Canada’s five federally supported biomanufacturing research hubs are now developing novel vaccines and other therapeutics, building new specialized facilities, and establishing programs to train the next generation of researchers to be “pandemic ready.”

None of the research coordinated through the five hubs has yet commercialized a new therapeutic, although some of the hubs’ researchers have products currently being evaluated in clinical trials.

Also, one of the hubs is recruiting a dedicated commercialization facilitator to help connect researchers with expertise and opportunities in process development, manufacturing, regulatory strategy, clinical development, intellectual property, industry partnerships, investment and continued funding.

The federal government committed $584 million in total through a two-stage investment to create and fund Canada’s five biomanufacturing research hubs.

The five hubs were identified through the Canada Biomedical Research Fund (CBRF) and created in 2022, with an initial $10 million investment.

A 2024 competition supported infrastructure at the five hubs. Ottawa provided $574 million for 19 major projects across 14 research institutions tied to the five hubs through an integrated CBRF and Biosciences Research Infrastructure Fund competition

This stage included about $360 million through Canada Foundation for Innovation for biosciences infrastructure and $210 million through federal research funding agencies.

Each of the hubs have distinct mandates:

• Canadian Pandemic Preparedness Hub, co-led by the University of Ottawa and McMaster University, is focused on surveillance, vaccines and innovation.
• Precision Interventions Hub / University of Toronto Hub, led by the University of Toronto, is focused on precision medicines, AI-driven process innovations and health intelligence.
• Eastern Canada Pandemic Preparedness Hub, led by the Université de Montréal, is focused on sector agility and crisis readiness.
• CBRF PRAIRIE Hub, led by the University of Alberta, is focused on vaccines, antivirals and diagnostics.
• Canada’s Immuno-Engineering and Biomanufacturing Hub, led by the University of British Columbia, is focused on immune-based therapeutics.

Research Money sent a set of questions to each hub, asking how they have spent the federal funding, what they’ve accomplished to date and how they are helping Canada prepare for the next pandemic.

Canadian Pandemic Preparedness Hub (CP2H)

Since its creation, CP2H has been focused on supporting Canadian SMEs and academic groups in the development and biomanufacturing of health-related products biologics, Dr. John Bell (photo at right), scientific co-director of CP2H and cancer research scientist at Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, said in an email.

Products being developed include vaccines for infectious disease and cancer, antibody-based therapies, cell-based therapies and cancer therapeutics.

McMaster University and University of Ottawa/Ottawa Hospital Research Institute are home to two of Canada’s longest-running, academically embedded GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices)-compliant biomanufacturing laboratories, Bell noted. “This has allowed us to implement our mandate immediately.”

Some of CP2H’s projects include:

• supporting the GMP manufacturing of a needle-free, inhaled, next-generation COVID-19 vaccine currently in Phase 2 clinical trials. This product was invented at McMaster University, manufactured at both the Hamilton and Ottawa sites, and is currently being tested in a clinical trial at the two sites.
• Supporting development and manufacturing of a new inhaled vaccine to protect against highly-pathogenic avian influenza virus (“bird flu”).
• Manufacture of three novel cancer biotherapeutics, including lentivirus products (modified lentiviruses, such as HIV-1, used to deliver genetic material into human cells) used to support three separate clinical trials that are ongoing in cancer patients across Canada.
• Establishing partnerships with three Canadian SMEs, including Ottawa-based Virica Biotech, to co-develop and test novel products that enhance manufacturing of novel biologics.
• Optimization of an mRNA manufacturing process through a collaboration with McGill University and the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (OHRI).
• Installation and optimization of analytical equipment at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization on the University of Saskatchewan campus to improve characterization of vaccine products produced by the network.
• Establishment and operationalization of a process development suite at McMaster University in collaboration with Germany-headquartered Sartorius, a major international partner and supplier for the life science research and biopharmaceutical industries.

Bell said CP2H received a “significant amount” of federal funding to expand capacity and capabilities of the hub’s existing biomanufacturing infrastructure.

The hub has initiated construction projects for new GMP-compliant laboratories at University of Ottawa/OHRI, McMaster University and Dalhousie University, he said.

CP2H also has convened a collective of academic and government-run GMP-compliant biomanufacturing laboratories across Canada to ensure coordination, design needed redundancies and reduce unnecessary ones, facilitate technology transfer, and coordinate training through the new Canadian Biomanufacturing Co-operative initiative.

“We have initiated a business development strategy to attract new customers to our manufacturing groups,” Bell said.

