Quebec and Ottawa said yesterday they would be looking for a buyer for Medicago, but the task will not be easy, said one of the company’s founders.
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“Is it a good time for big pharma to take this step? I would say that the timing is not good, but the timing has never been very good in recent years, so maybe this will be an opportunity,” Louis-Philippe Vézina confided to the Journal yesterday, who launched Medicago with François Arcand 1997
Mr. Vézina recalled that the World Health Organization’s (WHO) decision in March 2022 to reject Medicago’s anti-COVID vaccine was “a small coup de grace” for the company.
Medicago’s plant in Raleigh, North Carolina had already been converted to produce this vaccine.
A redesign to resume production of influenza vaccines would require further investment.
Under these circumstances, Medicago’s owner, Japanese giant Mitsubishi Chemical Group, may prefer to keep Medicago’s patents.
“It’s very possible, but what they can’t bring back is the plant,” noted Louis-Philippe Vézina. […] I would be very surprised if they decided to start from scratch in Japan based on this technology because we are still talking about something that would take them three to four years to implement. But it’s not impossible. »
Mitsubishi hides its game
In an email sent to the Journal yesterday, Mitsubishi spokesman Osamu Shimizu did not confirm that the company was looking for a buyer for Medicago. “The sale or transfer of the assets is currently being considered,” he said simply.
Construction of the Quebec plant, underway since 2015, will be “stopped,” specified Mr. Shimizu, before adding that the sale of the building is “considered.”
Mr. Vézina fears that more than 25 years of work by Medicago researchers will be forgotten.
“Medicago remains, to me, the biggest step Quebec has taken toward some autonomy in vaccine development and manufacturing,” he argued.
“All we can do right now, I think, is for Quebec governments and industrialists to sit down with Mitsubishi to make sure the wealth being developed in this project doesn’t disappear entirely. “, he continued.
Photo from Linkedin
Louis Philippe Vezina
“When a company is owned by foreign interests, we know it: if they decide to close up shop, we have no say in the matter. There’s not much we can do. »
Angany, currently run by Louis-Philippe Vézina, may be interested in buying Medicago’s patents with the help of financial partners. Otherwise, the entrepreneur offers to cooperate with the public decision-makers to find a solution.
At least save the factory
According to him, we should at least prevent the half-finished Quebec plant from losing its pharmaceutical vocation.
“A unit of this size with clean rooms that enable pharmaceutical preparations are not many in Quebec. It would be sad to lose her and lose the expertise that goes with it. »
Mr. Vézina also regretted that the presence of Philip Morris in Medicago’s participation had prompted the WHO to reject his vaccine.
Without the tobacco company, “Medicago would not have survived,” he said. The problem is that there is “a strained relationship that has always existed” between Philip Morris and the WHO.
– With the collaboration of Martin Jolicoeur
A spokesman for the Secretary of Commerce, Pierre Fitzgibbon, assured that Medicago would repay the $60 million government loan granted in 2015, but Mitsubishi declined to confirm this yesterday.
The Medicago saga in a nutshell
1997
■ R&D at Université Laval and Agriculture Canada laboratories.
1999
■ Foundation of the company Medicago.
2003
■ Quebec provides a $15.3 million loan to Medicago.
2006
■ Medicago completes its initial public offering and is listed on the TSX Venture Exchange.
2011
■ Medicago forms Medicago USA and builds a facility in North Carolina.
2013
■ Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma buys Medicago for US$357 million. The company is privatized.
2015
■ Quebec provided Mitsubishi with a US$74.5 million loan to build a new plant in Quebec.
2020
■ Quebec awards Medicago a US$7 million grant to develop a vaccine against COVID-19.
2020
■ Ottawa awards $173 million to Medicago to manufacture 76 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine.
February 2022
■ Health Canada approves the Covifenz vaccine.
March 2022
■ The World Health Organization rejects the Medicago vaccine.
Sep 2022
■ Tobacco group Philip Morris sells its 21% stake in Medicago.
February 2023
■ Medicago is closing its doors. Hundreds of workers lose their jobs.
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