Charlottetown drug-maker BIOVECTRA has signed a supply chain partnership deal with a quartet of other life sciences companies as part of a project from NGEN, the federal manufacturing Supercluster.

The project will see BIOVECTRA share supply chain resources with: Toronto's CCRM, which produces regenerative medicine-based technologies and cell and gene therapies; Massachusetts-based Cytiva; Calgary’s Northern RNA; and Hamilton, Ont.-based OmniaBio. The aim is to standardize work on lentiviral vector vaccines, which are immunotherapies that have shown promise in treating cancer, the consortium said in a statement.

Such vaccines might also eventually be used to alleviate genetic disorders, such as hematological issues and immunodeficiency diseases, the statement added.

But manufacturing gene therapies is technically complex and costly, so the life sciences businesses working on the project hope that developing an efficient, domestic supply chain will help cut costs.

“Together we are building a next-generation immunotherapy manufacturing platform that will be used for new treatments to fight rare and difficult-to-treat diseases,” said BIOVECTRA. “Cell and gene therapies are at the cutting-edge of patient care, tailored to the patient by reprogramming targeted cells to stimulate their immune response to fight acquired and inherited diseases.”

BIOVECTRA, which was sold to Miami-based private equity firm H.I.G. Capital for US$250 million in 2019, provides contract drug development and production services to other businesses. The company in November opened its new plant capable of producing a mammoth 70 million doses per year of mRNA vaccines, such as those used to prevent COVID-19, making it the first such factory in Canada.