A $61.8 million vaccine centre at the University of Saskatchewan is designed to help researchers combat food and water contamination, protect human health and create opportunities for animal health manufacturers.
The University of Saskatchewan announced its intention March 8 to open the International Vaccine Centre by 2009, following the pledge of $19.2 million from the Canada Foundation for Innovation.
The foundation was created in 1997 by the federal government to fund research infrastructure. Government and other sources will be sought for the remaining funding.
The centre will build on work already under way at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization, or VIDO, which has successfully developed animal vaccines against E. coli.
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Andy Potter, VIDO associate director of research, said collaborative research with the National Research Council in Ottawa is focusing on vaccines for chickens against campylobacter. VIDO is also studying vaccines to combat salmonella in poultry with the University of British Columbia.
That work is expected to produce vaccines within five years, said Potter, who noted the two diseases account for the largest percentage of human food-borne illness from animals.
He said such research is necessary given the links between new and re-emerging illnesses like avian flu, SARS and West Nile virus in humans and animals.
“If you’re interested in preventing human diseases, you get more bang for your buck if you go after the source,” he said.
Cryptosporidium is also being studied, focusing on how microbes grow inside the animal host and developing vaccines to prevent that growth.
In a recent seminar on biotechnology and vaccines at the university, VIDO director Lorne Babiuk said there are dozens of new diseases and millions of cases of food-borne illnesses every year. Salmonella is among the most serious, accounting for many deaths.
Consumers are concerned about food safety and increasingly marshal support and resources, often against livestock producers.
“We’d like to give (producers) some tools,” said Potter, who sees the new vaccines being incorporated into on-farm vaccination programs.
Both researchers said the public needs more information on these diseases and the role vaccines play.
“Vaccines have saved more lives than all other therapeutics combined,” said Babiuk.
The centre will include Saskatchewan’s first Level 3 laboratories dealing with human and animal diseases. The highly secure facility is needed to study diseases like BSE, hepatitis C and tuberculosis, and to test vaccines and their safe delivery methods.
The facility will involve VIDO and the colleges of medicine and veterinary medicine.
