B.C.’s ‘world-class’ biotech sector plays key role in developing COVID-19 treatments and vaccines
May 10, 2021
Source: VancouverSun.com
Gordon Hoekstra / Vancouver Sun
By early 2020, concern was mounting about a new, deadly coronavirus first detected in Wuhan, China.
The World Health Organization had declared the coronavirus outbreak a global health emergency just days before. There had been more than 400 deaths and more than 20,000 cases, most of those in China.
But the virus was spreading around the world. Deaths had occurred in Hong Kong and the Philippines, and the virus had been detected in the U.S. and Canada.
By early January of 2020, scientists in China had already sequenced the virus’s genome and made it public, allowing scientists to begin the research for a vaccine.
Scientists expected that could take years.
But, as a second case was confirmed in B.C. in early February, Thomas Madden, a world-renowned expert in nanotechnology who heads Vancouver-based biotech company Acuitas Therapeutics, flew to Germany.
Acuitas was in the business of creating lipid nanoparticles, microscopic biological vehicles that could deliver drugs — for example, to specifically target cancers in the body.
B.C.’s ‘world-class’ biotech sector plays key role in developing COVID-19 treatments and vaccines
May 10, 2021
Source: VancouverSun.com
Gordon Hoekstra / Vancouver Sun
By early 2020, concern was mounting about a new, deadly coronavirus first detected in Wuhan, China.
The World Health Organization had declared the coronavirus outbreak a global health emergency just days before. There had been more than 400 deaths and more than 20,000 cases, most of those in China.
But the virus was spreading around the world. Deaths had occurred in Hong Kong and the Philippines, and the virus had been detected in the U.S. and Canada.
By early January of 2020, scientists in China had already sequenced the virus’s genome and made it public, allowing scientists to begin the research for a vaccine.
Scientists expected that could take years.
But, as a second case was confirmed in B.C. in early February, Thomas Madden, a world-renowned expert in nanotechnology who heads Vancouver-based biotech company Acuitas Therapeutics, flew to Germany.
Acuitas was in the business of creating lipid nanoparticles, microscopic biological vehicles that could deliver drugs — for example, to specifically target cancers in the body.
