Nearly 17 months after construction finished on the $140-million International Vaccine Centre, researchers have yet to do benchwork in one of its high-end labs.
InterVac, which will draw researchers from around the world to develop and test both human and animal vaccines, is the biggest facility of its kind constructed in Canada in the last two decades, says VIDO-InterVac CEO and director Andrew Potter.
Before anyone can begin handling infectious agents in the facility, it needs certification from both the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the Public Health Agency of Canada.
"This is a big event and I think everybody on both sides wants to make sure we are doing this right," Potter said.
Joined by an overhead walkway to the existing Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization (VIDO) building on the University of Saskatchewan campus, the 145,000-square foot InterVac facility has six "containment Level 3" labs, which are equipped for the safe handling of organisms that transmit through the air and can cause life-threatening diseases. Experiments with tuberculosis, rabies, hepatitis C, avian influenza, hantavirus and anthrax will one day take place in these labs.
The necessary precautions are tremendous. Associate director of operations and maintenance Cam Ewart scans his fingerprint while holding up a magnetic card bearing the same signature before the security system matches them and unlatches the door to the labs. In each lab, a continuous whoosh of air is audible as negative pressure continually replaces it, drawing in clean air from outside and sending old air to be filtered.
A researcher must pass through four doors to get into a lab - a clean room, a decontamination shower and a dirty room - and each one won't open until the one behind it latches. Any used material must be baked in a sterilizer before it leaves. To contain any potential contamination to one lab or room, every pipe must be perfectly sealed in place.
In another wing, 18 rooms for experiments on animals from mice to livestock have submarine-like, airtight doors. A gating system for corralling larger animals is bolted to walls and hangs from the ceiling inside some of the labs.
In what will be Canada's only aerosolized pathogen lab, workers wearing protective suits with respirators will use a Madison aerosol chamber (one of 25 in the world) to infect animals with airborne diseases.
Once it is operating, Inter-Vac will be one of a handful of places in the world where development of both animal and human vaccines takes place.
Regulation of these types of facilities is strict, as the stakes for mishaps are high. In 2004, three workers at a Seattle infectious diseases lab were exposed to tuberculosis when a Madison aerosol chamber leaked.
"The danger to the public is non-existent, but the danger to the staff working over there is very real," Potter said.
Designed to keep ticking if any system fails, backup generators and extra fans will keep the air within each lab contained in the event of a breakdown.
When construction finished in fall 2011, Ewart was tasked with commissioning the building, meaning he pushed each system to its limit to see if it would trip. The testing took months.
"The ramifications of air stopping flow in this building are very significant," Ewart said.
Because the nature of the work requires strict security measures to stave off bioterrorist threats, staff must also be trained as first responders, Potter said.
In an email, CFIA spokes-man Rod Lister said that agency and the public health agency performed a certification inspection on InterVac in October 2012. The inspectors are experts in containment standards, and check all equipment and systems are functioning properly, test the ventilation systems and check each surface is perfectly in tact to prevent any leakage.
Meant to attract publicly and privately funded re-search alike, InterVac can't sign any contracts with researchers until the facility is certified. The federal government must also approve any experiments taking place in InterVac, but that process is more efficient, Potter says.
But the VIDO-InterVac director isn't worried about losing clientele. Waiting lists for Level 3 facilities are long, and demand for the labs is high.
Many similar facilities are owned by the military or governments and are not as accessible to university researchers, he says.
University of Saskatchewan researchers waiting to use the facility aren't stalled, either - they're using other facilities such as the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg. What these officials clearly are anxious about, though, is the next possible pandemic.
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