Charlottetown’s BIOVECTRA has reached a key milestone in its plans to develop one of Canada’s first mRNA vaccine manufacturing facilities, having inked a deal with pharma startup Acuitas to use the Vancouver-based company’s manufacturing technology.

Acuitas specializes in using lipid nanoparticles to deliver vaccines and other medications, with lipids being a class of organic compounds that includes substances like fats and waxes.

BIOVECTRA, which is owned by Miami-based H.I.G. Capital, stopped short of saying it will use Acuitas’s technology to manufacture COVID-19 vaccines, but highlighted in a press release that it would be possible to do so, at least in the case of the Pfizer-BioNTech shot.

The manufacturing work will be carried out in BIOVECTRA's new, 36,000-square-foot facility, slated to be completed later this year and will involve producing a range of different vaccines for the contract drug-maker’s clients.

“Our work together will provide their licensed partners with faster market access to cGMP-quality LNPs for early and late-stage products. BIOVECTRA looks forward to continuing to make a difference in patients’ lives ... at our new mRNA biomanufacturing facility in Atlantic Canada.”

BioVectra announced plans for the new facility in Nov. 2021, about six months into the COVID-19 pandemic, and construction began in April of last year. It will be capable of producing a mammoth 70 million vaccine doses per year and require about 125 full-time staff and as many as 225 co-op students to operate.

At the time of its announcement, the project was budgeted to cost just under $77 million, with the federal government paying $39.8 million, the Prince Edward Island government $10 million, and BIOVECTRA the remaining balance.

The facility will be joined in 2024 by a Moderna plant in Laval, Quebec that is being created under a 10-year deal between the Massachusetts pharmaceutical giant and the federal government.

Purchasing the business could prove to be a winning deal for H.I.G., which paid US$250 million for it in 2019. Last year, BIOVECTRA was the only Atlantic Canadian company to crack Communitech’s inaugural Team True North list of startups that are on track to reach $1 billion in annual revenue by 2030. To qualify for the 35-company list, businesses had to show growth metrics comparable to the top one percent of fastest growing startups worldwide.