Immunotherapies are among the most exciting and promising cancer treatments to emerge in the past decade, thanks to their ability to mobilize and activate the body’s natural defenc e mechanisms against the most advanced cancers. Unfortunately, too many of these promising therapies are failing to reach the clinic, in part because of a lack of critical infrastructure to bridge the gap between the laboratory discoveries and human testing of promising experimental therapeutics. Canada has launched a national effort to overcome these hurdles. Scientists and clinicians are working with provincial agencies, cancer foundations, industry and NGOs – as well as cancer patients and their families – to bring new treatments to patients quickly while reducing health-care costs.

BioCanRx is a pan-Canadian network of expertise and infrastructure for the development, manufacturing and clinical testing of new immunotherapies that hold the promise of being more effective, affordable and safe than conventional cancer therapies. The network builds upon the fundamental scientific discoveries made in laboratories across the country and leverages Canada’s specialized manufacturing, toxicity and testing infrastructure to de-risk the most promising therapeutic candidates and initiate testing in cancer patients. In addition to scientists and clinicians specializing in biology, genomics and immunology, legal scholars, ethicists and health economists have also been enlisted to ensure a holistic approach is taken for the uptake of these technologies within the health-care system and that they are affordable to health-care payers.

Among the results

BioCanRx and its partners funded CAR-T biomanufacturing in Canada and rolled out a point-of-care biomanufacturing network to enable the delivery of novel CAR T-cells using a decentralized manufacturing approach. Several projects are underway to determine the optimal use of this novel therapy in patients and, working with partners such as CADTH and Health Ontario, on how CAR-T will be further adopted in the Canadian health-care system.
The BioCanRx-funded clinical trial called Canadian-Led Immunotherapies in Cancer-01 (CLIC-01) is the first to manufacture CAR-T therapy in Canada. CLIC-01 launched in 2019 at The Ottawa Hospital and BC Cancer for patients with specific kinds of leukemia or lymphoma who had exhausted all other therapies and were given just weeks or months to live. More than a dozen people are alive and in remission today because of this trial. A CD19 trial opened in Denmark using the CLIC-01 viral vector made in Canada by The Ottawa Hospital’s Biotherapeutics Manufacturing Centre (BMC).
BioCanRx, in partnership with Mitacs, has developed CanPRIME 2.0 — a national, first-of-its-kind initiative that will enable standardized, hands-on training to work in a biomanufacturing environment. Despite an influx in physical capacity, CanPRIME 2.0 will address the critical issue of insufficient highly qualified personnel (HQP) able to ensure the success of these facilities.
BioCanRx leveraged its grant funds through its many industry partnerships and has funded 60 projects (including 12 clinical trials) and seven core facilities (including two Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) biomanufacturing core facilities to produce GMP-grade products) through these collaborations. A total of $115.2 million partner dollars has been leveraged by BioCanRx, resulting in a leverage ratio of 4.2 of its NCE funding.
A number of spin-out companies have emerged through initial investments from BioCanRx. An example is Virica Biotech, an Ottawa-based company. BioCanRx funded a study by Dr. Jean-Simon Diallo on Viral Sensitizer (VSe) technology to increase the yields of different types of therapeutic viruses that deliver material into infected cells in some cancer treatments. Virica is growing rapidly and announced a collaboration with Oxford BioMedica, a leading cell and gene therapy company.
BioCanRx has garnered international recognition for its successful Learning Institute at the annual Summit for Cancer Immunotherapy. Since implementing such patient engagement activities, BioCanRx has observed a 9-fold increase in patient engagement across its research programs.