U.S. drug maker Moderna (NASDAQ:MRNA) will sign an agreement with the Canadian government today (August 10) to build a new production plant in Canada.
Moderna Chief Executive Officer Stéphane Bancel will sign the memorandum of understanding (MOU) with federal officials in Montreal. It is the second major deal Ottawa has made over the past three months to get prescription drugs made within Canada.
In May, Ottawa announced that it will provide $199 million to Resilience Technologies in Mississauga, Ontario to fund the expansion of its existing plant to make up to 640 million doses of vaccines a year.
Moderna and Ottawa are still negotiating specifics on how much the federal government will contribute to its new plant, along with where it will be located and when it will be operational.
Ottawa attracted the attention of several life sciences companies last spring when it announced $2.2 billion for biotechnology research and commercial production over the next seven years.
Moderna was founded 11 years ago to research and produce messenger RNA, or mRNA, vaccines and therapeutics, and its COVID-19 vaccine is its first product ever authorized for widespread use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Scaling up production to meet huge demand has been difficult for Moderna. To date, Moderna has partnered only with Swiss-based Lonza to make the drug substance of its COVID-19 vaccine at facilities in Switzerland and New Hampshire.
The vaccine is finished and filled into vials by multiple companies throughout Europe and the U.S.
Canada has played no part in the production of COVID-19 vaccines to date. The country’s pharmaceutical industry has been decimated over the last 30 years and left Canada reliant on imported vaccines to slow COVID-19.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who is expected to call an election this September, has staked some political capital on rebuilding Canada’s life sciences sector, from basic research to clinical trials, and large commercial production.
More than $1.2 billion has been committed previously, including $126 million for the National Research Council to build a biologics production plant in Montreal. That facility, which is nearing completion, is to make vaccines for Maryland-based pharmaceutical company Novavax.
mRNA vaccines are among the newest vaccine technology. They use RNA, a single-stranded molecule that typically carries specific codes about various human genes and instructs the body to make certain types of cells to fight infections.
