Good morning, everyone.
I was not expecting to start with a six-minute statement, so I will start by telling you that I'm a professor at Université Laval. Before that, I was in Winnipeg as the chief of the special pathogens program at the National Microbiology Laboratory, NML, which I headed for eight years. My expertise is in vaccine development.
Being from the NML, I led the group that developed the VSV vaccine the year after Heinz Feldmann left. The vaccine has now been licensed by the FDA and the EMA in Europe.
I believe I'm here to talk about vaccine manufacturing. I'm actually not too sure; I'm so sorry. I did agree to this with having little information, but I'm pleased to be with you. I'd be very happy to answer your questions.
Since I'm probably still within my six minutes, I will say that we have been facing many challenges, which I, personally, have seen on the international level. In full disclosure, I'm also a member of the advisory group STAG-IH. It is the main advisory group that advises the WHO at the executive director level in emergency operations. At that level, I have seen that there are challenges for many regions in the world, starting with southeast Asia when the first report of the virus emerged December 31, and then going throughout the world with all the different challenges that were faced and are still being faced at the world level.
In Canada, I was part of the vaccine task force, which I stepped out of voluntarily due to concern over transparency. I think it was, more widely, a public decision at the end. Most recently, following a discussion with journalists, I made a few public statements indicating my position that I strongly believe in Canadian capacity—as much in intellectual capacity as in manufacturing capacity. It's not like everything is available, but everything can be built. We have the knowledge here in Canada to develop those vaccines and bring them all the way to a completed phase three and licensure, and, ultimately, in good time, with improved manufacturing in Canada as well.
Part of my expertise also is in the development of therapeutics mainly based on medical antibodies, which touches a bit on the same technology as that of AbCellera, which you may have heard of, as well, as it received important funding from the Canadian government.
I think that will be it. I'm happy to talk about any of those subjects at the more regional, national or international levels.
Thank you so much.