On May 12, 2020, the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) announced a collaboration with CanSino Biologics to advance bioprocessing and clinical development in Canada of a candidate vaccine against COVID-19.

Referred to as Ad5-nCoV, the vaccine candidate received Chinese regulatory approval in March, allowing CanSino Biologics to move ahead with human clinical trials in China. It is one of only a handful of vaccine candidates in the world against COVID-19 so far approved for initial safety testing in humans, and was the first candidate vaccine to begin conducting Phase II human clinical trials.

The relationship between the NRC and CanSinoBIO was first established in 2013. The NRC’s HEK293-SF-3F6 cell line was later licensed to CanSinoBIO and used in the development of an approved vaccine against the Ebola virus. The new COVID-19 vaccine is also produced using HEK293-SF-3F6 cell lines that were designed and developed at the NRC. By bringing their respective technologies and expertise together to fight COVID-19, CanSino Biologics and the NRC are aiming to pave the way for future clinical trials in Canada, in collaboration with the Canadian Immunization Research Network at the Canadian Center for Vaccinology. The vaccine is subject to approval by Health Canada, for which CanSinoBIO is in the process of filing a Clinical Trial Application (CTA).

This collaboration will allow the NRC to advance a scale-up production process for the vaccine candidate, using its proprietary HEK293-SF-3F6 cell line. As a preparatory step, the Government of Canada has already announced $44 million in funding to support upgrades to the NRC’s facilities in Montreal to enable compliance with Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) standards, to ensure readiness for Canadian bioprocessing of potential vaccine candidates as they become available.