BioChem Pharma mounts major vaccine development program with $80 million from Technology Partnerships Canada

BioChem Pharma Inc has launched a seven-year, $600-million project for the development of recombinant vaccines as part of its re-focused business plan that saw the shedding of its diagnostic division last year (R$, June 16/99). The massive program is the largest of its kind in Canada and underpins the Laval PQ-based firm's bid to become a dominant domestic player in the bacterial vaccines business, while taking greater control of its sales and marketing activities. The development of a new generation of vaccines is partially financed with an investment of up to $80 million from Technology Partnerships Canada (TPC), the largest investment the federal agency has ever made in a biotechnology company.

The vaccine project is based at the Univ of Laval where a staff of 55 are working under the direction of Dr Bernard Brodeur at BioChem's new $35-million facility. That number will jump to 95 as the project gears up, requiring an expansion of the existing 1,0000-sq-m of lab space. As many as 400 more jobs will be created once a new production facility is brought on stream in the Quebec City suburb of Ste Foy.

NINE PROTEINS SLATED FOR DEVELOPMENT

The goal of the project is to conduct research on nine proteins that BioChem has targeted, with particular emphasis on three lead candidates. The protein for a meningococcal vaccine is the most advanced and is in Phase I clinical trials. The other two promising candidates target Group B Streptococcus and Strepococcus pneumoniae. The first generation will be injectible vaccines and BioChem is working with a French firm to develop nasal applications. The total value of the project could exceed $600 million if all projects reach the market. But the TPC contribution is capped at $80 million, representing about 13% of overall expenditures - much lower than the agency's average of 30% of project costs.

"Our approach is to bind protein at the surface of bacteria and take the gene out and purify it," says Brodeur, who became a professor of microbiology and immunology at the Univ of Laval's Medical University Centre in 1995 after a 20-year career with Health Canada's centre for disease control. "We then attach it to ecoli bacteria and grow it in the laboratory."

For TPC, the rationale for such a significant investment in a large, successful biotech firm centres on the project's potential economic and social benefits if the program is a success. The agency's preference in biotech is to back R&D proposals further downstream in the development process that offer greater job creation and rates of return. BioChem's new business model sees the firm moving away from funding clinical trials by licensing to offshore multinationals and taking responsibility for moving drug candidates through the process.

"BioChem is committed to take its R&D through to the phase where they can introduce at least three vaccines to the marketplace," says Maureen Lofthouse, TPC's director of enabling technologies. "The recombinant vaccines that come from this project they will produce themselves."

Technology to be repatriated from US

The BioChem project will also involve the repatriation of technology from the firm's Boston-area laboratories, where it has been conducting vaccine development work with a 55-person operation since 1998. Once scale-up work is completed, the technology will be transferred to the Ste Foy facility which is waiting to produce the first vaccines. TPC will fund some R&D work undertaken in the US lab, but at a much lower rate than the Canadian-based R&D.

"That is part of the deal with TPC," says Michelle Roy, BioChem's director of communications. "The vaccine program with Dr Brodeur is the growth side of the company."

With the BioChem and Research In Motion investments (see story on this page), TPC has invested or committed approximately $340 million in enabling technologies. It has now invested or committed $1.1 billion since its launch in 1996 in conjunction with the federal S&T Strategy (February 28/96).

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