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Calgary-based Providence Therapeutics recruits for vaccine trial, secures funding for bringing jabs to developing world

'We want to make sure we bring a quality vaccine and as safe a vaccine as we can to the market'

A Calgary-based company with a COVID-19 vaccine currently in clinical trials is turning its attention to vaccine access for the developing world.

Providence Therapeutics, a Canadian biotechnology company with offices in Calgary and Toronto, announced it had received nearly US$2.2 million in funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation earlier this week. The funding will go toward raw materials for their mRNA vaccine development, with the eventual goal of providing shots to low- and middle-income countries that lag far behind the rest of the world in immunization rates against COVID-19.

That’s on top of a memorandum of understanding inked with Colombia’s health ministry Dec. 17 to produce up to 100 million doses of their vaccine in the South American country each year.

Company CEO Brad Sorenson said Canada can be an exporter of vaccines to parts of the world that have faced inequitable vaccine supply, a problem he said must be resolved to stem the emergence of new variants that could prolong the pandemic.

Read the entire article here on the calgaryherald.com website