As the PEI BioAlliance industry group looks to expand the province’s biotech manufacturing capacity, it has opened a new $6.5 million Biomanufacturing Incubator with room for six companies in the BioCommons Research Park in Charlottetown.

The incubator includes 20,000 square feet of floor space for biotech companies looking to pilot their manufacturing processes. It was funded by the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency and the provincial government to the tune of $1.5 million and $500,000, respectively. The remainder of the cost was paid for by the BioAlliance, which will also administer the incubator.

Residency applications were oversubscribed and the BioAlliance has now created a waitlist for access to additional bio-manufacturing space that it plans to build, said Executive Director Rory Francis in an interview.

“We have a waiting list, essentially, of companies that expect that in the very short term … they will be looking for this kind of facility to take the next stage in the growth of their business,” said Francis.

“So there's definitely more demand for this and it’s certainly in our plans to supply space for those companies.”

The Biomanufacturing Incubator is part of the Bioalliance’s strategic plan to make Prince Edward Island a “centre of expertise” for biotech, which includes improving the sector's infrastructure and expanding its skilled labour force.

Francis said the waitlist that the BioAlliance has created for biomanufacturing facilities signals his team’s intent to add further new capacity in the coming months and years.

The decisions about which companies would receive one of the existing six spaces in the incubator versus being waitlisted were driven largely by the urgency of each company's need.

“(The decisions were) at least in part driven by timelines,” said Francis. “For example, Chinova (Bioworks) had a really urgent need to increase their manufacturing capacity because of demand for their products nationally and internationally."

Chinova Bioworks has developed an all-natural food preservative made from white button mushrooms and was previously a resident of the BioAlliance's Emergence incubator.

Another factor was the National Research Council’s push to improve Canada’s capacity in bioprocessing — a subset of biomanufacturing that produces substances made from living ingredients — which Francis added the BioAlliance’s triage decisions were aimed at supporting.

Two of the six spaces also went to contract drug manufacturer BioVectra and national industry group Canadian Alliance for Skills and Training in Life Sciences, or CASTL.

In November, Miami-owned and PEI-headquartered BioVectra inked a $76.9 million deal with the federal government and the province of PEI to become Canada’s first manufacturer of mRNA vaccines, which can be used to guard against illnesses including COVID-19. The mRNA manufacturing will happen in a purpose-built facility, but Francis said BioVectra needs additional space in the meantime.

CASTL, meanwhile, will use the Biomanufacturing Incubator as a base of operations for its new biopharmaceutical manufacturing skills and training centre under a deal that includes another $3.1 million of federal and provincial funding.

CASTL is a partnership between academia, industry and government that specializes in training workers for the biopharmaceutical manufacturing industry, using curriculums created by Irish industry group the National Institute for Bioprocessing Research and Training.

In November, the organization announced a partnership with Vancouver’s adMare BioInnovations to offer a national slate of technical training programs for prospective life sciences workers