Surveillance, Preparedness & Vaccines Task Force

Project leads: Brian Lichty, associate professor of Medicine and director of the Robert E. Fitzhenry Vector Lab, Fiona Smaill, professor of Pathology & Molecular Medicine, Zhou Xing, professor of Medicine 

Description: Working in McMaster’s Robert E. Fitzhenry Vector Lab, researchers are developing, and manufacturing two new second-generation COVID-19 vaccine candidates designed to provide broader immunity and help protect against emerging COVID-19 variants.

The McMaster COVID-19 vaccines focus on two vectors – delivery agents used to carry gene therapies or vaccines into a person to illicit an immune response. The first is a human adenovirus, which causes the common cold, and the second, a chimpanzee adenovirus to deliver the DNA of a component of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID.

The vaccines are designed to be administered in two phases. The first, a priming dose, is delivered by injection, followed by a booster administered four weeks later by inhalation. This strategy directly targets the common sites for infection — the mucus linings of the lungs and upper airways — using a delivery system similar to an asthma “puffer.”

Researchers in the Fitzhenry lab are currently manufacturing tens of thousands of vaccine candidate doses, with the potential to manufacture hundreds of thousands more. With Health Canada approval, they hope to begin human trials with healthy volunteers in Hamilton this spring and if successful, will expand to the second phase of clinical testing in the fall. Both the injected and inhaled vaccines will be tested in the Fitzhenry lab as part of clinical trials. 

Resources

• Learn more about the Robert E. Fitzhenry Vector Lab
• Article: McMaster researchers developing homegrown vaccines to fight COVID-19 and prevent future outbreaks using specialized campus lab and production facility
• Article: How McMaster’s inhaled COVID-19 vaccines would work
• Article: Upgrades to Fitzhenry Lab would enable ‘on the order of a million doses of a vaccine per production run,’ McMaster researcher says
• Article: McMaster researchers talk with MPs about made-in Canada vaccines

Lead: Ravi Selvaganapathy, director, Centre of Excellence in Protective Equipment and Materials and professor of mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering

Description: The Centre of Excellence in Protective Equipment and Materials is Canada’s first and only research hub dedicated to developing, testing and validating personal protective equipment (PPE).

Made up of an established network of engineers, clinicians, local manufacturers, CEPEM aims to create an ecosystem of expertise to build domestic supply chains for PPE and innovate existing products, including face masks and shields.

The team is focused on six areas of activity: designing and developing PPE, advanced manufacturing, research in functional materials, testing and validation, creating Canadian standards for PPE, and making PPE more sustainable for the environment.

Since it was established in July 2020, its team has worked with more than 50 Canadian companies to develop and validate products, get them to market faster, and rethink the design of PPE for the next generation of frontline workers.

Resources:

• Learn more about the Centre of Excellence in Protective Equipment and Materials
• McMaster opens Centre of Excellence to advance personal protective equipment
• McMaster researchers rally to help Canadian company expedite new mask to meet urgent COVID-19 demand
• McMaster researchers collaborate on N95 respirator made and approved in Canada
• McMaster Centre of Excellent receives $1.2M to advance Canadian-made PPE

Lead: Michael Wilson, assistant director, McMaster Health Forum; associate professor, Health Research Methods, Evidence, and Impact

Description: The roll-out of the COVID-19 vaccines is arguably one of the largest health-system initiatives ever conducted. As such, there are many activities that vaccine roll-out plans will need to consider. This living evidence profile summarizes and organizes key findings from evidence documents and experiences from other countries and within Canada, and is updated once per month.

Resources

• Vaccine roll-out – Living evidence profile

Network leads: David Earn, professor of Mathematics, McMaster University and Caroline Colijn professor of Mathematics, Simon Fraser University, Canada 150 Research Chair

Description: One of four national research networks in Canada, the Canadian Network for Modelling Infectious Disease (CANMOD), brings together statisticians, mathematicians, epidemiologists and public health experts to increase the country’s ability to track the spread of pathogens, such as SARS-CoV-2, and inform short, medium and long-term public health decisions.

The researchers will study incidence, mortality, hospitalization, testing patterns, and genetic sequences, and will use mathematical models to assess and improve strategies for surveillance, vaccine distribution, control through non-pharmaceutical interventions, and epidemic forecasting.

CANMOD will bring together researchers from a variety of hospitals, public health agencies and many universities, including Yukon College and the Universities of Victoria, British Columbia, Alberta, Calgary, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Guelph, Waterloo, Brock, Toronto, Ryerson, Ottawa, Queen’s, Laval, McGill, Memorial and Prince Edward Island.

Resources:

• Read: McMaster and SFU to lead national network for modelling infectious disease epidemics

Lead: Brian Lichty, director, Robert E. Fitzhenry Vector Lab

Description: Opened in 2004, the Robert E. Fitzhenry Vector Lab’s specialized equipment and pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity have made McMaster a Canadian leader in the development of immunotherapies, including life-saving vaccines to combat cancer and infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, and in producing viral-vectored vaccines for human and animal clinical trials. It remains one of the few facilities of its kind in the country and was the first academic pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in Canada to produce vaccines approved for use in human clinical trials by Health Canada.

Over the years it has enabled Canadian scientists to take their candidate immunotherapies into the clinic, while employing highly skilled staff and training the next generation of young scientists. It’s because of this trailblazing work that McMaster scientists working in the Fitzhenry vector lab were able to apply their experience and expertise to the development of two new second-generation COVID-19 vaccine candidates which are designed to provide broader immunity and help protect against emerging COVID-19 variants. Researchers in the Fitzhenry lab are currently manufacturing tens of thousands of doses of these vaccine candidates and hope to begin human trials this spring.

Resources

• Learn more about the Robert E. Fitzhenry Vector Lab
• Article: McMaster researchers developing homegrown vaccines to fight COVID-19 and prevent future outbreaks using specialized campus lab and production facility
• Article: How McMaster’s inhaled COVID-19 vaccines would work
• Article: Upgrades to Fitzhenry Lab would enable ‘on the order of a million doses of a vaccine per production run,’ McMaster researcher says
• Article: McMaster researchers talk with MPs about made-in Canada vaccines