While we are picking up speed in getting vaccines into the arms of Canadians during this yearlong COVID-19 pandemic, we are still doing very poorly compared to other high-income countries including the United States and Britain. Why? One reason is that we do not have vaccine production capacity in Canada.
This was not always the case. The University of Toronto, through its School of Hygiene, once owned and operated one of the world’s premier vaccine companies, Connaught Laboratories, from the First World War until the 1970s.
Connaught played a pivotal role in combating the diphtheria epidemics of the 1910s and 1920s, developing heparin in the 1930s, and developing vaccines for tetanus and typhus during the Second World War, as well as polio in the 1950s. In the 1960s, Connaught was so trusted as a producer of high-quality and low-cost vaccines that it was called upon by the World Health Organization (WHO) to help launch its global effort to eliminate smallpox and improve standards for vaccine productions throughout the Americas.
Connaught grew into one of the world’s largest and most reputable, self-sustaining pharmaceutical and vaccine-making manufacturing facilities. Unlike private pharmaceutical companies, Connaught combined vaccine research and distribution along with a mission to address public health issues, including infectious epidemics. Connaught provided vaccines and insulin to the public and provincial governments at cost and sold vaccines that were needed beyond Canada well below the prices charged by private pharma companies. In its heyday, Connaught made Canada almost completely self-sufficient for its domestic vaccine needs.
Unfortunately, Connaught was sold, first by the University of Toronto to the Canadian Development Corporation (CDC) in 1972, and then privatized in 1986 as part of the Mulroney government’s dismantlement of the CDC. Ever since, Canada has had virtually no vaccine production capacity. We could have predicted that the current pandemic would have triggered the European Union, the United States and other jurisdictions to block the export of their domestically produced vaccines. We should face the fact that domestic production capacity is both a strategic national asset and a health security issue.
Belatedly, and too late (probably) for this pandemic, the Trudeau government has recognized the problem. However, its solution — pumping in a huge amount of public money into a National Research Council-owned facility to produce tens of millions of vaccine doses for COVID-19 produced by U.S.-based Novavax — is not likely going to work.
Drawing some lessons from Connaught, it would be more effective to invest in a university-based enterprise that has the essential elements for success: the bench strength of basic research, combined with applied research and production, along with a public health mandate of providing as much vaccine as possible at the cost of production. Strong arguments can be made that the curiosity-driven research coming out of universities, not just in Canada, is what really fuels the pipeline for new therapeutics. This is a public investment in a health research ecosystem, something that is missing from Canada today.
The scientists involved in such a venture would be part of a rich research network involving a school of public health, a faculty of medicine, hospital-based research institutes, academic health sciences centres, and global research collaborations. It would span the entire research continuum from discovery research to tech transfer to clinical trials. No private pharmaceutical company can replicate such a rich ecosystem, the secret sauce that is missing in the NRC-Novavax proposal.
So, how might this be done? Using an expedited version of the Canadian Foundation for Innovation competition, proposals from research-intensive universities and their private and public partners should be solicited immediately for a pan-Canadian facility. It is likely too late for this pandemic, but, unfortunately, we are certain to face epidemics, if not pandemics, in the future.
The time has come for this country to up its game. We were warned almost 15 years ago in the Naylor report on SARS to better prepare for emerging infectious diseases. The current COVID-19 pandemic drives the point home that we need to ensure the critical research and production capacity that will guarantee the future production of vaccines in this country.