Medicago returns to the forefront. The pharmaceutical company is acquired by Aramis Biotechnologies, after being let go by its parent company, Mitsubishi Chemical, in February. Aramis is a new company, headquartered in Quebec, which was founded by former employees of Medicago, the federal Ministry of Innovation, Science and Industry announced in a press release on Friday.
The Government of Canada has reached an agreement with Mitsubishi, which will “pay $40 million and transfer key research and development assets, including intellectual property and equipment, from Medicago to Aramis”, perhaps we read.
Medicago, which had developed a plant-based vaccine against COVID-19, was dissolved by Mitsubishi, as the Japanese company deemed it no longer viable to continue marketing the products developed by its manufacturers. However, the governments of Quebec and Canada did not want to lose the expertise of the pharmaceutical company, not to mention that both levels of government had invested in the construction of the Medicago biomanufacturing plant.
The federal government injected $173 million in 2020 to support the development of the vaccine and help Medicago expand. In 2015, Quebec and Ottawa had already announced loans of $60 million and $8 million respectively for the construction of a complex in the Quebec region to house Medicago’s activities — a factory which was ultimately never completed. .
With the agreement announced Friday, the federal government would recover approximately 20% of the financial aid granted to the Japanese parent company.
The vaccine developed by Medicago, named Covifenz, was approved by Health Canada in February 2022, but the World Health Organization (WHO) subsequently refused approval for global use because tobacco company Philip Morris was among its shareholders. In the wake of the WHO’s decision, Mitsubishi announced in February that it had stopped marketing the product.