VIDO aims to create ‘holy grail’ of vaccines with research grant

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VIDO has received $24 million from CEPI, with the money being used to further research into vaccine development in the future.

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With COVID-19 still not far removed from people’s minds, the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization (VIDO) in Saskatoon has received a multi-million-dollar global research grant to prepare for the next possible pandemic.

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In an announcement on Monday that featured representatives from the federal and provincial governments, VIDO and the University of Saskatchewan, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) has invested up to $24 million into VIDO in the hopes of developing a broadly-protective vaccine.

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Dr. Nicole Lurie, CEPI’s executive director of emergency preparedness and response, said the funding will help VIDO create a pan-sarbecovirus vaccine, which means it should protect against an array of potentially deadly coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind the COVID-19 pandemic.

The project follows VIDO’s earlier research and development on a variant-proof COVID-19 vaccine that was funded by CEPI in 2021.

“The clever design works by presenting fragments of several coronaviruses together to potentially induce a strong immune response. If it’s successful, this vaccine could kind of serve as a holy grail, protecting us against both the coronaviruses we know about and the ones that could still strike in the future,” Lurie said.

CEPI was created after the 2014-2016 global response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. It’s a global effort to help develop vaccines and biological countermeasures against epidemics and pandemics.

The world was not prepared for COVID-19, Lurie said, and while the first vaccines were developed in record time, they were always one step behind the virus. She said variants that popped up weakened countermeasures and prolonged the pandemic cycle.

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Lurie said this potential “holy grail” of vaccines could potentially stop a pandemic before it even begins.

Volker Gerdts, VIDO’s director and CEO, said this research will help predict what the next pathogen may look like.

“You can use artificial intelligence (and other tools) to predict where those mutations will take place and develop vaccines today for tomorrow’s pathogen,” Gerdts said.

Facilities like VIDO are needed to test those vaccines, he added.

Gerdts said a new animal facility is in development, which will help VIDO study pathogens in any animal.

Volker Gerdts speaks on the importance of VIDO's vaccine research.
(From left to right) MLA Jamie Martens, Minister Terry Duguid, University of Saskatchewan’s Baljit Singh and VIDO’s Volker Gerdts spoke about the grant from CEPI and the impact it will have on VIDO’s vaccine research. Photo by Brody Langager.

New in-house vaccine manufacturing facilities have been created to create vaccines for both humans and animals, which Gerdts said cuts the development time and gets vaccines into clinical testing more quickly.

VIDO is also upgrading its containment level to level four, which is the highest level needed to contain pathogens.

“It allows us to work with any human or animal pathogen that might evolve in the future,” he said.

Canada currently only has one level four containment lab, which is located in Winnipeg. Gerdts said VIDO is about two years away from having the new lab completed.

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Terry Duguid, minister responsible for PrairiesCan, said this work shows the power of collaboration between the public and private sectors.

“Since 2020, PrairiesCan has invested over $120 million to help VIDO become a world-class hub for research, innovation, and vaccine manufacturing — work that promises to deliver benefits far beyond our borders,” Duguid said.

U of S president Peter Stoicheff said the work being done at VIDO and on campus is “advancing innovation to protect people worldwide from emerging infectious diseases.

“This tremendous investment highlights the global recognition of VIDO’s scientific excellence and the University of Saskatchewan’s commitment to addressing some of the world’s most pressing health challenges,” he said.

Dr. Richard Hatchett, the CEO of CEPI, noted that coronaviruses are “behind some of the deadliest outbreaks in the 21st century and the threat of a novel coronavirus threat (is) ever present. We therefore need to move away from the ‘one bug, one drug’ approach where we create vaccines against individual viral threats and instead develop a single vaccine that could target COVID-19, SARS and other sarbecoviruses.

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“This would be an essential preparedness step for the world that could prevent the escalation of cases in a future outbreak, and save time, money, and, ultimately, lives.”

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