Kardium gets federal funding boost to expand manufacture of heart devices in B.C.

One of Canada’s most promising medical device developers, Kardium Inc., is getting a $31.25-million funding boost from the federal government to expand its manufacturing capabilities in the greater Vancouver area.

The funding, from the government’s Strategic Response Fund, will support a $125-million investment project by Burnaby, B.C.-based Kardium to more than double its clean room facilities as it scales up manufacturing of its devices, which treat atrial fibrillation, a common heart problem.

Kardium makes a catheter that is threaded up a patient’s femoral vein into the heart and expanded into a disco-ball-like globe just three centimetres in diameter. It pinpoints where erratic electrical signals in the heart originate and zaps the problem cells. The device has generated better clinical results than its rivals.

Kardium receives Health Canada approval to sell device treating common heart problem

Kardium received regulatory approval to sell the devices from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in August, 2025, and from Health Canada last month. The privately held 19-year-old company, which plans to go public as early as the second half of 2027, struggled to raise money in Canada for its distinctive heart technology. But it had little trouble finding foreign-based financiers, including Fidelity, T. Rowe Price Associates and Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, who have invested nearly $500-million in the company.

“We’re building Kardium to be an independent company and in order to do that we want to have control of our own destiny. That means controlling our own manufacturing,” chief executive officer Kevin Chaplin said in an interview.

The company’s manufacturing process requires each device to be assembled in clean rooms, which are kept free of dust, germs and polluted air, and which are each equipped with their own heating, ventilation and air-conditioning system. The company currently has 10,000 square feet of clean room space; with the investment, that will increase to 25,000.

The company now has more than 700 employees and has added 200 this year for manufacturing, Mr. Chaplin said.

The facility in Burnaby is one of two that Kardium will use to manufacture its devices as it expands globally. The company plans to open another facility in Costa Rica, a major centre for medical device manufacturing, by 2029. That facility will ultimately supply a majority of its devices globally.

Kardium is one of a slew of promising, cutting-edge Canadian medical-science companies poised for global success.

The federal government has provided heavy support to B.C.’s thriving life sciences sector through the Strategic Response Fund, previously called the Strategic Innovation Fund, created by the Liberal government under past prime minister Justin Trudeau.

Kardium gets FDA greenlight to sell in the U.S. device that treats common heart problem

The funding for Kardium is the eighth such commitment from the SRF in B.C., out of 35 to date in the country’s biomanufacturing and life sciences sector. The last four have gone to B.C., including projects announced this year to support Aspect Biosystems, which 3-D prints live tissue implants that can replace organ functions, and to create an incubator at Providence Health Care. SRF last year funded an expansion by Vancouver-based Stemcell Technologies Canada Inc., which makes supplies used in the biotechnology research and development process.

The government funding program has also provided $400-million to Vancouver’s AbCellera Biologics, including $175.6-million in 2020 that helped the company develop an antibody to treat COVID-19, which partner Eli Lilly & Co. took to market. The government also provided $225-million to AbCellera in 2023 to help build out its capacity to develop new drugs. That investment helped the company produce a treatment for reducing the frequency and severity of hot flashes.

AbCellera this month reported strong results from that drug’s first efficacy trial and quickly raised US$200-million from investors to advance its development.