BIOTEC Canada – Insights Magazine – May 2025
It’s often said that nature makes the best medicines, and history has shown that to be true. From the fungal origins of penicillin to the Pacific yew tree’s gift of paclitaxel, drugs derived from nature have shaped modern medicine. Indeed, about half of all drugs used today come from nature, including antibiotics, immunosuppressants, and cancer therapies.
Yet pharmaceutical companies, once deeply invested in mining nature’s chemistry, have largely abandoned the field, deeming it too laborious, slow and expensive. Discovery has instead shifted toward synthetic libraries—easier to produce, modify, and screen. As a result, vast reserves of bioactive molecules produced in nature remain untapped, with estimates that less than 1% of this chemistry has been examined for its medicinal potential.
That’s a significant opportunity for modern medicine, and one that Kapoose Creek Bio is quickly unlocking, using artificial intelligence—and the rich biodiversity of a remote rainforest on Vancouver Island. And it couldn’t come at a better time.
