Potential COVID-19 vaccine still not in Canada, three months after approval for trials

 

Shipments of a Chinese and Canadian-developed COVID-19 candidate vaccine remain delayed from getting to Canada, more than three months after Health Canada approved them for Phase 1 trials here.

The Ad5-nCoV potential vaccine is being produced at CanSino Biologics in Tianjin, China, and uses cell lines developed at the National Research Council of Canada (NRC).

Researchers at Dalhousie University’s Canadian Center for Vaccinology were set to test the CanSino product in Phase 1 trials in Halifax as early as late May.

Ad5-nCoV has already completed relatively promising Phase 2 trials within China. In June, it was approved for use in the People’s Liberation Army – China’s armed forces.

A Chinese patent was granted for Ad5-nCoV this month, and Phase 3, large-scale trials — which include people who have been exposed to COVID-19 — are set to begin soon in Russia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and Mexico.

Yet Canada — the home of the cells used to develop the candidate vaccine — is still waiting to even see the product.

In an email to Global News, the NRC said the “vaccine candidate for Phase 1 clinical trials has not yet been approved by Chinese customs for shipment to Canada. Once the Canadian Center for Vaccinology receives the vaccine candidate it will start the clinical trial for CanSino, under the regulatory supervision of Health Canada.”

When asked specifically how much the Government of Canada has invested specifically in the CanSino Ad5-nCoV vaccine project, including the planned clinical trials in our country, the communications advisor for the NRC cited confidentiality reasons for not revealing details. “For reasons of commercial confidentiality the terms of the agreement between the NRC and CanSino cannot be shared. The overall aim of the NRC’s collaboration with CanSino is to enable production of the candidate vaccine in Montreal, for the purposes of later stage clinical trials, as well as for emergency pandemic use should the vaccine be approved by Health Canada,” said Nic Defalco via email.

CanSino did not respond to a Global News request for information about the delay.

The NRC and CanSino previously teamed-up to develop a successful Ebola vaccine approved for use in 2017.