Government Operations Committee on May 5th, 2021

[Dr. Joanne Langley]

It is hard to say it with exactitude.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Would it be a three months or six years type of thing? Just give me a rough ballpark figure.

[Dr. Joanne Langley]

If they had full support, they could potentially move to phase 2 with the 28-day results from their phase 1. That would be early. They could do phase 3, potentially, if their phase 2 went well, next fall to winter.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Providence is saying that if they get the right support after they get phase 3, they can produce 50 million a year. Is that practical?

You mentioned Medicago would be in 2024.

[Dr. Joanne Langley]

That's the Quebec facility that Medicago would be running. They do have a plant in North Carolina. That's why they can commit to providing doses earlier.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Can I ask what the committee is advising regarding the booster?

[Dr. Joanne Langley]

The committee has considered whether there would be a need for boosters for ongoing vaccine supply. That is not clear, I would say, as a scientific consensus.

People are preparing for several trajectories, namely, that there would be a need for ongoing yearly boosters, that the virus might attenuate and only certain populations would need to have a new vaccination, or that it could fade away. You have to prepare for every possibility, the worst-case scenario meaning ongoing vaccine supply.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

One of the witnesses mentioned four for four—which is fantastic—for the ones that you've recommended and have been approved.

Are we recommending then to start looking at procuring boosters from those four? Are we there yet? Are we waiting for more data?

[Dr. Joanne Langley]

That is being considered. A booster vaccine would generally be a qualitatively different vaccine. There are regulatory considerations, and we can't just make a recommendation based on the fact of the previous vaccine working. All of those aspects are being considered.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. McCauley, and Doctor.

We now go to Mr. Kusmierczyk, for five minutes.

[Irek Kusmierczyk, Liberal, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I wanted to take this opportunity just to recognize the tremendous work of Mr. Lievonen in founding the Sanofi Biogenius Challenge and helping to nurture our next generation of scientists and researchers. I can tell you that in 2013 we had the pleasure of introducing one of our students to the biogenius challenge, and she is now a doctoral researcher at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. I just wanted to give you a tip of the hat for your tremendous work there.

To date, we've had about 17 million vaccines delivered to provinces and territories from four authorized suppliers. Can you, Mr. Lievonen, just describe again for us this achievement for those folks who may be tuning in from outside and need a little bit of context here? Can you describe for us this achievement for Canada?

[Mark Lievonen]

First of all, thank you very much for the comments.

Sorry, can you just reiterate briefly the achievement that you...?

[Irek Kusmierczyk, Liberal, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

It's just the fact that we've been able to deliver 17 million vaccines to provinces and territories, to date, with many more on the horizon. Again, we have four authorized suppliers that have delivered vaccines to date, in such a short time frame, which is basically 12 months.

[Mark Lievonen]

Thank you for the question.

It is unheard of. It's unprecedented. I don't know that any of us thought it would be done that quickly. Thank goodness it has been, because other measures have been challenging.

As I said, typically a vaccine would take 10-plus years to develop. The fastest ever was four to five years, for mumps and Ebola. A year ago, I was contemplating the fact that this was upon us and that we did not have a task force, though I was getting involved in some discussions. To think that we could have something within two years would have been miraculous. That it is under a year is just unbelievable. Everything has gone right.

They've used a brand new technology that's never been tried before—RNA vaccines. It's turned out to be wonderfully successful. The viral vectors have also been successful. We have had some viral vector vaccines, and there's still the protein subunit—the more traditional vaccines—coming down the course.

The fact they've been licensed and approved, that we've gotten them into Canadians' arms, and that other countries have.... When you look at vaccines and vaccinology, as unfortunate and as devastating as COVID-19 has been, in terms of vaccinology it's been quite a year in terms of success, and it bodes very well for the future.

It's an amazing feat that we have these vaccines. As I said before, there's never been a product commercialized with RNA vaccines before. They've been working at it for 10 to 20 years, and everything has come together.

