Front Burner - Inside Canada’s race for a COVID-19 vaccine

Episode Date: August 19, 2020

A global race for a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine is underway. More than 160 of them are in different stages of testing around the world. Canada is in this race too. A group of scientists at the University of Saskatchewan's VIDO-InterVac - the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization in Saskatoon - are trying to get through a decade’s worth of testing and approvals as early as next year. Today on Front Burner, CBC Saskatoon reporter Alicia Bridges takes us inside a lab working on a Canadian COVID vaccine, and inside the lives of the scientists trying to find it.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. So we got to pull our virus out of the freezer, in a minus 80 freezer. You're in a lab with beakers and Bunsen burners around. And right now, the only thing separating you from a live sample of COVID-19

are a few layers of protective gear and a plastic box. Today we just need two tubes. You're somewhere that only top virus researchers usually go, inside a high containment lab in Saskatoon. You're looking out from a scientist's face shield as he works with an open tube of the virus. You can hear the air circulating in his protective suit. We've added our virus stalk to the media we're diluting it with. We're going to just give it a mix.

My colleague Alicia Bridges wired the scientist with a microphone before he entered containment level three, so we could take you in a lab for highly infectious and deadly viruses. Alicia, what's going on here? So this is VEDO Intervac. The V-I-D-O stands for Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization. They're a lab at the University of Saskatchewan and they're working on a vaccine for COVID-19. So like most of the over 160 vaccine candidates around the world, they're trying to get through a decade's worth of testing

and approvals as early as next year. And there's a lot riding on finding a vaccine that works, right? People are counting on it so that life can return to some kind of normalcy eventually. Yeah, yeah. And that's not lost on the researchers. I've been talking to them for months about what it's like to have the world watching your lab. You know, I've been working every day since really this started. People said, why did you go into this career? And they said, and not jokingly, to save lives. And now it's our time to do this. So today on the show, Alicia takes us inside a lab working on a Canadian COVID vaccine

and inside the lives of the scientists trying to find it. I'm Josh Bloch, and this is Fremper. Alright. Okay, this does not sound like the delicate work of a scientist in a high containment lab. No, you're hearing Volker Goertz. He's the director and CEO of Vito Intervac in Saskatoon. And he's cutting hay. Okay, so going on my field right now.

I finished the first round. So this is where I'm going to spend the next six or seven hours or so. Of course. Of course. Volker has been working literally day and night in this push for a vaccine. We're talking interviews, fundraising, meetings with research partners and suppliers and the World Health Organization. I work every night from home. As soon as my kids go to bed, I work at home until it's bedtime.

And then I usually get up early in the morning to try to do some of the work even before I come to the office. Wow. So working after the kids go to bed. I mean, in my life, that is purely aspirational. Yeah, it's a lot to juggle. So on weekends, his way of giving himself a mental break is to do farm work. To cut the hay, what you need is three days of sunshine, ideally, for the hay to dry. Let's hope.

OK, so that's the baling of the hay. That's right. And the team at Vito have set an incredibly tight timeline for their vaccine. They want to be ready for manufacturing by the beginning of next year. And the goal is to make more than 10 million doses by March of 2021. So I've been calling him for regular updates as he goes through all this. I think the biggest fear is not that the vaccine will not work. The biggest fear is that we're not as fast as we want to be. If one of these activities or one of these suppliers gets delayed, how is that going to affect the overall timeline?

The process is really condensed. You need to get the different vaccine parts. There are a bunch of safety tests and it's all happening simultaneously. And if a single step doesn't go as planned, it could delay everything. Volker works this hard because he's very aware of the difference between what a vaccine could mean in March and what it would mean later. We all sense the urgency and the importance of our work and so it's hard to explain to yourself,

you know, taking time off when people literally are dying in the hospital. But, you know, developing a vaccine is not a fast process. Presumably, these scientists really have to look at this like a marathon and not a sprint. And there's countless hurdles between Vito and that deadline, like where they're going to be able to manufacture so many doses. But the next challenge, or the next big challenge, is clearing preclinical trials.

