Canadian Science Controlled a Deadly Virus Long Ago

Gray Merriam | Mar 25, 2020

Canadian science showed its superior ability with viruses long before COVID19.

The National Microbiology Laboratory opened in Winnipeg in 1998, providing a Level 4 (highest) microbiological containment facility. Heinz Feldman, a researcher studying hemorrhagic fevers, joined the new lab. His critical observation that lab mice did not get sick even when exposed to Ebola virus meant that a vaccine for Ebola was possible.

But the world had not yet had an Ebola outbreak and Canadian researchers had trouble getting government funding in the early 2000's.

Nevertheless by 2004 the Winnipeg lab showed that they had a vaccine that was 100 percent effective in lab mice. In 2005 they published a study showing that the vaccine totally protected monkeys against Ebola.

But greater funding was needed to get the vaccine through clinical trials and to devise commercial production methods.

Canada sought help from corporations in the US and signed an agreement with BioProtection Systems Inc., later called NewLink Genetics, to get the vaccine commercialized. Nothing happened and by 2010 funding the Canadian work was at risk. A contract scientist, Judie Alimonti, kept it alive by personal devotion. Canada's National Research Council developed methods for commercial production of the vaccine.

In 2014 Ebola killed more than 11,000 people in west Africa. The political winds changed. Canada donated 800 doses of vaccine to those affected by the outbreak. In the midst of the outbreak Merck bought NewLink for US$ 50 million. Canada's government had put $120 million into the Ebola project.

Canadian science developed the Ebola vaccine that saved thousands of lives in west Africa. Our scientific capability with viruses was globally superior despite being handicapped by political and commercial viewpoints. We need that superior science again now with COVID19 and probably will again in the future.