Thank you, Madam Chair.
First of all, I would like to thank the committee for inviting me to participate in this meeting. I believe this is a topic of paramount importance to national security and to dealing with this pandemic, but more importantly to better prepare us for possible future pandemics.
It's also a topic that concerns me personally, having been involved at all levels in the vaccine development chain during my career, from vaccine design to clinical trials.
I'm a professor at the Armand-Frappier Santé Biotechnologie Research Centre of the Institut national de la recherche scientifique, on the campus of the former Institut Armand-Frappier.
Dr. Armand Frappier was a pioneer in public health in Quebec and Canada. He participated in the development and manufacturing of numerous vaccines. At that time, Canada was a world leader in vaccine production, but its production capacity gradually eroded with the globalization of this industry. Canada's small share of the international market certainly also contributed to the exodus of vaccine manufacturers as early as the 1980s.
As a result, we are now faced with a national vaccine production capacity that is insufficient for our needs and that leaves us at the mercy of vaccine “protectionism”, as we see it at work today. Canada has begun to make substantial investments to restore its domestic vaccine production capacity, but an even greater effort should be made in the coming years to rebuild a rich and diverse ecosystem at all levels of the vaccine development chain.
In order to contribute to thinking about these strategic issues, I would like to propose three areas where Canada will need to consolidate its investments to maximize the potential benefits of vaccine production.
First, federal investments in basic research in Canada must be continued and increased. Basic research is an indispensable component in the development of new technologies related to immunization. For example, the messenger RNA technology, which is the basis of the new Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, is the result of developments in the design of new approaches to cancer treatment. This means that the development of innovative approaches does not always require targeted, problem-specific investments, but often emanates from overall investments in basic research, the potential benefits of which were often unsuspected at the outset.
While the government's allocation of funds to the federal granting agencies, such as the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, or CIHR, and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, or NSERC, has increased over the years, the growing number of applicants and the rising costs of research have meant that the success rate for research grants has declined significantly in recent years, putting at risk the operation of many university laboratories. It will therefore be important to increase research grants to maintain our place on the world stage.
Second, continued and increased federal investment in leading-edge research infrastructure through the Canada Foundation for Innovation. New advances in basic research, particularly in vaccine development, require state-of-the-art infrastructure. The creation of the Canada Foundation for Innovation has placed Canada in an enviable position in this regard relative to some other countries. However, this new infrastructure entails significant operating and maintenance costs for researchers and universities. Continued and increased investment in infrastructure, as well as funding for its long-term operation and maintenance costs, will be critical in the coming years to maximize the benefits of these investments.
Finally, a funding structure needs to be put in place at the interface between academic research and the pharmaceutical industry for vaccine development. Canada has several world leaders in vaccine development in its universities. These researchers are designing and developing new, innovative and diverse vaccine approaches. However, the costs associated with vaccine development are often too great for universities or small biotechnology companies to carry out. As a result, many candidate vaccines developed in universities never reach the market.
Government investment in the commercialization of innovations emerging in universities could help advance the industrial and clinical development of promising vaccine candidates until they are sufficiently advanced and mature to attract the interest of large pharmaceutical companies and invest heavily in their large-scale production and distribution.
The presence of these vaccine development accelerators in Canada could also encourage these same pharmaceutical companies to build vaccine production facilities nearby and therefore complete the vaccine production chain. As a professor at the INRS, I would be the first to want to participate in the operation of this type of accelerator with my students.
In conclusion, it isn't too late for Canada to better position itself in vaccine production so that it will be better prepared to fight COVID-19 and other pandemics in the future.
Thank you. I am available to answer any questions you may have.