Dalhousie's Dr. Jeanette Boudreau, an associate professor with the departments of Microbiology & Immunology and Pathology
Posted: May 28, 2024
Originally published in the Chronicle Herald
A cure for cancer. It’s long been a holy grail for researchers like Dalhousie’s Dr. Jeanette Boudreau.
But the associate professor with the departments of Microbiology & Immunology and Pathology may be on the verge of better treatments using one of the most powerful weapons we have in this ongoing fight: the human immune system.
Dr. Boudreau is looking at the potential of using white blood cells, known as natural killers, as immunotherapies for cancer. Her research into these cells, which have proven effective in treating leukemia, shows promise. But Dr. Boudreau is facing a significant challenge. There are no biomanufacturing facilities in Atlantic Canada that can help her take this innovative idea from the lab to patients’ bedsides.
“It’s not just the ability to transform living organisms like white blood cells into vaccines and therapies that is missing here,” Dr. Boudreau explains. “It’s the ability to do what we call preclinical testing - figuring out dosing and toxicity - so these therapies are ready for prime time. Without a facility in place that can do all that, you either have to convince somebody else to pick up your discovery and run with it or you shelve it.”
Thanks to Dalhousie’s Faculty of Medicine, that facility could soon be a reality. Supported by the fundraising efforts of the Bringing Worlds Together campaign, the faculty is collaborating with Nova Scotia Health, the IWK Health Centre, the Canadian Center for Vaccinology (CCfV), and Life Sciences Nova Scotia to bring GMP BioLabs East to life.
Researchers in the Faculty of Medicine, such as the CCfV teams led by Drs. Scott Halperin and Joanne Langley, first envisioned the biomanufacturing facility in 2021. In 2022, their vision came into greater focus when the government of Canada announced $2 billion to support such infrastructure across the country.
The scarcity of this infrastructure contributed to the challenges Canada faced both in commercializing and securing vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The pandemic taught us that by prioritizing collaboration, industry partnerships, specialized facilities, and skilled personnel, we could shorten the 15-year innovation pipeline significantly,” Dr. Anderson says.
The health solutions that Dalhousie Faculty of Medicine researchers envision range from vaccines that treat influenza to ways to ramp up or calm the immune system to fight infections. But before GMP BioLabs East can run with new ideas, it will need to demonstrate it’s capable of producing the same high-quality biomaterials that other facilities create.
Once it is up to speed, GMP BioLabs East will initially focus on supporting the research of Dalhousie’s Infection, Immunity, Inflammation, and Vaccinology (I3V) research team. But the ultimate goal is to make its biomanufacturing and testing expertise available to researchers and life sciences organizations across Atlantic Canada.
Sean Awalt, CEO of Life Sciences Nova Scotia, an industry association dedicated to helping startups succeed, says that will be game changing for the industry.
“Right now, companies developing innovative biotherapeutics … must access larger markets like Montreal or Boston to continue developing their product ... This facility is going to enable entrepreneurs and companies to stay here and develop their innovations. That’s not just going to help our life sciences sector grow, but also our economy.”