Saskatchewan scientists get green light to start COVID-19 vaccine trial
"COVID-19 is not going to go away. And I think it's important for Canada to not depend on other countries to give us access to these vaccines."
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University of Saskatchewan scientists got an early Christmas present this week when they got the green light to begin testing their COVID-19 vaccine in humans.
The Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization — International Vaccine Centre (VIDO-InterVac) at the U of S has been developing a COVID-19 vaccine since January and has two in development.
The centre announced Tuesday that it has received a notice of authorization from Health Canada to initiate a phase 1 clinical vaccine trial for one of its two vaccines.
The approval means the first doses will likely be administered to volunteers next month at the Canadian Center for Vaccinology in Halifax.
“The approval to initiate a human clinical trial is a milestone for VIDO,” director and CEO Dr. Volker Gerdts said in a release.
The vaccine was developed alongside many international partners using a cell line from the National Research Council of Canada and an adjuvant developed by French company Seppic in collaboration with the Vaccine Formulation Institute in Switzerland.
VIDO-InterVac’s second candidate will be submitted for regulator approval when manufacturing of a second adjuvant is completed by Dalton Pharma Services in Ontario.
In an interview last week, Gerdts said VIDO hopes to give the vaccine to about 100 volunteers in the first phase, during which researchers ensure the vaccine is safe.
The centre plans to start the second phase soon by “combining” the first two phases of the clinical trial as soon as data becomes available. The second phase is for scientists to identify if the vaccine triggers an immune response.
The third and final step of the trial would involve thousands — if not tens of thousands — of people.
“It’s going to be staggered, if you want,” he saidd, adding that timelines are uncertain. “There’s so many ‘ifs’ this year, I don’t want to say ‘by this date, this will happen.’ ”
If all goes well, a vaccine could be ready for use by late 2021.
That might seem eons away, given that the first doses of other vaccines are already being administered in Saskatchewan. However, Gerdts argues that VIDO’s vaccines, which use a protein subunit technology, are a proven, easy-to-make model that may be a flexible, cost-effective vaccine in the years to come, even if it doesn’t win the horse race.
“COVID-19 is not going to go away. And I think it’s important for Canada to not depend on other countries to give us access to these vaccines,” Gerdts said.
“There are a lot of unknowns that we still don’t know, and so I think that it’s absolutely critical that Canada and the world develop alternative vaccines.”
VIDO-InterVac has received millions in funding for vaccine development from the federal government and Innovation Saskatchewan. It was awarded $12 million in federal funding in March to create a facility capable of manufacturing vaccines for humans. Gerdts said he expects construction of that to wrap up in September 2021.
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