Vaccine independence requires a 21st-Century Connaught Labs, policy experts argue

In the midst of a turbulent vaccine roll-out, the federal and Ontario governments announced a $470-million investment to expand Sanofi Pasteur Limited’s vaccine manufacturing capability. The company will upgrade its facility on the historic Connaught Laboratories site in Toronto to produce influenza vaccine domestically, starting in 2026, and spend $79 million per year for five years on research and development.

Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, François-Philippe Champagne called it a landmark investment. “We are building our bio-manufacturing capacity in Canada one investment at a time," he said. The federal budget, revealed on Monday, committed $2.2 billion to the bio-manufacturing and life-sciences sector, and called the ability to make our own vaccines "essential to our national security.”

But for Canada to be truly self-sufficient in vaccine development and production, critics say other models must be considered—including a 21st-century version of Connaught Labs. 

“Let's try to grow another Connaught. Yes, there are risks to that. But let's start taking some risks,” said health policy expert Leslie Boehm in an interview with Research Money.

In a recent article in Policy Options, Boehm and co-author Gregory Marchildon, Ontario Research Chair in Health Policy and System Design at the Institute of Health, Policy and Evaluation at the University of Toronto, charted the history, sale and privatization of Connaught Labs, and the policy lessons it offers today. 

Connaught was a not-for-profit, university-based enterprise, with deep connections to academic research, public health and government. And though it made vaccines (and insulin) available to the world at or near cost, it was still “ one of the world’s premier vaccine companies until it was privatized in the 1980s,” they write.

Adopting a similar model today would give Canada the necessary control over its vaccine supply, including what vaccines get made, when and in what quantities, they argue.

Boehm, an adjunct professor at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME) at the University of Toronto, recently published a book on the history of IHPME, formerly known as the School of Hygiene. Along with Connaught Labs, it was a global powerhouse of innovation in infectious disease research and education. 

Boehm acknowledges that the government's investment in Sanofi moves Canada's vaccine supply forward. But he said Canada also needs a public option. "Connaught had very strong relations with the province, the feds and with the local public health department and Connaught always, always, always pivoted to meet their needs," he said.

Dr. Joel Lexchin, an expert on pharmaceutical policy and professor emeritus in the School of Health Policy and Management at York University, has called for “a strong and enduring financial commitment” to publicly funded vaccine research and a domestic, publicly-owned vaccine manufacturing facility. 

Boehm admits that biomedical research and bio-manufacturing are dramatically different now than in Connaught's heyday. "In Connaught's day, it could be the research ecosystem. Now we're much more highly differentiated and specialized," he said. 

For example, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine contains 280 ingredients coming from 86 providers in 19 countries, according to Conrad Bellehumeur, Vice-President, Government Affairs, Innovative Medicines Canada. Each dose crosses the Atlantic two times before being injected into someone's arm, he said during a recent webinar.

Could Canada pull it off? Boehm isn't sure, but he says it is a risk worth taking. "It's what I would like to see happen. I think Canada is good at publicly owned corporations." 

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