Champagne said the funds will expand Resilience’s vaccine and therapeutic manufacturing and filling capabilities, including mRNA injections like those used to fight COVID-19.

The government stated that once the construction is completed in 2024, the factory expansion will create 500 permanent jobs and 50 cooperative placements for students.

The addition of approximately 55,000 square feet of factory space will allow Resilience to produce 112 to 640 million doses of mRNA products per year. The goal is to reduce Canada’s dependence on foreign vaccine manufacturers when the next pandemic approaches.

Watch | Champagne Trudeau announced that it has received funding to build an mRNA vaccine factory in Ontario:

Flexibility is a contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO), which means it can assemble products developed by other companies.

This is the standard for large pharmaceutical companies such as AstraZeneca, Merck and Pfizer to outsource the actual drug manufacturing process to a third party. Some companies have sold their manufacturing plants to focus on research and development. Novartis owns a factory in Butcherville, Quebec. It was sold to Avara, a contract manufacturing business unit in 2018.

There is currently no CDMO in Canada that can produce enough vaccines to meet national and international needs.

In an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) Power and politicsChampagne said that the purpose of federal investment is to reverse the “four decades of decline” in the country’s biomanufacturing industry.

once The forefront of global vaccine developmentAfter years of insignificant investments by the government and the private sector, Canada’s life sciences sector has been eliminated.

Champagne said that in the early stages of the pandemic, it was difficult for Canada to attract any large vaccine manufacturers to Canada because there were not enough filling and finishing capacity to produce vaccines in batches. (“Finish and fill” refers to the process of filling vials with vaccine and completing product packaging for distribution.)

Champagne said: “I think this will change the rules of the game, because with it, we will be able to support many vaccine candidates.” “We are always looking for opportunities to bring everything back to Canada.”

Quebec’s Medicago reports encouraging early clinical trial results

In this COVID-19 crisis, Canada is completely dependent on foreign countries to provide shootings.As a result, Canada had to deal with The threat of export controls And vaccine nationalism, which made the first few months of the vaccination campaign turbulent.

According to the recommendations of the COVID-19 Vaccine Working Group-an independent organization composed of industry experts to provide advice on procurement to Ottawa-the federal government signed AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna, Novavax, Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Sanofi (Sanofi) transaction, and a Canadian company located in Medicago, Quebec City.

Last fall, the federal government invested $173 million to help Medicago develop its COVID-19 vaccine and build a large factory to produce the vaccine.

On Tuesday, Medicago, which is jointly developing the product with GSK, reported positive data from early clinical trials of its plant-derived COVID-19 vaccine, which is in line with the mRNA injection vaccine provided by Pfizer and Moderna or the viral vector of AstraZeneca. The vaccine is different from Johnson & Johnson.

Nathalie Landry, executive vice president of scientific and medical affairs at Medicago, said in a statement: “After two doses, the adjuvant vaccine candidate induced a strong neutralization in all subjects. Antibodies and cellular immune responses, regardless of age.”

“These results give us full confidence because we will continue to advance the third phase of clinical trials. We hope to add another tool in the global fight against COVID-19, especially when cross-protection has become an important consideration in global vaccination efforts. Case,” she said, referring to the concept of mixing two different vaccine products.

In addition to today’s disaster-relief funding commitments and Medicago commitments, the federal government has pledged to invest about 455 million U.S. dollars for the large-scale expansion of Sanofi’s Toronto plant. The plant will mainly produce influenza vaccines, but it can also be restructured to produce Coronavirus vaccine.

Once operational, Sanofi will be able to produce enough flu vaccines for all Canadians at its Toronto plant every year.

Calgary-based Providence Therapeutics, a Canadian company behind the promising COVID-19 mRNA vaccine, has criticized federal funding policies.

in Interviewed by CBC News last month, The company’s chief executive Brad Sorenson (Brad Sorenson) threatened to withdraw from Canada because of repeated requests from the government for help to bring the product into the development phase but failed to resolve the request. Sorensen once said that if Ottawa used capital to make money at the beginning of the pandemic, his products would go further.

In a speech on Tuesday, Champagne said that he recently had a conversation with Sorenson and once his product passed the next phase of clinical trials, he would provide more federal support to the federal government.

Champagne said: “This has nothing to do with the minister’s selection of the winner. This is science telling us what is the most promising product.” “If you get good results, we will support you. They are in a very early stage of finding a vaccine. stage.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on Tuesday that in addition to new funding for future vaccine factories, Canada will also receive 9 million mRNA vaccines from Pfizer in July.

This means that the New York-based pharmaceutical company will send 2 million doses of vaccine to Canada every week for the foreseeable future. Based on these figures, another 9 million photos will be taken in August and September. Canada has ordered 48 million doses from Pfizer, enough to inject two vaccines for 24 million people.