Québec City-based Aramis Biotechnologies, founded by former employees of failed vaccine venture Medicago, is advancing an $80-million project to develop plant-based vaccines for new flu shots and pandemic preparedness.
Half of the funding is a repayable contribution of $40 million awarded by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) through the Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF), as first reported by The Logic in August. Another portion consists of an all-equity $30-million Series A round announced this week. The remaining $10 million is made up of undisclosed loans and funding from the Québec City municipal government.
The $30 million in Series A financing was led by a group of undisclosed Québec investors, plus $10 million from Aramis employees.
The $30 million in Series A financing was led by a group of undisclosed Québec investors, plus $10 million from Aramis employees.
Aramis was founded in 2023 by former Medicago employees after the latter biotech firm was shut down by its parent company, Mitsubishi Chemical Group. Medicago was awarded over $300 million from the federal government in 2020 to build a vaccine manufacturing plant in Québec and deliver COVID-19 shots, but the plan never materialized.
In December 2023, former employees founded Aramis Biotechnologies and acquired Medicago’s intellectual property, technology platform, and new manufacturing facility.
“Aramis is seeking to build on Medicago’s cutting-edge technology platform to advance and optimize plant-based vaccines and therapeutics against influenza and other respiratory illnesses,” ISED wrote in an email to BetaKit.
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Aramis plans to develop a next-generation flu vaccine to address the efficiency gap with currently available vaccines. The vaccines are not mRNA-based, but rather recombinant vector vaccines, and are entirely plant-based. The major protein found in the flu virus is produced recombinantly in nicotiana plants and assembled into virus-like particles in plant leaves, which Aramis then extracts.
According to Aramis, current flu vaccines are 30 to 60 percent effective at preventing the flu, and that metric is lower among adults over 75 years old.
ISED told BetaKit that no vaccine doses were purchased as part of this agreement. But in the event of a new pandemic, Aramis would get the chance to achieve what Medicago, its former iteration, never did: developing and manufacturing vaccines for Canadians within the country.
Nathalie Charland, senior director of partnerships and communications at Aramis, also worked at Medicago for over 18 years, according to her LinkedIn. Aramis says its technology can coax plants into producing the molecules needed to make vaccines against virtually any type of pathogen, as long as the appropriate genetic sequence is available. Charland claimed that if necessary, the company could produce a new vaccine in as few as 20 days.
Medicago’s plant-based COVID-19 vaccine—the world’s first—was approved by Health Canada in 2022. The World Health Organization had rejected Medicago’s vaccine for emergency use due to tobacco company Philip Morris International’s status as a shareholder of Medicago, leading to its vaccine approval with Health Canada also being revoked.
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The parent company, Mitsubishi Chemical Group, shut down Medicago in February 2023 before it could distribute any vaccines, citing changing demands for the COVID-19 vaccine.
The federal government was able to recover $40 million of its initial investment. ISED clarified to BetaKit that the new $40-million SIF contribution is distinct from these funds.
Charland told BetaKit that the problems which led to Medicago shutting down, related to Philip Morris holding a stake and the speed of technological change during the earlier days of the pandemic, are no longer a concern.
According to ISED, oversight through the SIF contribution is on the vaccine development project itself, rather than the company.
Feature image courtesy Aramis Biotechnologies.
The post Aramis Biotechnologies secures $80 million CAD for vaccine development do-over first appeared on BetaKit.