December 27, 2007

Bioniche gets US$10 million to upgrade cattle vaccine production

Bioniche Life Sciences received a US$10-million loan from the Ontario government in support of its vaccine production facility scale-up.

The company will expand vaccine production at its Belleville facility over the next two years to provide capacity of 40 million doses of the E. coli O157:H7 vaccine. The increase is expected to cost approximately US$25 million and is part of a long-term, US$100 million project to create an Animal Health & Food Safety Vaccine Manufacturing Centre.

The vaccine reduces the shedding of an organism that is considered potentially lethal to humans but causes no disease in cattle.

Canadian-based Bioniche developed the first cattle vaccine that may be used as an on-farm intervention to reduce the amount of Escherichia coli. It will be the first product manufactured in the scaled-up Belleville facility.

The company obtained approval from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) to distribute its vaccine by last December.

However, USDA did not give US licensure to the company, indicating that trial results were not sufficient. The company announced in October it was submitting additional data and supporting rationale and announced plans to pursue additional vaccine studies in 2008.