Grants and Contributions

Participation in Canada–UK biomanufacturing peer-to-peer networking meetings – June 8 to 15, 2026. Through the 2023 Canada–UK Biomanufacturing Initiative (Memorandum of Cooperation), Canada and the United Kingdom committed to advancing collaboration in biomanufacturing, with a focus on co-innovation, workforce development, and scale-up. The initiative includes the creation of a bilateral peer-to-peer network that brings together experts and organizations from both countries to strengthen partnerships and pursue shared growth opportunities.

The purpose of this CanExport SMEs agreement is to support small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) for activities related to export market development that are part of an export business case for a specific target market, particularly where activities are targeting departmental priority markets and sectors.

In this project Virica Biotech (TM) will develop custom VSE (TM) enhancer formulations and optimize parameters for AAV vector production in Japanese Partner proprietary media, feed, and cells to create a joint offering for international academic and commercial clients. Virica will apply internal expertise, including high-throughput viral production/quantification assays and Design of Experiment frameworks, to enable simultaneous optimization of multiple factors and VSE candidates.

As part of the international consortium project “UK Multisector – BioM - LV Production Kit: Development of GMP lentiviral production kit with optimized upstream and downstream processes” this project will develop an end-to-end and off-the-shelf GMP enabled lentivirus manufacturing kit. The current standard in lentivirus manufacturing is inefficient and delivers low yields, leading to elevated manufacturing costs and less accessible therapeutics. This kit will be the first of its kind, integrating innovative upstream and downstream technologies that have been demonstrated to significantly enhance both upstream manufacturing yields and downstream processing recovery and contributing to the greater accessibility of ex-vivo gene therapy.

The purpose of this CanExport SMEs agreement is to support small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) for activities related to export market development that are part of an export business case for a specific target market, particularly where activities are targeting departmental priority markets and sectors.

To strengthen its competitiveness and commercialization readiness in the viral-vector market

The firm is using co-innovation as a mechanism to access technological knowledge that complements their in-house offerings and close technical and capital gaps with respect to these new applications.

As part of the international consortium project "Viral Enhancers - Development of small molecule formulations for enhanced production of AAV", this project will focus on developing and demonstrating at scale small molecule formulation(s) which increase the yield of next-generation gene therapies. Development of such technologies will enable faster clinical and commercial development of life saving technologies while simultaneously improving patient access through reduction of cost per dose.

The purpose of the Canadian International Innovation Program (CIIP) contribution agreement is to support Canadian SMEs identify international partners in CIIP target countries for industrial research and development collaboration that has good potential for commercialization.

To commercialize a library of viral sensitizers used in biopharmaceutical manufacturing processes.