The National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP) has received a total of $150 million over 3 years to help advance the early-stage research and development of made-in-Canada vaccines and therapeutics for COVID-19, working in coordination with ISED through Canada's Strategic Innovation Fund.
NRC IRAP has provided advisory support and more than $37 million in stage 1 funding to support research and development of 6 vaccine candidates and therapeutics candidates for COVID-19, including up to:
Vaccine candidates
- $5.4 million to Immunovaccine Technologies Inc. (Dartmouth, N.S.) for phase 1 and 2 clinical trials of its DPX-COVID19 vaccine candidate
- $5.0 million to Entos Pharmaceuticals (Edmonton, Alta.) for phase 1 clinical trials of its Covigenix VAX-001 vaccine candidate
- $4.7 million to Providence Therapeutics COVID Inc. (Toronto, Ont.) for phase 1 clinical trials of its PTX-COVID19-B mRNA vaccine candidate
- $4.0 million to Glycovax Pharma (Montréal, Que.) for phase 1 clinical trials of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate
- $2.8 million to Symvivo (Burnaby, B.C.) to advance its bacTRL-Spike oral DNA vaccine candidate in preclinical and phase 1 clinical trials
- $1.3 million to Biodextris Inc. (Laval, Que.) for preclinical development of its nasal COVID-19 vaccine candidate
Therapeutics candidates
- $4.6 million to JN Nova Pharma (Montréal, Que.) to assist in the development of a proprietary drug to block coronavirus infection, while reducing the impacts of the disease in patients exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms so they may recover faster
- $4.1 million to Laurent Pharmaceuticals (Montréal, Que.) for the clinical development of their LAU-7b antiviral and inflammation-controlling therapy for COVID-19 infections
- $289k to Bold Therapeutics (Vancouver, B.C.) for a project to prepare preclinical efficacy data in live SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19), support preparation for clinical trials, and to support manufacturing of its BOLD-100 investigational therapy to treat patients with viral infections, including COVID-19
- $109k to Qu Biologics (Vancouver, B.C.) for a project to provide proof-of-concept evidence for the safety and efficacy of a preventative treatment as well as therapeutic use of a treatment to protect the lungs and prevent serious COVID-19 infection
- $1.9 million to Hypermabs Inc. (Toronto, Ont.) to support the development of their FB100 therapeutic, a novel treatment for COVID-19 survivors with lung fibrosis
- $1.7 million to Mannin Research Inc. (Toronto, Ont.) to support the development of methodology for purification and pre-clinical testing of a therapeutic to prevent vascular leakage in acute respiratory distress syndrome
- $1.2 million to Vasomune Therapeutics Inc. (Toronto, Ont.) to support phase 1 clinical trials of its
AV-001 drug candidate which will be used to treat patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome resulting from COVID-19.
When the stage 1 projects are completed, NRC IRAP will invite the companies who received stage 1 funding to submit proposals to undertake stage 2 projects to advance the most promising candidates to the next phase of clinical development.