4 hours Ago By Adam R. Houston and Jason Nickerson, Special to Montreal Gazette
Article content When COVID-19 first struck, Canada had a problem: It lacked domestic capacity to manufacture vaccines. Today, the government of Canada faces the opposite problem: It owns a factory that isn’t manufacturing vaccines. The Biologics Manufacturing Centre (BMC) in Montreal was completed in 2021 at the cost of $126 million , and fully licensed by Health Canada in 2022.
However, a 2021 deal with Novavax to produce their COVID-19 vaccine looks increasingly unlikely to produce a single dose . Indeed, despite annual operating costs around $17 million a year, the BMC has never produced anything. The value of domestic manufacturing capacity is a lesson Canada learned the hard way.
Now, Canada needs to maintain that capacity to be prepared for the next health emergency. Although a non-profit entity with an explicit “public good” mandate , the BMC is currently operated as a contract manufacturer for commercial interests — thus far producing no medicines — rather than producing drugs under its own initiative. A better approach would be using the BMC to fill gaps the commercial pharmaceutical sector leaves behind.
The world faces numerous public health threats, and tools to respond are too frequently in short supply. Canada can keep itself safe by keeping others safe, simultaneously maintaining the BMC in a state of operational readiness while helping tackle outbreaks before they spread. Future outbreaks of infectious diseases with epidemic or pandemic potential will occur, and may accelerate as factors like climate change create conditions favouring their emergence and spread.
For some diseases already posing threats, no vaccines or treatments exist; pharmaceutical companies have minimal interest in developing them, since the unpredictable nature of outbreaks makes for insufficiently lucrative markets until it’s already too late. For others, like Ebola, treatments exist, but are very expensive, and the limited supply is concentrated in the stockpiles of wealthy countries, while access in countries that have faced recent outbreaks remains negligible. In short, there is a market failure for these important tools.
For a fraction of the amount already spent on a factory that produces nothing, Canada could use the BMC to help fill this crucial gap. It isn’t capable of making everything, but in addition to certain vaccines, it can also produce monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), which form the basis not only of top-selling drugs like Keytruda and Humira, but others, like Ebola treatments, the commercial market isn’t adequately supplying. To its credit, Canada already provides financial support for access to countermeasures during health emergencies abroad.
However, its impact is diluted by lack of supply and high commercial prices. So why not apply Canada’s dormant manufacturing capacity directly to meeting goals Canada already supports, removing for-profit middlemen while strengthening the link between Canada’s actions and lives it saves? Canadian-manufactured products could be donated or provided at cost to other countries and aid organizations, while replenishing Canada’s own stockpiles. This is a sound investment that would not only help rebuild Canada’s stature in global health — tarnished by hoarding COVID-19 vaccines — but further its domestic innovation and access goals.
Crucially, this win-win approach would keep Canada’s facilities operational and its skills sharp, making products, like mAbs, that are adaptable to a wide range of threats Canada might face. In the process, it would also meet other key Canadian policy goals , like attracting and retaining expertise in these areas, and in turn training the next generation of experts. Finally, it would increase opportunities to get Canadian innovation to the world.
Canadian scientists have done world-class research on outbreak-prone diseases — the first Ebola vaccine, a vital tool in outbreaks, emerged from Canada’s National Microbiology Lab — but the resulting tools have often been delayed, sometimes indefinitely, in the absence of a clear path from lab to patient, especially for products not seen as sufficiently profitable despite their public-health value. Utilizing the BMC is one obvious step along that path. It’s time for Canada to ensure its public investment pays dividends for public health.
Adam R. Houston (medical policy and advocacy adviser) and Jason Nickerson (humanitarian representative to Canada) work for Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières..
