Made-in-Canada COVID-19 vaccine’s final-stage results promising, says expert

A made-in-Canada COVID-19 vaccine is showing very promising results in its late-stage trials, according to one expert.

There are currently 14 COVID-19 vaccines under review by Health Canada, including one from Quebec-based company Medicago.

Medicago began phase three of human testing of their vaccine in 10 countries, back in March, with a goal of sharing results later this year.

Dr. Omar Khan, a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Toronto, says this vaccine uses plant-based technology, unlike any other vaccine currently approved for use in Canada.

“The reason of that is it is a virus-like particle … a VLP — it looks like the virus and it’s just the outside parts of it. It’s a very interesting, almost hollow version of the virus and it has none of the other parts of it, so it’s just a shell,” he explained. “It’s none of the pathogen parts. There’s no genetic information in there at all. Some proteins in there that are assembled together that resemble what an actual virus is.”

Khan tells CityNews the late-stage trials have been going very well, and he’s looking forward to seeing the overall results.

He also says plant-based technology, which he explains is easily recognized by the immune system but is completely non-infectious, are easier to make around the world.

“Other places that may not be able to make mRNA vaccines, if they can make a very effective VLP vaccine instead because they already have that infrastructure, that’s great because then it gives people more supply and it can really help us stem the growing global infection numbers,” he said.

If approved, Medicago expects to be able to produce up to 80-million doses of its vaccine every year. That number goes up to a billion doses, once its large-scale factory is completed in 2023.

Medicago’s vaccine candidate is made in partnership with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).

Health Canada received the first portion of Medicago’s vaccine submission for review in April.