“Our goal is to ensure that we have sovereign surge capacity for manufacturing of candidate vaccine candidate in the event of another pandemic,” he said.

Precision Interventions Hub / University of Toronto Hub (HI³)

Since its creation, HI³ has brought together approximately 100 partners, including academic institutions, affiliated research hospitals, research networks, not-for-profit and industry partners.

This initiative has established a life science and biomanufacturing research and commercialization ecosystem “with increased connectivity and effectiveness, and fewer barriers and silos, to deliver innovative solutions to real-world problems,” HI3 co-directors Jennifer Gommerman (photo at right), professor and chair of the Department of Immunology, and Christina Guzzo (photo at left) associate professor of biology – both at the University of Toronto – said in an email.

Overall, they said, HI³ has guided the curation of 28 projects aligned with Canadian Biomedical Research Fund mandates, orchestrated new alliances between the various institutes in the bub, and leveraged existing capacities and facilities to establish new collaborations, partnerships and responses to health threats.

In May 2024, HI³ received $72 million in federal funding from the Canada Biomedical Research Fund and Biomedical Research Infrastructure Fund to fund four research programs.

HI³ leveraged its national and international partner network to address a talent development gap, resulting in BioHubNet, a biomanufacturing talent training program that delivers workforce-ready highly qualified personnel across Canada, Gommerman and Guzzo said.

BioHubNet provides graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and college students with access to practical training programs that equip them to meaningfully contribute to Canada’s biomanufacturing sector.

This national talent development platform, which grew from HI³’s close engagements with industry, “spans the entire innovation and biomanufacturing pipeline,” they said.

HI₃’s other projects to date include:

• The Integrated Network for the Surveillance of Pathogens: Increasing Resilience and Capacity in Canada’s Pandemic Response (INSPIRE), which leverages community-level wastewater surveillance data, infrastructure and expertise to monitor the arrival and spread of infectious threats.

INSPIRE and its partners’ research and innovation is also offering a high-impact, multidisciplinary training experience to prepare industry-ready highly qualified personnel.

• The Prepare, React, Collect, Innovate, Share and Engage (PRECISE) Diagnostic Platform, which is developing rapid diagnostic tools to scale up testing capacity, including strengthening a Canadian network of expertise for emerging pathogen characterization and host responses, in efforts to reduce reliance on global supply chains and foreign expertise.
• The Pandemic Preparedness Engaging Primary Health Care and Emergency Departments (PREPARED) program is building a coordinated primary-care ecosystem that can swiftly respond to new viruses and other pathogens.

To foster nation-wide collaboration and coordination, HI³ co-created CanPIVOT/PIVOTCan, a partnership of the five CBRF hubs, for which HI³ hosted the first annual meeting to align the hubs on key pan-Canadian strategies and objectives.

HI³’s contributions to CanPIVOT bolstered health intelligence, surveillance and pathogen detection capabilities by linking research groups in wastewater surveillance with clinicians, social scientists and industry partners to share specimen and anonymized patient health datasets to enable quicker development and adoption of vaccines and diagnostics for established and newly emerging pathogens, Gommerman and Guzzo said.

“These efforts also led to participation in trials to assess new equipment, along with collaborations with Canada’s key international partners.”

Eastern Canada Pandemic Preparedness Hub (ECaPPH)

Since its creation, the ECaPPH has focused on bringing together academic, research, government and industry partners to strengthen Canada’s capacity to respond to future pandemics and health emergencies, Arianne Trudeau (photo at right), executive director of ECaPPH, said in an email.

Through the CBRF/BRIF Stage 2 competition, ECaPPH submitted a portfolio of 20 different, highly collaborative proposals from eight distinct institutions, she said.

Four major projects associated with ECaPPH ultimately received a total of $98 million in federal funding, spanning biomanufacturing, therapeutics, preclinical research infrastructure, and pediatric and maternal health research.

“These four projects are well underway with strong progress across their implementation,” Trudeau said.

“Teams have been established, research programs are progressing, highly qualified personnel is being trained, new infrastructure and capabilities are being developed, and collaborations with industry and academic partners are expanding.”

ECaPPH has established and is advancing four complementary research national initiatives address gaps in Canada’s preparedness capacity, she added. They are:

• Biologics RAMP-UP – Polytechnique Montréal

RAMP-UP is developing an integrated biomanufacturing platform designed to accelerate the path from the identification of a health threat to the production of vaccines and other biologics. The project recently entered an important new phase through a collaboration between Polytechnique Montréal and the National Research Council of Canada (NRC), bringing academic expertise and specialized biomanufacturing infrastructure together at the NRC’s Royalmount site in Montreal.

