Vaccine To Be Made In Winnipeg

WINNIPEG - A Winnipeg manufacturing plant has signed on with a Canadian company to help develop its COVID-19 vaccine in a $90 million deal.

Emergent BioSolutions Inc., which purchased Winnipeg-based biopharmaceutical manufacturer Cangene Corporation in 2013, has signed a five-year contract with Calgary-based Providence Therapeutics to produce ingredients for its mRNA-based vaccine candidate, and to put the vaccine into vials.

Providence says a Phase 1 clinical trial with nearly 100 adults ages 18 to 64 showed its vaccine produces an immune response similar to the response triggered by vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna. Phase 2 of the trials, involving hundreds of people, is now being prepared to test the vaccine’s safety and effectiveness, with plans to manufacture tens of millions of doses in 2022. The made-in-Canada solution is also slated to be formulated and distributed in bulk to be used to create hundreds of millions of potential doses.

Canada still hasn’t authorized any Canadian-made vaccines to fight COVID-19, relying entirely on mRNA vaccine imports. 26 million Canadians have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 so far.