They'll be testing the vaccine on animals to prove it's safe and effective, and they need good results before they can test on humans. So there's a lot of pressure to not only develop a vaccine quickly, but to make sure that it's safe and effective, right? So how does Vito go about doing that? They started early. They actually started working on this back in January before we even started thinking of COVID as this huge threat in Canada. So one of the early steps was getting a hold of the actual virus. Daryl Falzerano is the researcher who was in charge of this, and he says that it really helped that Canada had some cases of COVID-19 at that point. And so they got Canada's first case, a sample of that, flown over from Toronto to Saskatchewan.

You're looking at a small little tube labeled with, you know, isolate of novel coronavirus with a very small amount of sort of clear to slightly tinged yellow liquid in the bottom of it in a very hard plastic orange and white sealed container that's designed to withstand an airplane crash or something like that. So the sample, when it arrives, is stored in dry ice. So white smoke sort of whops out of the container when he opens it. And they were the first lab in Canada to actually isolate this virus from that sample so they can use it to test for potential vaccines. But they also got a head start, I guess, in another way. Vito was already working on a vaccine for coronavirus in camels before COVID.

Oh, so this was for a different coronavirus, not for COVID-19. They switched for MERS, which is, like you say, another coronavirus. And they're able to use that model to make a new vaccine pretty quickly. Basically, we keep cells in an incubator. So when we actually grow up cells, we try and actually model everything we can after what we find biologically. So I'm inside the lab here with Jason Kindrichuk. He is giving me a lesson on how Vito grows vaccines in living cells.

And actually, Jason, he's another one of the research scientists that I've been keeping up with over the phone. You know, I got into research because I grew up at a time frame when, you know, the book The Hot Zone came out and the movie Outbreak came out. And it's like, oh, there's this, you know, this, you know, emerging virus called Ebola. And those were the things that pull us into it. Josh, have you seen Outbreak? It's terrible. I have not. All I know is it's about a pandemic and it stars Dustin Hoffman.

Yeah, so Dustin Hoffman is this hero research scientist. He's trying to save the world. It's from the 90s. It's completely dramatic and over the top. You got to isolate the sick. And I mean, really isolate them, Billy. We got to get everybody else back into their houses. We got to keep them there. We're doing that, doing that Sam no we're not doing it because I just drove

through 100 people but it showed Jason who was a teenager at the time that it's someone's job to stop these viruses from spreading and now he does that job what we have inside here are basically flasks of cells. These are cells? These are cells. So these ones are actually African green monkey kidney cells. Jason is showing me a pinkish liquid in a small flat tray. And essentially, Vito uses cells like these to grow tiny pieces of the coronavirus.

uses cells like these to grow tiny pieces of the coronavirus, just the spike proteins, the things on the surface of the virus that look like little points on a crown. You might have seen them in photographs of COVID-19. The scientists essentially give some cells instructions on how to build them. And so when the cells divide and multiply, they make copies of the spike protein along with copies of themselves. So if you want to look through the microscope, I do. So you should be able to see the kind of brain black. Oh wow. Oh my gosh. So they're all the same cell. So it's sort of like a very pale gray and white web. Yeah exactly. So these particular cells are not for the COVID-19 vaccine. Actually, the final vaccine will be grown in human cells.

But the idea is by putting these spike proteins in a vaccine, they can train your body's immune system to react and recognize and attack those spikes. So the idea is that you need a little bit of the coronavirus in order to make the coronavirus vaccine. Right. So that when you or if you get exposed to COVID, you'll already have antibodies to target those spikes and try to kill the virus right away. I can't imagine that growing these proteins in tubes and in petri dishes will be enough for millions of these vaccines. How are they going to speed this up? Yeah, so that's the other thing that they're trying to work out at this stage. Volker says a manufacturer can mass produce proteins in these

things called cell banks. And then you can literally grow them in thousand liter fermenters, millions of these cells, billions of these cells. And what does that look like? Well, it's a cloudy fluid. It looks like beer. And essentially you end up with a concentrate of protein, which looks like, you know, like a milky fluid. Wait, so this is like a milky concentrate of human skin? It's gross, but Volker is trying hard to find suppliers to do this work. A vaccine for humans needs better materials than what they're using now for their preclinical trials with animals. And there are also other ingredients like something called an adjuvant, which makes your immune system respond stronger to the vaccine, kind of like a booster.

