Alberta urged to speed up domestic vaccine industry
Alberta-based pharmaceutical companies with COVID-19 vaccines in the works are urging the provincial government to move quickly to support the development of a domestic vaccine industry.
The Alberta government — which put out a call for proposals in March for projects that would bolster long-term vaccine capacity in the province — has since received 17 submissions from companies both inside and outside Alberta, proposing to do everything from early-stage research and development, to manufacturing and final production. All of the interested companies were asked how they would support the health of Albertans during COVID-19 and any future variants, as well as how they would support the longterm growth of the pharmaceutical sector in Alberta and local job creation.
Though the government has not yet committed a dollar amount to the project, it has contracted an outside agency to conduct a due diligence review of the proposals. The plan is to “move quickly” after that to choose specific proposals to fund.
“We know there's still a huge amount of urgency,” Jobs, Economy and Innovation Minister Doug Schweitzer said in an interview. “My goal is to go back and report to my colleagues before the summer, and get further guidance from cabinet on the direction we want to pursue.”
As of Monday, Alberta had administered close to 1.2 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines, all produced by international vaccine-makers Pfizer Biontech, Moderna and Astrazeneca. But Premier Jason Kenney has said early supply chain issues and vaccine nationalism have demonstrated the importance of building out a domestic vaccine supply chain — for both this pandemic as well as future communicable disease outbreaks.
“If there's another scramble for supply around the world, it would be great to have our own (COVID-19) booster shot capacity. And we should be prepared for future pandemics,” Kenney told reporters last month.
The 2021 provincial budget includes $1.5 billion in COVID-19 contingency funds, as well as an additional $500 million set aside to support the province's economic recovery — money that could be tapped to support the development of a domestic vaccine industry, Schweitzer said. Monday's federal budget also contained $2.2 billion to support Canada's national capacity in biomanufacturing and vaccine development and production, some of which could be used for Alberta-based projects, he added.
“The emerging health space is a huge opportunity for growth for this province,” Schweitzer said. “We want to make sure we position Alberta to play a leadership role here in Canada going forward.”
Some companies working in the space say there is no time to lose. Providence Therapeutics is a Calgary-based company that started clinical trials on its messenger Rna-based COVID-19 vaccine earlier this year. The company hopes to receive Health Canada approval for its product this fall and has partnered with another Calgary company, Northern RNA, which aims to develop vaccine manufacturing capacity in this city. In February, the company signed a deal with the province of Manitoba to supply it with two million doses of its vaccine when it receives its final approvals.
Providence CEO Brad Sorenson made a presentation to a House of Commons committee earlier this week, lobbying for a $150-million federal investment to help the company produce 50 million vaccine doses for Canadians. Providence has also submitted a proposal to the Alberta government, but Sorenson said things are moving too slowly.
“We're getting contact by probably two to three countries per week asking us if we can supply them with vaccine booster doses in 2022. We haven't inked any deals yet, mainly because I'm trying to see this through in Canada first so I know how much I've got to sell,” Sorenson said. “We're trying to get things moving and we're trying to convey urgency, and we're just not getting that reciprocated from this government.”
Another Alberta-based company, Edmonton's Entos Pharmaceuticals, is developing a “pan-coronavirus” vaccine candidate that it says will provide protection against the original SARS-COV-2 strain as well as variant strains. The company hopes it will be through Phase 3 trials and that its vaccine will be authorized for use as a booster before the end of this year.
Entos CEO John Lewis said his company has submitted a proposal to the province to construct an Alberta-based commercial manufacturing centre for its vaccine and other genetic medicines. Currently, Entos — which has already received $5 million from the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP) to develop its vaccine candidate — has secured a small amount of manufacturing space at the University of Alberta, as well as at sites in Ottawa and Vancouver. However, it is not enough to begin large-scale manufacturing.
“I wish all levels of government had moved quicker to provide funding up front for both vaccine development and manufacturing. That being said, we're extremely happy that the (Alberta) government has committed funding for vaccine manufacturing, but obviously every day that passes is a day where we are not solving the problem,” Lewis said.
Lewis said beyond the immediate needs of this pandemic, Alberta has the long-term opportunity to diversify its economy through the build-out of a thriving biotherapeutics and pharmaceutical industry. The same technology that Entos is using to develop its COVID-19 vaccine, for example, has applications in the world of cancer treatment as well as childhood genetic diseases.
“If we discover and develop world-changing medicines in Alberta, we need to be able to take advantage of this industry here,” he said. “We need to provide opportunities for companies to scale, and to do that scaling in Alberta rather than moving to other centres in Canada or the U.S.”