Grant: Alliance Grants

The program will establish and sustain a dedicated cadre of academic researchers and train highly qualified individuals, in collaboration with Sanofi scientists, to provide evidence-based and data-driven strategic direction and enhanced research capacity around respiratory infectious diseases relevant to vaccine product pipeline and the optimal use of vaccinations in Canada and globally. The program will support mathematical modelling, neural network-based data analytics and health economics for rapid response to outbreaks, and for proactive, real-time, and both prospective and retrospective evaluation of control and prevention programs using multi-source data. The initial focus will be on Sanofi's vaccines at different stages of development and registration against prototypical respiratory infections such as influenza, Covid-19 and Respiratory Syncytial Virus, but the methodologies and technologies, as well as the datasets collected and analyzed will be as generic as possible. The established capacity will serve as a vaccine R&D platform and can be activated for rapid mobilization in response to emerging public health threats and industrial production needs. We develop models and modelling technologies for scenario planning as a central component of risk management efforts to meet the critical need in compressing timelines for vaccines to be discovered, produced and made accessible at scale. Our research supports scenario planning over three distinct periods. During a short-term period, our Nowcasting and Nearcasting Techniques support decisions on interventions and the required manufacturing capacity for development and deployment, and provide decision support on clinical trials for new vaccines. During a mid- to long-term period, our Transmission Dynamics Models and Scenario Optimization Technologies support decision making on where/when to test new vaccine candidates and what scale of the production capacity is needed. During a long-term period, when the disease may be endemic and can cause recurrent outbreaks, our Bifurcation and Optimization Techniques support planing for further vaccine manufacturing capacity needs, and inform optimal vaccine boosting scenarios and intervals.