In a previous post I discussed the new mRNA vaccines developed to fight COVID-19. Since their approval, Canada has fallen behind other countries in providing them to members of the public. Over the last year, the Canadian government ordered millions of doses of various vaccines from multiple companies. This covered the mRNA vaccines I discussed before, but also other types of vaccines, many of them still in clinical trials. This was done to maximize the chances of Canada getting shipments from the vaccines shown to work best. In fact, on paper at least, Canada secured enough doses to fully vaccinate the entire population a few times over. However, shipments are now delayed.
Why is this the case? None of the currently approved vaccines for COVID-19 are manufactured in Canada. For example, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is produced in Michigan and Belgium. Meanwhile, the Moderna one is produced in New Hampshire and Switzerland. The US and EU have both struggled with the pandemic more than Canada. Consequently, they want the vaccines manufactured in their own countries to be used on their populations first.
This begs the question: where is Canada’s domestic production of vaccines? In fact, great vaccine producers existed in this country decades ago. Many vaccines were shipped overseas to save lives across the globe. Others were stored throughout the country to be used in the event of dangerous pandemics and biowarfare. However, according to Prime Minster Justin Trudeau and others, Canada lost this production capacity years ago. Is this true? How did this happen and what can government do about it?
Connaught Laboratories
Probably the best example of Canada’s past biomanufacturing capability is Connaught Laboratories. Today, we often hear about large multinational corporations within the pharmaceutical industry. News of them is often a steady listing of new mergers and acquisitions, spin-offs, and buy-outs. These companies are very profitable and have a consistent presence on the Fortune 500. Connaught Laboratories was not like this. It was a publicly owned pharmaceutical company that sold its products at cost.
Connaught’s roots go to back to 1913. Then, a diphtheria outbreak cost the lives of many children. A Toronto doctor, John Gerald FitzGerald developed the diphtheria antitoxin to fight it. Out of the University of Toronto lab space where Dr. FitzGerald and his staff worked diligently, Connaught Laboratories was born. The company grew and over the next few decades its scientists developed or contributed to treatments for tetanus, typhoid, and meningitis. Penicillin, arguably the wonder drug of the 20th century came out of the Laboratories. As did vaccines for whooping cough and polio. When the World Health Organization (WHO) began an initiative to eradicate smallpox globally in the 1960s, Connaught provided 25 million doses of vaccine to be shipped overseas. In Canada, the Laboratories primarily sold vaccines and other products to provincial governments at cost, providing savings to taxpayers.
End of an Era
Connaught Laboratories is no longer a publicly owned pharmaceutical company. It is now part of biotechnology multinational Sanofi Pasteur. How it got here is a story that seems like the many merger stories within the pharmaceutical industry. In 1972, Connaught left the University of Toronto and was sold to the Canada Development Corporation (CDC) by the Trudeau (Sr.) Liberals. This was part of a government initiative to use public and private investment to create Canadian corporations in significant sections of the economy. However, Connaught soon faced criticisms of becoming driven by short-term profits, mismanagement, and having deteriorating manufacturing standards. In the 1980s, the Mulroney PC government sold off Connaught in a wave of public entity privatizations. The sale was controversial, and the company that acquired Connaught is Sanofi Pasteur today.
The Hollowing Out of Canada’s Industry
The Mulroney government cited a report that stated Connaught would face difficulty sustaining the spending necessary to remain competitive in the industry. Perhaps this was not entirely on Connaught Laboratories as many corporations were also feeling a cash crunch. Beginning in the 1980s, the global biotechnology industries began undergoing major structural changes. Over the last decades, companies developing and manufacturing vaccines fell from approximately 25 to five. Many of those originals, like Connaught, were incorporated into the remaining five, like Sanofi.
Beyond vaccines, Canada lost much pharmaceutical manufacturing over the last 25 years. The Canadian offices of some pharmaceutical companies today are little more than a marketing footprint without any personnel involved in physical production. These facilities were moved overseas just like what happened with manufacturers in other industries.
Connaught Laboratories Today – A Big Petri-dish to Fill
However, even hollowed, biotechnology in Canada is still very active. The inheritor of Connaught Laboratories, Sanofi Pasteur is the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, accounting for 20% of global vaccine sales. Its Connaught campus is the largest biotechnology facility in Canada. It remains the world’s only producer of special vaccines for whooping cough, North America’s only manufacturer of polio vaccine, and Canada’s only source for those of diphtheria and tetanus. Its also growing as Sanofi Pasteur seeks to double the facility’s capacity by 2023.
Missing: COVID-19 Vaccines
Right now, no coronavirus vaccines are produced in Canada. We know that public entities such as Connaught Laboratories are no longer around to produce them, and the industry consolidated and moved many such operations overseas. However, as Sanofi Pasteur shows, a large number of vaccines are still made in this country.
