SASKATOON – One of Canada’s premier vaccine centres celebrates its 50th birthday this week, but researchers say it comes amid unease over U.S. policy changes and funding cuts that threaten to upend the global fight against disease.
“Having all of that capacity gone from the U.S., as well as the investment in vaccine development, is really going to affect researchers around the world,” virologist Angela Rasmussen said in an interview.
“(It goes) far beyond people just mistrusting vaccines or being hesitant to take them.”
Rasmussen works at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization in Saskatoon.
Fellow virologist Dr. Arinjay Banerjee said he receives some funding for his lab from the U.S.-based National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and that Canada must rise to the challenge amid U.S. hesitancy.
“It’s an opportunity for us to step up and fill the gap that’s being created globally,” he said.The organization, known as VIDO for short, sits on four hectares on the University of Saskatchewan campus. It started as a Prairie-based livestock lab and became a world-leading infectious disease research centre.Launched in 1975, It is home to more than 200 scientists and other staffers, and is a key player in the world fight against pandemics.
It is a partner in the global “100 Days Mission,” an initiative endorsed by G20 countries to create new vaccines within 100 days of a pandemic threat being recognized.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, VIDO isolated SARS-CoV-2 from the first Canadian case and was the first school in Canada to move a possible vaccine into clinical trials.
But hopes to build on that success have been tempered by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration cutting billions of dollars in grants provided by the National Institutes of Health.
Rasmussen said the National Institutes of Health had a budget of US$48 billion last year, the largest in the world. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research invests about C$1 billion into research each year. Both, she said, help fund her research.
“I will hope that the government steps up with us and is able to make a larger investment,” she said.
“The problem is, right now, private foundations, other governments, including the Canadian government, just don’t have that amount of money to invest.”