The University of Saskatchewan’s Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization-International Vaccine Centre says a coronavirus vaccine has been produced that is now being tested in animals. However, there is still a long road ahead to manufacturing a vaccine for human use.
Volker Gerdts CEO and Director of VIDO-InterVac explains that everything learned from the first SARS outbreak, along with MERS and other coronavirus infections in animals gives a good idea of what this vaccine will have to look like. He added that he is pretty positive the vaccine will work and they are currently a few weeks away from finishing this stage of research, then will need to send any viable vaccine away to clinical studies before it would be safe for human use.
This past week VIDO-InterVac was also the recipient of almost a million dollars in funding from the federal government, that was part of a 27 million dollar initiative to expedite research to fight SARS-CoV-2 (the name of the virus associated with the COVID-19 disease).
The coronavirus has seen researchers share information at a faster rate than ever before. Gerdts says that similar projects usually take months to be processed and approved, in this case it was a matter of weeks, which he explains is recognition that the federal government realizes the importance of this disease.
Although any vaccine will need to be sent away for the next steps in the process, VIDO-Intervac has a long term goal of building a vaccine manufacturing facility in Saskatoon. The facility would be smaller scale, comparatively, but would go a long way to help producing clinical batches in house. Currently VIDO-Intervac is looking to raise $10 million towards the budget for the project with the hope of starting construction this year.
