On Thursday (February 25), Health Canada, the department of the Government of Canada responsible for Canada’s national health policy, approved the world’s first plant-based COVID-19 vaccine for use in adults aged 18 to 64. Too little data exists for approval in adults over 65, the regulators concluded.
Medicago, the Quebec-based pharmaceutical company behind the plant-based jab, has agreed to supply the Canadian government with 76 million doses of the vaccine as soon as possible, the Associated Press reports.
“We're at a stage where we're ramping up capacity to meet the supply agreement,” Marc-André D’Aoust, executive vice president of innovation, development, and medical affairs at Medicago, tells Reuters.
Medicago uses Nicotiana benthamiana, a close relative of the tobacco plant, to manufacture virus-like particles that mimic SARS-CoV-2’s spike protein but don’t cause infection or disease. The particles are then harvested from the plants, purified, and combined with an immune-boosting adjuvant—made by British ...
