University of Sask.’s VIDO facility is raising its game in vaccine research

The University of Saskatchewan’s Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization (VIDO) has evolved dramatically over the past 49 years.

What started as the “Veterinary Infectious Disease Organization” in 1975, is now a world leader in vaccine research.

“It really started as a spinoff from the vet college at the time, recognizing that we needed the research to lead to the development of technologies of products that livestock producers can actually use,” said Volker Gerdts, VIDO’s director and chief executive officer. “We needed an institute that can apply the science that comes out of your typical discovery lab and make it into a vaccine that people can use.”

Gerdts said “game changing” vaccines have been developed at the facility over the years. The mindset, he said, is to always apply the most modern research to solutions and to vaccines in order to protect animals.

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“That’s really what we’re doing today, we haven’t really changed the focus very much” he said. “We’re still serving the livestock industries, but we also are much more active now on the human side. That all goes back to the recognition that animals and humans are very closely linked. Much closer than we actually think they are.”

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He called the link between human and animal health “one health,” saying by working on solutions for animals, you’re also working on solutions for humans.

“It’s actually this ‘one health,’ this interface between humans and animals where we see these new diseases emerge from, viruses that jump from animals to humans or back,” he said. “Working in that area is really VIDO’s niche and always has been and will also be in the future.”

VIDO is home to one of the largest high-containment facilities in the world, currently operating as a containment Level Two and Level Three research facility. Work is currently underway to upgrade part of their containment to Level Four — the highest level of containment. Gerdts said they are in the planning and designing stages, with construction expected to be completed in 2026 and work to begin in 2027.

“Currently, the Winnipeg lab — the National Microbiology Laboratory — is the only facility in the country that has the ability to work with containment level-four pathogens,” Gerdts said. “By VIDO now also using our infrastructure to do that, we double Canada’s capacity to respond and work with level-four pathogens.”

VIDO recently created an in-house vaccine manufacturing facility and they’re adding a new animal housing facility.

“If you put this all together, that is Canada’s centre for pandemic research,” Gerdts said. “That is the ability to rapidly respond to whatever the next disease is, test it, evaluate it, and manufacture in-house.”

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