AAFC loans $5M to Bioniche vaccine scale-up facility

Bioniche Life Sciences Inc has received another funding commitment as part of its planned $100-million project to create an Animal Health and Food Safety Vaccine Manufacturing Centre at its headquarters in Belleville ON. The latest financial assistance is a $5-million repayable loan from the new Agri-Opportunities Program at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. The funding will be used to build a $25-million scale-up facility to produce Bioniche's E.coli O157:H7 vaccine for cattle. The firm has also received $10 million from the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Trade and is currently seeking the remaining $10 million from other sources. E.coli O157:H7 — the world's first vaccine to reduce the amount of E.coli O157:H7 organism shed by cattle — will be the first vaccine product produced at the scale-up facility....