Innovation

Toronto’s life science sector has enjoyed a very impressive past and is driving forward to an even more impressive future.

Technology

Clearly, Toronto is poised to meet global pharmaceutical challenges with a vibrant and dynamic research and development community.

Business

But Toronto is not just about engaging in early stage research. Innovative discoveries from our research institutions are creating new companies where these technologies are being developed and commercialized into new products and services.

Toronto’s Discovery District is more than just world-class science and discovery. The research park which is fully integrated into Toronto’s downtown core offers a concentrated mix of research, biomedical companies, finance and business support services for the research community, and more.

  • 2 square kilometres of concentrated brain power
  • More than 50,000 jobs
  • 22,000+ medical care and research-related jobs
  • 9 teaching hospitals
  • 30+ specialized medical and related sciences research centres

University of Toronto

  • Over 70,000 students
  • Canada’s largest university
  • 11th of the rankings of HEEACT that measures the performance of scientific papers for world universities (2009)
  • 11th in the world in Life Sciences and Biomedicine ranked by Times Higher Education’s QS World University Rankings (2009)
  • One of the largest Faculties of Medicine in North America
  • More medical faculty and students than Harvard
  • Ranked 4th in North American in terms of medical research spending

York University

  • 50,000 students
  • 3rd largest university in Canada
  • leading interdisciplinary research and teaching university in Canada

Ryerson University

  • Canada’s leader for innovative career-focused education
  • 28,000 undergraduate and graduate students
  • largest primarily undergraduate university in Canada

Biotechnology specialization in:

  • vaccines
  • diagnostics
  • Bio-informatics
  • Bio-pharmaceuticals
  • Biotech instrumentation
  • Genomic, proteomics