The initiative has also trained more than 100 highly qualified personnel in biomanufacturing, helping strengthen Canada’s talent pipeline in this critical field.

• PandemicStop-AI – Université de Montréal

PandemicStop-AI brings together artificial intelligence, microbiology and drug discovery expertise to accelerate the identification and development of new antibiotics to address antimicrobial resistance.

The initiative has also attracted additional international funding and partnerships, including a US$3.8-million grant from the Gates Foundation.

• National Primate Center for Pandemic Preparedness (NPCPP) – Université Laval

The NPCPP is establishing critical Canadian preclinical research capacity, including specialized infrastructure and capabilities for non-human primate research, bioimaging and infectious disease studies. These resources will help accelerate the evaluation of vaccines and therapeutics before they advance to clinical trials.

• POPCORN 2.0 – Université de Montréal / CHU Sainte-Justine

POPCORN 2.0 is building a coordinated national research infrastructure for pediatric and maternal health. The network connects pediatric hospitals and research networks across Canada, enabling collaborative studies, surveillance and more rapid generation of evidence during future health emergencies.

Trudeau said that following the CBRF/BRIF Stage 2 competition, ECaPPH explored alternative sources of funding, including provincial, federal and international.

At least 40 percent of project directors who were part of the ECaPPH-endorsed portfolio have received support from various partners to submit proposals for funding opportunities, she noted.

Opportunities include Médicament Québec’s vaccine initiative, and for highly promising RNA-based technologies through the CELLULE as part of AReNA (Quebec’s RNA Hub).

Within its network and in collaboration with other research hubs, ECaPPH acts as a convenor and connector of Canada’s bio-innovation and life sciences ecosystem and helps to facilitate and consolidate partnerships across proposals, other hubs, industry partners and government agencies.

ECaPPH has adopted and implemented innovative and agile approaches to achieve a coordinated pandemic readiness response as well as encouraged stakeholder groups to work collaboratively, rather than competitively, across Canada, Trudeau said.

“Throughout this process, ECaPPH has played a key role in building a proactive versus a reactive model of preparedness that is critical to establishing an autonomous Canadian response to any emerging health threat, and to strengthening our domestic biomanufacturing and life sciences capacity.”

The five hubs have successfully ushered in a significant cultural change and adoption of “doing science differently” – a necessary paradigm shift for research, training and infrastructure funding – that holistically leverages existing assets and builds new crucial infrastructure and research capacity, Trudeau said.

PRAIRIE Hub for Pandemic Preparedness

The PRAIRIE Hub received $2 million in Stage 1 CBRF funding, allocated at $500,000 per year.

This supports the people and activities needed to operate the hub, including a director of operations, training and administrative support, governance and advisory activities, engagement with researchers and partners, coordination with the other hubs, communications, and support for the Stage 2 programs.

One of the first major activities for the PRAIRIE Hub was developing, reviewing and endorsing a regional research portfolio for Stage 2 of the Canada Biomedical Research Fund and Biosciences Research Infrastructure Fund competition.

This brought together multidisciplinary teams and partners from across Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, Joanne Lemieux (photo at right), executive director of the hub, professor of biochemistry and vice-dean of research (biomedical) in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry at University of Alberta, said in an email.

Fifteen multidisciplinary teams were endorsed to apply, with four programs ultimately receiving approximately $110 million in federal research and infrastructure funding, she said.

These programs are advancing vaccine, diagnostic and biomanufacturing technologies, including self-amplifying RNA vaccines, viral vector and protein vaccine platforms and adaptable diagnostic technologies, Lemieux said.

“These programs are at different stages of research and development and have not yet reached commercialization,” she said. “A major priority is helping researchers move discoveries further along the development pathway.”

To that end, the PRAIRIE Hub is currently recruiting a dedicated Commercialization Facilitator to help connect researchers with expertise and opportunities in process development, manufacturing, regulatory strategy, clinical development, intellectual property, industry partnerships, investment and continued funding.

Also, in May 2027, the PRAIRIE Hub will be hosting a workshop – Beyond Discovery: From Research to Real World Readiness. This event will bring researchers and partners together to focus on the practical steps needed to move promising research toward development and application.

Since the Stage 2 awards were announced, much of the nub's work has focused on supporting the four successful programs within the PRAIRIE Hub, Lemieux said.

