Canadian university races former Chinese partner to make a COVID-19 booster

The federal government has trumpeted previous vaccine partnerships with a China-based company as one of the reasons why Canada was pinning its hopes on a COVID-19 vaccine candidate from China early in the pandemic.

But The Fifth Estate has reviewed those partnerships and found that a collaboration with McMaster University in Hamilton stalled years ago and never resulted in an approved vaccine anywhere in the world.

That collaboration has been of little benefit to the university or Canada. Instead, both the company, CanSino Biologics, and McMaster are now independently racing to develop similar COVID-19 booster vaccines.

Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, a former federal public servant who negotiated Canada-China science and technology agreements, said the CanSino-McMaster vaccine arrangement may turn out to be "a case study of what not to do in partnerships with China."

"The whole point is to work together, having the smartest people work together on the common good of fewer people dying," McCuaig-Johnston told The Fifth Estate. "But there's a valid reason for mistrust."

CanSino Biologics, based in Tianjin, China, was founded in 2009 by scientists who studied and worked in Canada. Over the years the company has maintained ties with Canadian researchers and used Canadian technology to develop its vaccines — including an Ebola vaccine and its single shot COVID vaccine.

McMaster, as well, inked a licensing deal for its tuberculosis vaccine with CanSino more than a decade ago. However, the partnership hasn't been active in years.

Yet Canada's National Research Council has cited that long-inactive CanSino-McMaster collaboration as a reason why the federal government went into business with CanSino for an injected COVID-19 vaccine early in the pandemic.

The federal government had hoped the CanSino COVID-19 vaccine could be made and manufactured in this country, but in May 2020, officials in China blocked it from coming to Canada for human trials.

After the deal fell apart, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters that the reason Canada partnered with CanSino was because of the "well-established partnership" between scientists in Canada and China "that has been effective in the past."

McMaster scientists developed a tuberculosis vaccine in 2011 and licensed its global marketing rights to CanSino.

McMaster hoped CanSino could in turn provide funding as well as manufacturing capabilities for trials, given that tuberculosis is still a problem in China.

McMaster and CanSino jointly conducted trials on monkeys at the Wuhan University School of Medicine, resulting in a study published in 2015.

But that's as far as the CanSino-McMaster relationship went. The two groups never did human trials together. CanSino went on to pursue other vaccines.