The normally secure doors to some new halls of innovation were flung open for a day last week at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization in Saskatoon.
For more than a month, re-searchers have been gradually moving into their new digs after being crammed “as many as three to an office, where we got to know each other really too well,” said VIDO director Lorne Babiuk.
On Oct. 16, the public was toured through VIDO’s new labs and offices during the grand opening of the organization’s $17.8 million expansion.
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Overcrowding and a need for more modern labs and new genetic research tools made expansion necessary at the University of Saskatchewan research institute.
The federal government’s Canada Foundation for Innovation contributed $5.15 million to the expansion project, the Saskatchewan government invested $5.65 million, Western Economic Diversification kicked in $4.5 million, the Alberta government spent $2 million and Genome Canada provided secured operating investments of $27 million.
Robert Davidson, director of the Canada Foundation for Innovation, said the money was well spent.
“VIDO is well known in the science community for aggressively pursuing the commercialization of its discoveries,” he said. “Just making the discoveries is not enough to build a research organization.”
Federal public works minister Ralph Goodale said his government recognizes VIDO’s achievements, which is why the “money is an investment in excellence.”
Begun in 1975 to improve livestock health, VIDO patented a variety of vaccines and vaccine delivery tools including Pneumo-Star and Sumnu-Star to vaccinate against cattle Pasteurella, calf sours vaccines Vicogen and Ecolan RC, swine bacterial vaccine Pleuro-Star and the vaccine Hevlan TC to control poultry hermorrhagic enteritis.
Babiuk also said VIDO may get some new partners, similar to the U.S. genomics research company Pyxis, which is now housed on the institute’s third floor.
Pyxis and VIDO are seeking new ways to sort out the naturally healthiest and best producing animals and genetically identify them for producers and the food industry.
“We are talking to folks at MIT and Harvard about forming another company, the same as the Pyxis arrangement,” Babiuk said.
“We have the drug delivery mechanisms and they have the (drug) formulations. It would result in another company and more research investment,” he added.
“Unless you have the building … the tools to do the research, you can’t attract researchers and without researchers you can’t do the science necessary to improve agriculture.”
