The COVID-19 pandemic exposed a number of weaknesses in Canada’s capacity to respond quickly to a public health crisis. Among them were the limited availability of vaccine manufacturing infrastructure and the shortage of highly qualified personnel capable of managing all stages of large-scale biopharmaceutical production.

To address these gaps, the RampUp (Rapid Actuation of Mass Production Under Pandemic Conditions) project was launched in 2024. The national initiative is supported by $20.5 million in funding from the Canada Biomedical Research Fund and the Biosciences Research Infrastructure Fund. RampUp is now reaching an important milestone with the creation of a shared workspace at the NRC’s Royalmount facility, where teams from Polytechnique Montréal and the NRC will work side by side.

A Biomanufacturing Hub Built on Collaboration

By bringing together advanced equipment and complementary expertise in a single location, Polytechnique Montréal and the NRC’s Royalmount facility are creating one of the most comprehensive biomanufacturing platforms in Canada. The facility will significantly reduce the time required to move from the design stage to large-scale production of vaccines and protein-based therapies.

Cell culture incubators, bioreactors, purification systems, and state-of-the-art analytical platforms will soon operate alongside the NRC’s large-scale production infrastructure. Together, these resources will support every major step in the development of vaccines and biopharmaceutical proteins on a single site, from design and process scale-up to purification, analysis, formulation, and fill-finish operations.

The initiative is led by Gregory De Crescenzo, Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Polytechnique Montréal and Scientific Director of the project. Professors Olivier Henry and Jing Guo, also from Polytechnique’s Department of Chemical Engineering, are key contributors to the initiative.

RampUp also draws on the expertise of Kelley Parato, Director of Bioprocess Engineering at the NRC Royalmount facility, and Yves Durocher, Principal Research Officer and internationally recognized biomanufacturing expert. Specialists from Université de Montréal and Université Laval, along with researchers from the CCTTs CERASP and TransBioTech, are also participating in the project, as are several companies from Canada’s biomanufacturing sector.

“From the outset, RampUp has been driven by a clear objective: to break down silos so that biomanufacturing is no longer carried out in isolation, but instead benefits fully from the expertise available at every stage of the innovation chain, from upstream research to downstream industrial applications,” said Gregory De Crescenzo, explaining the rationale for bringing together such a diverse group of partners. “By consolidating our equipment at the NRC’s secure facility, we are confident that we can fulfill our mandate and establish an agile platform capable of enabling a rapid response to the next pandemic.”

Beyond pandemic preparedness, the RampUp platform is intended to serve as a long-term catalyst for collaboration within Québec’s and Canada’s biomanufacturing ecosystem. Once fully operational, it will support technology transfer, collaborative innovation, and process development aligned with the needs of academic, government, and industry partners.
 

Learn More

RampUp website
Pr Gregory De Crescenzo expertise
Pr Olivier Henry expertise
Pr Jing Guo expertise
Department of Chemical Engineering website