Medicago invests CA$4m to expand research facility
Funding will support preclinical studies for a rabies vaccine and other drugs
Canadian biotechnology company Medicago is investing approximately CA$4m (€3m; £2.5m) and creating about 20 new jobs as it expands its pilot production facility in Quebec City.
The company said the investment includes capital expenditure and labour costs, as well as preclinical studies for a rabies vaccine and other drugs.
‘Investing in our Quebec City facility is an important step for Medicago as we look towards expanding our product candidate pipeline,’ said Andrew Sheldon, president and ceo of Medicago.
‘We are happy to invest in our local community with the addition of approximately 20 new employees in 2012.’
Medicago is a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing novel vaccines and therapeutic proteins to treat infectious diseases.
The company uses proprietary VLP and manufacturing technologies that it says will speed up and lower the cost of developing vaccines.
Medicago has benefited from support from the Quebec Consortium for Drug Discovery, which in 2009 awarded the firm CA$1.77m in funding to support the development of VLPExpress, an automated high-throughput technology enabling the rapid expression, purification and testing of VLPs to identify the best antigens for a disease-causing agent within ten weeks.