It sort of powers up your immune response. And Volcker says right now, Canada has pretty limited capacity to manufacture these things. So much so that Vito is building their own manufacturing wing. But that still won't be done for another year. So even if they develop a vaccine, they won't have the capacity to really scale this up until next summer? No. And so for now, Volcker has to bet on some early deals he's made with existing suppliers to make the vaccine in time and to make it in this country. And so we

have a strategy, like a priority for us is to make this vaccine for Canadians, to ensure that Canadians have access to our vaccine. And so that's why I have one complete development process set up in Canada with Canadian partners. And so for now, the lab is doing all the testing they can to make sure that this vaccine gets approved. So we're just waiting in an office where we can see through the window into the lab. Daryl is going through the process of getting geared up in all his protective equipment. There's a white disposable suit underneath, which is sort of marshmallow-ish in appearance. It's quite puffy. I'm picturing like the scientists in the movie E.T. when they have E.T. like all

hooked up to all those machines. I haven't seen E.T. That's embarrassing. But I imagine this, it does look like what you would picture. It's very sort of Hollywood-like. I should tell you where I am. I'm back at Vito Intervac. I and with Daryl Falzerano. He's the project leader I mentioned earlier. Daryl's preparing the virus for testing but I couldn't take my equipment in the lab because they'd have to decontaminate it and it might not survive that process. So I set him up with a mic to put inside his suit on the way into the lab and I'm now waiting in one of the offices that looks inside. So our first step to go in is getting out of all the clothes we were wearing. This is a place where they work on live samples of pretty dangerous stuff.

That's tuberculosis, Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome, that's MERS, and the flu. And it's containment level three, which is the second highest level of biological safety that Canada even has to get into the lab they have to change out of their normal clothes into green scrubs and then they go into a secure corridor and then they change again. All right, so first thing we do is put on a pair of gloves onto our Tyvek suits. Putting on a pair now of white shoes that are dedicated to the lab. Then after that, we're putting on a second pair of gloves, and we use a little bit of duct tape to secure those on.

Grab our Percival Flow Blower, turn it on. Sometimes people wonder whether or not we're concerned or fearful when we're working in containment labs. And of course you're working with a pathogen that can infect you and in some cases cause a high chance of a high fatality rate. But I think being fearful, that's not the right attitude to have. It's maybe respectful and mindful of what it is you're working on. Alicia, can you hear him when you're looking through the window? I can because I'm recording him through a transmitter, but he can't hear me. So I'm writing my questions on my cell phone and holding them up to the glass.

And I'm using some hand signals through the window, which happens a lot around here. We're making a virus challenge for some animals. So we've got to pull our virus out of the freezer. They're stored in little tubes and little boxes. So a virus challenge is when the researchers vaccinate an animal and then they expose them to the virus to see if the vaccine works. So they're sort of challenging this immunity that the vaccine is supposed to give them.

Daryl's team has already done challenge studies using ferrets, but they didn't get an infection deep in the lungs. So now they're doing another round of tests using hamsters. I think hamsters are a better model for looking at virus replication. Will they be better at assessing a vaccine? My inclination is yes. I know not everyone might be comfortable with this idea of testing on animals, and the researchers say that they have to do it. There's no alternative. It's the only way they can understand how this vaccine would affect the whole immune system and make it safe to test on humans.

We're going to give these viruses a quick mix. I've got the right amount of volume. And just like that, we're done. When the virus is ready, it has to be transferred over to the lab where the hamsters are kept. And it goes out through like a giant sterilizing machine. So opening up the door to the autoclave room, opening the tank, sticking that container in, and pushing it down and through to the other side. Once it's out, it's time to expose the animals to the virus. And then they start monitoring their condition.

