Curing disease, right here.

Cell and gene therapies just might cure the world of disease. But only if there’s enough to go around. 

Cures for blood cancers. Permanent treatments for diabetes. An end to hemophilia. Those landmark changes are all possible, and the efforts are currently underway. Canada has an opportunity to be the driver of these revolutionary medicines if we continue to invest in infrastructure, talent and our collaborative nature.  

There was a time when Canada was a global leader in biotechnology. We discovered insulin, brought it to the world, and built an entire ecosystem on that foundation. The lesson to the world was this: Canada was where you could learn from the brightest minds, train in cutting-edge labs, develop new innovations. 

But over time, the industry has shown signs of stagnation while international ecosystems have grown. Manufacturing wasn’t a focus for growth. Capacity and capabilities remained focused on existing technologies while new modalities were not being developed and commercialized. Many of our best and brightest moved to the US to get their innovations to market and industry jobs went with them. That’s a recipe for brain drain. 

“Innovative companies liked the probability of success in the US, the majority going to Boston,” says Mitchel Sivilotti, CEO at OmniaBio Inc., a contract development and manufacturing organization specializing in cell and gene therapies. “They had very few options here. Several key categories of resources were limited, particularly domestic biomanufacturing capacity, so they left and took the opportunities and job growth with them.” 

The departures, in some important cases, could be traced back to manufacturing expertise and scale. Pre-clinical development and proof of concept are typically conducted in an academic laboratory setting. Manufacturing for clinical studies, however, even when producing small quantities of target therapeutics, is rarely a core competency of researchers. The difficulty only multiplies when it’s time to scale up and produce enough to treat thousands of people in compliance with Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP). A GMP biomanufacturing facility is designed for aseptic process controls through the use of specialized clean rooms and efficient air system engineering. Such facilities are operated by highly trained experts who connect robust quality and technical capability to a supply chain network that guarantees compliance with international regulatory standards.  

These all need time and support to develop. Finding and funding the right projects (and helping them scale) makes it possible for an industry to take root and grow. OmniaBio is one of the key players supporting Canada’s emerging biotechnology industry, an endeavour that NGen is proud to support.  

 “NGen shares our vision of ecosystem building. They provided the funding and the structure to bring more collaborators together,” Michael May, President and CEO, CCRM says. “Their support has been instrumental in advancing some crucial projects.” 

With NGen’s support, OmniaBio is building new state-of-the-art biomanufacturing facilities in Hamilton, Ontario. The site will house cellular (allogeneic and autologous) and viral vector manufacturing platforms and is investing heavily in high-throughput automation and advanced data systems, for production, quality and supply chain. These capabilities and advances will help cell and gene therapy thrive in Canada by building a resource that attracts both domestic and international biotechnology developers. With access to these new capabilities, other NGen collaborators are already using cell therapy to treat conditions ranging from blood cancer to diabetes to liver disease.  

The global pharmaceutical industry is starting to take notice of Canada’s emerging biotechnology companies. Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical giant, recently signed a $2.6 billion deal with British Columbia’s Aspect Biosystems, an NGen and OmniaBio partner. The deal funds the development of 3D-printed live tissue that can be implanted in the body. It’s a new treatment method with exciting and far-reaching potential. And it’s just the start.  

NGen has also partnered with OmniaBio’s parent company, CCRM, a leader in developing and commercializing regenerative medicine-based technologies and cell and gene therapies to bring manufacturing technology to Canada, repatriating senior talent and building more domestic partnerships. The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in the middle of these activities and the launch of OmniaBio punctuated the alignment, value and importance of the strategies of CCRM and NGen to develop Canadian domestic supply chains for vaccines and the advanced therapies that OmniaBio will manufacture in the future. The launch of OmniaBio in 2022 and NGen’s support for OmniaBio’s ecosystem-building projects demonstrate how economic development and pandemic preparedness will be addressed differently in Canada in the future.