However, the response to this pandemic is much more critical. For two reasons: the sheer volume of vaccines needed due to the high number of COVID-19 cases, and the new RNA technology behind the development of the first two approved vaccines.
Sanofi Pasteur and GSK both make protein-based vaccines. However, as mentioned previously, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are composed of mRNA. These are the first such vaccines to ever be approved and manufacturing them is very different from classical vaccines. This is the main reason that Canada’s current vaccine manufacturers are not making them. Just because you can manufacture one type of vaccine does not mean you can manufacture all the others. In many cases, the production lines for these new vaccines are developed alongside the vaccines themselves. Thus, this was limited to a few special laboratories with the right equipment. Expectedly, those sites are in places with current and robust domestic biomanufacturing.
Shiny New Laboratories
The COVID-19 vaccines developed fastest came from places that already had a leg up in terms of knowledge and equipment. The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines came from researchers who were already looking at how to use mRNA technology for medical breakthroughs. The team at Oxford University had access to a facility specially designed to make experimental vaccines.
In contrast, Canada simply does not have these sites. Basic medical research at universities is done across the country, but private companies are often relied on to produce subsequent medical innovations. When scientists at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg worked on treatments for Ebola, they did not make vaccines. Instead, millions of dollars were made when a small US company contracted to Merck to do so. Other organizations, including start-ups, also develop vaccines. Again though, these companies lack production capability and are forced to find manufacturing partners.
Facilities for Canada
Firstly, Canada needs facilities that can take new technologies to the next step. In the past, something like Connaught Laboratories may have filled this role. Connaught’s public funding model allowed it to undertake financially risky research that commercial companies simply were not willing to do. Today, a similar organization could develop things like mRNA vaccines. It could be contracted to create experimental batches for researchers and biotechnology start-ups like Moderna and the Oxford team.
The planned Biologics Manufacturing Centre (BMC) in Montreal could be such as site. This plant will manufacture the protein based Novavax vaccine upon its approval and other vaccines and biologic medications in the future. Construction should be completed in July. But, it must also have the proper quality controls and technology in place. Unless this happens in parallel, Novavax may not even be made there until the following year. An even more astronomical feat would be to establish a Crown Corporation like what NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh called for. Its job would be to make vaccines and medications that are in short supply.
Last year, the U.S launched Operation Warp Speed. It provided $12 billion to accelerate development and manufacturing of various COVID-19 vaccines. Comparatively, Canada provided little funding. Now though, it is taking domestic measures to support private development. This month alone, approximately $40 million was granted to two different Canadian-based biotechnology companies.
Back to Basics
Bolstering Canadian vaccine manufacturing can only be done by staffing these facilities with trained experts. The best way to do this is by supporting scientific education and research. To properly understand the science needed to innovate, companies build partnerships with universities and academic labs. They often build facilities near those same communities. However, spending cuts to scientific research have only prevented this. The funding should at least be restored if not enhanced. As I have detailed in another post, extraordinary breakthroughs in cancer research can start from the strangest places, even simple jellyfish research.
Separately, antibiotic resistance in bacteria is a growing global problem. It could even be the cause of the next pandemic. The public, doctors and industry must all take efforts to address this. However, pharmaceutical companies are reluctant to invest in new antibiotics due to slim profit margins. Consequently, the pipeline for new antibiotics has withered. Funding for academic research into new antibiotics and anti-microbial substances would help re-establish this and provide training for the scientists who will develop next generation medicines.
A Life-Science Supercluster
Unfortunately, it is not just in biotechnology that Canada lags in turning high quality scientific research into innovations. To help solve this, the federal government created the Superclusters Initiative in 2017. The idea is to invest $950 million over five years to increase business R&D; promote collaboration, especially with public institutions; attract and retain talent; and ultimately to increase the size and global reach of firms. The government took numerous proposals on what regionally focused industries would make up the planned 5 superclusters. However, not one is dedicated to the health and life sciences. The life science sector considers this a grave oversight. The COVID-19 pandemic response shows this miscalculation. Increased commitment from the government, through the Superclusters Initiative, would certainly involve building domestic vaccine manufacturing. However, comprehensive measures could and should also be taken outside of the Supercluster umbrella.
Vaccine production was identified as a major issue during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. At that time, GSK provided the needed supply, perhaps explaining why no subsequent actions were taken to address this. The COVID-19 pandemic is much worse than that a decade ago. Thus, the need to address this issue is more obvious. Canada, like many other governments, is taking drastic steps to acquire coronavirus vaccines. Everyone is of the opinion that crisis should not happen again. Both the government and industry must take concrete and comprehensive measures to ensure that.
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