There have been no shortcuts taken in terms of the steps. There have been shortcuts taken in terms of the time to do them. A number of those steps have been done in parallel. Health Canada has worked to do rolling submissions.

It has been an incredible cooperation among companies, and we've seen some companies that are competitors working together. It really has been quite something.

[Irek Kusmierczyk, Liberal, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

You've answered part of my next question, but how is this unfortunate experience of COVID changing the landscape in Canada in terms of biomanufacturing? How do you see it shaping out?

[Mark Lievonen]

I think the first point I would make is that there has been awareness that we have some challenges with biomanufacturing. We weren't ready for this pandemic, and we have lagged behind. Outside of GSK's and Sanofi Pasteur's vaccine campuses, there tends to be a number of companies, but they're small-scale companies compared to other jurisdictions around the world, so now investments are going into them to scale them up.

One of the points I made is that we wanted to mobilize existing capacity. Quite frankly, it was a real learning experience to realize what is out there and to get these companies together and working together. The investments are being made, so I think it does bode well for biomanufacturing in the future.

The other point I would make is on what kind of biomanufacturing you have in place. Some of the traditional vaccines, such as tetanus and diphtheria and pertussis vaccines, are made in large-scale fermentation and so on. That's not the way of RNA vaccines. That's a different technology. To paraphrase the old Wayne Gretzky comment a little bit, this is not to skate where the puck is but to skate where the puck will be. That's kind of what we're looking at in terms of biomanufacturing.

We need to make investments now in thinking about what will it look like in five years, and that is being taken into consideration. An example is making sure that it's flexible so that you can pivot from one technology to another. All of that has been taken into consideration in our discussions with the companies, in our advice to the government and in the negotiation of contracts.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you.

We will now go to Ms. Vignola for two and a half minutes.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Two and a half minutes is so short! I have so many questions.

We've talked about how time consuming it is to develop a vaccine. In addition to the technology, it requires significant funding, and not every company is able to put it together, because it still takes 15 to 20 years.

We are aware of this, in Quebec. In fact, we are reintroducing the Québec life sciences strategy, which aims to increase investments in horizontal research. This brings together various partners, and not just pharmaceutical giants.

Ms. Langley, is your committee looking at this strategy to examine its application in Canada?

[Dr. Joanne Langley]

Thank you so much for your question. Knowing that you only have two and a half minutes and that Mark's going to be able to answer with regard to biomanufacturing, I'll turn to him.

[Mark Lievonen]

Well, Quebec certainly is a hotbed of biomanufacturing and life sciences. There are others across the country—Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton, and out east in Halifax—and I think there's an opportunity here across the board to coordinate and to make sure people work together across all our reactions to the pandemic. I think that Quebec and the co-operation among those various geographic areas are paramount, and I think this will serve and drive the need to do more of that in the future.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you.

The BIOTECanada CEO, Mr. Casey, was saying that there is little production of mRNA vaccines and that Canada is completely out of the loop.

In Canada, what would it take to be on the global stage of mRNA vaccine production?

[Mark Lievonen]

First of all, a lot of the technology related to mRNA vaccines and mRNA generally has come from the Vancouver area and the University of British Columbia. There are number of companies involved with lipid nanoparticles—which are an important way of encasing the RNA—that are present, as well as other companies, so that is very much there.

On the investments that are being made, a number of them are being made in RNA/mRNA capabilities, such as Precision NanoSystems is doing in Vancouver. As we looked at some of the other investments and provided advice to some of the other contract development and manufacturing organizations, we've looked at “do they have RNA technology and will they be able to pivot in that direction?” For the investments that are being made now, RNA is included in those areas of investment.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you.

I do have a heart, Ms. Vignola. I gave you an extra 10 seconds there.

We'll now go to Mr. Green for two and half minutes.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Hearing the testimony, is it safe to say, then, that viral vector technology-based vaccines are kind of done? Is the competition between the two over?