The Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning/McGill University

Published purpose

Scientists and public health authorities worldwide are making an unprecedented collaborative effort to understand and develop effective interventions for the control and prevention of SARS-CoV-2. Vaccination remains the most efficient medical intervention to counteract the pandemic. Viral vaccines have been the most effective in protecting against viral infections. Vectored-vaccine candidates are among the most advanced SARS-CoV-2 in the 38 clinical evaluations (WHO, Draft landscape of COVID-19 candidate vaccines, Sept. 24, 2020). One such platform is using the recombinant Vesicular Stomatitis Virus (rVSV), which is replication competent and is known to induce both cellular and humoral host immune response against foreign antigens. VSV-based vaccine vectors, which, as enveloped viruses, are designed to incorporate glycoprotein antigens into their viral lipid membrane and thus display the antigen on the virus surface, in addition to expressing it upon entry into the target cell. Another important viral vector platform that has been extensively evaluated in preclinical and clinical trials as an onco-therapeutic agent is the Newcastle disease virus (NDV), an avian virus that has several well-suited properties for development of a safe vector vaccine against SARS-CoV-2. Both vectored-vaccine platforms demonstrated good safety profiles and in the case of VSV it has been successfully used for vaccination in emergency situations such as Ebola outbreaks. This Project focus on accelerating vaccine manufacture processes by using a producing cell line compatible with cGMP operations and industrialization to address the challenges posed by large scale manufacturing. The accelerated development the proposed robust technology platform will enable higher and faster accessibility to these class of vectored vaccines in situations of pandemic and contribute to building long lasting capacities in Canada.