So one of the things we're looking for is weight loss, or in this case, vaccinated animals showing a lack of weight loss. So the animals also have nasal washes and oral swabs collected every second day. About two weeks after the hamsters are infected, the scientists will have a pretty good idea how well the study has gone. And that depends on the level of infection and how well the vaccine protected them. The results will also depend on the amount of vaccine that the hamsters were given. That would have happened a couple of months earlier. And if they didn't give them enough of the vaccine, the scientists won't be able to show that it's effective.

So basically it's really hard to get it right. Right, and this was just a demo with no real stakes, but when the real challenge studies happen, it's the difference between getting a vaccine approved for human clinical trials or not. This team wants to start human trials in November, that's only a couple of months away. The timeline is very tight.

And having a microphone on Darrell while he's in the lab kind of literally allows me to go into his headspace about the stress of all this. So sometimes people ask us if we feel a lot of pressure. I think I always answer this question strangely and people don't really, I almost feel they don't like my answer but um so to a certain extent no there's certain things beyond our control i don't feel that so much i actually think that's a bad thing that leads you to want to you know cut corners or you know look

at potentially your data differently it's interesting all the scientists are telling me something different about how they're confronting this burden of their work and how much people are counting on them for this vaccine. Jason Kindredchuk, he's the one who was inspired by the movie Outbreak, is really humbled by it. The opportunity for us to be able to do this kind of research is amazing. But also I think in many ways we have a public responsibility to give back while we can. And Alison Kelvin is another researcher who's working at Vito right now. She's dealing with that same dilemma.

I can't be more motivated to work on understanding this virus and develop a vaccine so that we can get back to a more normal life. Yeah, there's a lot of emotion in that. Definitely, I feel excited to be applying my skills, but not in the way you would be excited to win a race or get a good mark on a to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share

with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. Okay, so these hamster trials happened back in June.

How did they turn out? Well, I called Daryl and Volker at the end of July to ask about that. The way that the experiment did not go the way that we anticipated. And so the data that we get out from it is not particularly useful to us. So unfortunately, yeah, we're back on that to starting over again. Okay. And then when do you expect the challenge study to happen? So that's two months out then. Oh, wow. Okay. That is a big difference, hey? It is, yes. Yeah. Okay. So maybe, I know you got... It may sound devastating, or maybe, I don't know if devastating is the right word. It may sound unfortunate. But that experiment was being repeated anyway. So Josh, despite the hamster trials not working out as well as Daryl hoped, he's still confident in his vaccine. And I heard this from Volcra2. He said that for the next trial,

they'll give a bit more of the vaccine to hopefully get better responses. So will their timeline for getting this vaccine approved be delayed? Well, not because of the hamsters. Volcker says the vaccine is working. It's just a matter of fine tuning the right dose. But there is a hold up. I'm just wondering what if your timeline has changed for your vaccine to be ready for manufacturing? Like, is it still spring of 2021?

No. So, no, it's not. Like, I think the short answer is not. They have to wait to get hold of some of the materials they need to make the vaccine for more animal testing, which holds up their application for human clinical trials. And they can't manufacture their own materials because they're still building that facility. So everything is unfortunately delayed by maybe three to four weeks

in that range there. You know, on June of next year, we might have the ability to start manufacturing some of the vaccine. So maybe June 2021? That feels like a long time from now. It does. And that would only be for small targeted groups like healthcare workers or seniors.

And it could only happen that early if the government grants an emergency authorisation to fast track the process. Usually there are three phases of human clinical trials before a vaccine can be approved and Health Canada can give an emergency authorization in a pandemic and say it's okay to start manufacturing after phase two for people who are high risk. That's something Volker always thought might happen to help get the vaccine to people that need it right away. But then last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that they had a vaccine.

