The $75 million lifeline for Canadian Blood Services

The federal government has announced a $75-million investment in Canadian Blood Services to increase domestic blood and plasma supplies for health emergencies. This is part of the Defence Industrial Strategy,which aims to bolster Canada's medical countermeasures.

The strategy focuses on supporting life sciences processes, such as manufacturing, rather than just boosting product supply. Two life sciences experts say the strategy provides an opportunity for Ottawa to support life sciences processes and not just product supply.

They argue that Canada's life sciences industry is known for its RNA expertise and the speedy process necessary to develop those particular therapeutics would lend itself well to manufacturing medical countermeasures against biothreats.

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Other nations have explicitly linked biodefence and medical countermeasure readiness to their economic and national security.. The United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia have all invested in domestic medical countermeasures.

For Northern RNA's Thomas Hansen and Torys LLP's Teresa Reguly,the opportunity from the DIS comes in the form of potential investments to help strengthen domestic life-sciences manufacturing processes and not just the building up of supplies.

They argue that if Canada thinks about medical countermeasures in the sense of biological threats that our first responders, and in fact our citizens could be exposed to, you want to make sure that we have the ability to manufacture those or the ability to respond to those in a quick and timely fashion from a domestic perspective.

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The Defence Industrial Strategy was launched on February 17, but it did not include any examples of possible countermeasures. Instead, it promised the government would 'support targeted investments in life sciences innovation, infrastructure, and workforce development.'

Thomas Hansen, co-founder and vice-president of Northern RNA, says Canada's life sciences industry is known for its RNA expertise, and the speedy process necessary to develop those particular therapeutics would lend itself well to manufacturing medical countermeasures against biothreats.

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Companies like Northern RNA specialize in RNA-short for ribonucleic acid-technologies, which are important for cancer and personalized medicines. The related mRNA became a household name during the recent pandemic as the technology was critical in COVID-19 vaccines .

When you're talking about personalized medicine and rare diseases, we need to be able to sequence, design, and manufacture a vaccine for oncology in seven to 10 weeks, Hansen said.

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The investment will strengthen Canada's ability to respond quickly and effectively to large-scale health emergencies and support military operations at home and abroad.

It will also improve access to effective, made-in-Canada blood products and expand domestic manufacturing so that critical supplies remain safe, secure, and available when needed most.