Carbohydrate science centre receives $4.35M for vaccine research equipment

Edmonton, AB – The Alberta Ingenuity Centre for Carbohydrate Science (AICCS) at the University of Alberta has received combined $4.35 million funding to help purchase and install equipment for vaccine research. The equipment includes $3 million for a nuclear magnetic resonance and mass spectrometer. The total project cost is $6.34 million dollars.

“This investment reflects the impact that the work of the Alberta Ingenuity Centre for Carbohydrate Science is making outside of Alberta,” said Dr Peter Hackett, president and CEO of Alberta Ingenuity. “And, as a flagship of the centre’s program, this also shows how targeted and aligned support for research can create new solutions and new opportunities for Alberta.”

The funding enhances the region’s capacity to develop vaccines and therapeutics with commercialization potential.

The funding “… will have a major and immediate impact on the centre’s vaccines and therapeutics program,” said Dr David Bundle, AICCS scientific director and distinguished university professor in the department of chemistry at the University of Alberta. “It will accelerate the development of novel technologies, the discovery of vaccines and treatment for diseases such as tuberculosis and cholera, increase translational research and provide new commercialization and economic opportunities for the AICCS’s spin-off company, TheraCarb and other industrial partners.”

The carbohydrate centre is a flagship of the Alberta Ingenuity Centres program that has brought together five collaborative hubs between Alberta’s researchers and their industry partners. The other centres include the Alberta Ingenuity Centre for In Situ Energy, the Imperial Oil – Alberta Ingenuity Centre for Oil Sands Innovation, the Alberta Ingenuity Centre for Machine Learning, and the newly announced, Tecterra, an Alberta Ingenuity Centre for integrated resource management.