This included bringing teams and partners together across institutions, supporting reporting and interactions with the Tri-agency Institutional Programs Secretariat and Canada Foundation for Innovation, and connecting researchers with expertise and opportunities in manufacturing, regulatory development and commercialization.

The Hub's regional role is broader than the four funded programs Lemieux noted. It also includes the 11 additional teams endorsed for Stage 2, as well as researchers, companies, health care organizations and other partners involved in pandemic preparedness across the region.

The hub includes research at U of A, University of Calgary, University of Saskatchewan, and University of Manitoba.

The PRAIRIE Hub has also established a dedicated Training Initiative and begun mapping pandemic preparedness and health security capabilities across the region, she said.

The hub secured $400,000 for this program, with $200,000 from the University of Alberta vice-president of research and $200,000 from the Li Ka Shing Institute of Virology “to assist with training the next generation of researchers to be pandemic ready.”

The PRAIRIE Hub is also working with Dr. Molly Shoichet's Biomanufacturing Hub Network (BioHubNet) at the HI³ Hub to explore common training opportunities across the hubs. Schoichet is university professor and Canada Research Chair, Tissue Engineering, at the University of Toronto.

Canada’s Immuno-Engineering and Biomanufacturing Hub (CIEBH)

The CIEBH received an initial $14-million investment from the federal government – the largest awarded among the five hubs.

Since its creation, the CIEBH has brought together an extensive network of more than 60 academic, industry, government and health-system partners, Dr. Michelle Wong (photo at right), executive director of the hub and senior director, research, at the University of British Columbia (UBC) Faculty of Medicine, said in an email.

CIEBH leveraged the initial federal investment to attract significant additional support from the B.C. government, donors and other partners such as Genome BC and Health Research BC, bringing the total investment in CIEBH to nearly $200 million, she noted.

CIEBH researchers are developing a range of next-generation medicines, including RNA vaccines, antibody therapies, cell and gene therapies and new approaches to antimicrobial resistance, Wong said.

“We are currently advancing eight flagship research platforms in areas of strength and strategic importance for B.C. and Canada, including RNA therapeutics, AI-driven biologics and new clinical-grade biomanufacturing capacity,” she said.

A major accomplishment is the development of a personalized mRNA vaccine for pancreatic cancer, “which we are on track to bring into clinical testing next year,” she noted.

This is part of CIEBH’s AVENGER platform, which is building a made-in-Canada RNA vaccine platform to develop these important therapies at home. The platform will ultimately be expanded and adapted to other cancers, infectious diseases and future pandemic threats.

Through the hub’s PROGENITER platform, researchers are also developing antibody treatments and AI-enabled biologics discovery against viruses with high pandemic potential, building a library of potential therapies that could give Canada a head start when a new health threat emerges.

Wong said that one of CIEBH’s biggest accomplishments is the construction of a new Advanced Therapeutics Manufacturing Facility (ATMF) at UBC, which UBC broke ground on last year and expects to be completed by 2028.

The first of its kind in Western Canada, the ATMF will provide more than 25,000 square feet of specialized manufacturing space where Canadian researchers and biotech companies can produce clinical-grade therapies.

“This will help address a recognized gap in Canada's life sciences ecosystem and keep more of the economic benefits of Canadian innovation here at home,” Wong said.

 Alongside its eight flagship research platforms, CIEBH is training highly skilled talent and working collaboratively with other hubs to build partnerships and shared capabilities that strengthen Canada's life sciences ecosystem.

“One of our long-term goals is to build a more connected life sciences ecosystem that can support Canadian health innovation and preparedness for current and future health threats,” Wong said.

Nationally, CIEBH is working with Canada’s other hubs to identify gaps, complementary strengths and improve coordination.

Internationally, CIEBH has helped facilitate new global partnerships that will create opportunities for Canadian researchers and students, including UBC becoming the first Canadian university to join the Eurolife network of leading European biomedical universities.

Wong, like the leaders of the other four hubs, noted that strengthening Canada’s life science ecosystem is a long-term undertaking.

Said Wong: “Sustained investment will be needed to build on this momentum and ensure we continue to realize the benefits for our health system, economy and Canadians.”

On September 18, the federal government announced a contribution of $1.55 million over three years to each of the five pan-Canadian biomanufacturing research hubs to extend their existing pandemic preparedness activities and integrate the development of dual-use technologies (technologies that can be used for both civilian or commercial purposes as well as military or defence operations).

See also: CFI spent $490 million of federal funding to upgrade biocontainment facilities and life sciences infrastructure

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