A vaccine against coronavirus has been registered for the first time in the world this morning. I know that it works quite effectively. Russia didn't complete the third and final phase of human testing, but it approved the Sputnik V vaccine anyway, and it was not well received by many scientists. Now, Volcker thinks there's unlikely to be any kind of early authorization for vaccines in Canada, even if it's for frontline workers or seniors or people who are most at risk. I think there is a concern in the public that some of these vaccines are maybe not as safe enough because they were developed so quickly. So, you know, I think the government is reacting to it and saying,

well, then let's do this properly rather than even pushing it through like Russia does right now. Now, Vito Intervac is starting to plan for having to do not two, but three phases of human clinical trials. And this isn't the scenario that they wanted because it means potentially vaccinating tens of thousands of people and then just waiting to see if they're protected from the virus in their daily lives. And that pushes the manufacturing date even further to around the end of 2021. So is that kind of disappointing for you? Well, what is disappointing right now is sitting here waiting for the material to come in. You know, we've been telling the government and I mean,

I don't want to use this as a blaming, but we have we have raised the issue of, you know, Canada's unpreparedness for pandemic diseases for quite a while and said, you know, you need to have manufacturing capacity. I reached out to the federal government for a response and they pointed to the recent funding that they'd given Vito, $23 million to speed up Vito's vaccine, plus $12 million just for the manufacturing wing. And that's only since March, so maybe too late to get the facilities ready. But the government also gave Vito over $3 million for the manufacturing wing back in 2018. Regardless of why the facilities weren't ready, Volcker thinks they would have let Vito's vaccine compete in this race.

We had our own facility. We would have completed phase one and phase two studies already. We would have been as fast as the Oxford vaccine is. Are you worried that they'll sort of fizzle out and they won't support you to complete your work in terms of funding? Well, I think there is that risk for sure. Volker sounded disheartened when I spoke to him a few days ago. This is kind of a change of tone for him. Well, I think it's reality, right? I mean, we're still super excited about what we're doing. And, you know, like, I think

the scientist in me says I have a better vaccine than many of these vaccines that are out there right now. And that's really, you know, what I'm foreseeing is that we will see a number of vaccines coming up quickly and early next year. But some of them may not be as effective as we want them to be. And then there will be a second round. Volker has just put in a proposal to expand Vito Intervac to work with exotic species like monkeys. And the team is testing vaccines and treatments for other developers too.

But regardless of the process of this vaccine, he sees the pandemic as an opportunity for Vito Intervac to grow and prepare for, dare I say it, the next pandemic. So it's not that, you know, we failed by not being super fast with our own vaccine. We also have, you know, done a phenomenal job in testing others. And, you know, that's what our role is as well. So where does all this leave Canada in this global race for a vaccine? There's about eight vaccines being developed in Canada right now. At least four of them are being worked on at Vito Intervac. And last week, the federal government

signed deals to buy vaccine doses from Pfizer and Moderna, which are not Canadian. Public Services and Procurement Minister Anita Anand essentially says that they're hedging their bets. We are working on all possible fronts and diversifying our vaccine supply chains. In other words, we are working with a number of suppliers in order to deliver safe and effective vaccines to Canadians as quickly as possible. Demand for the vaccine is going to massively outweigh manufacturing capacity globally and in Canada. Plus, it's really hard to think about another pandemic right now by people like Volker who work with these emerging infectious diseases. They say we really need to. You can say that every year, three new diseases emerge. And every third year,

one of those diseases will have a bigger impact. So essentially every three years we might see something. It may not be as big as this one. It could be smaller but more lethal, for example, like Ebola. And so I think it needed maybe an event like this to remind governments or politicians of the importance of all of this. Every three years. I mean, that's an unsettling thought. Yeah, it is. Alicia, thank you so much for sharing this story today.

Of course, you're welcome. Before we go today, an update on our episode about Bill Morneau stepping down as Canada's finance minister. Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Friedland has taken over as his replacement. She took the oath at Rideau Hall yesterday afternoon. I, Christia Friedland, do solemnly and sincerely promise and swear. And at the request of the Prime Minister, the Governor General has now prorogued Parliament. That shuts down parliamentary business, including committees that have been looking into the We Charity controversy.

We need to reset the approach of this government for a recovery, to build back better. And those are big, important decisions. Trudeau's government is set to relaunch mid-September. That's all for today. I'm Josh Bloch. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.