show promising paths is massive.”
Trudeau on AI in health care and vaccines: “The amount of computing power required to even begin to simulate clinical trials in a way that’s going to show promising paths is massive.”
— Rebel News Canada (@RebelNews_CA) February 27, 2023
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Overall, Trudeau expressed that he was “really pleased” to see global interest and confidence in what Canadians are doing here.
“Not only building critical capacity to develop vaccines and therapeutics but building a whole ecosystem, expanding the research network, investing in innovation, and building a more resilient future for healthcare systems.”
Premier of Ontario Doug Ford thanked the federal government for attracting companies like Sanofi with their $925-million state of the art vaccine facility for flu vaccines and Ambio with their $580 million investment for new cell and gene therapy manufacturing facility.
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