How one Ottawa biotech is tackling biomanufacturing’s biggest bottleneck

Cell and gene therapy, vaccine development, and manufacturing are vital to advancements in medicine, but their high production costs limit the scalability of these innovations and significantly impact patient affordability.

These challenges affect organizations working in viral vector and advanced biologics manufacturing by limiting the speed at which optimized production conditions can be identified.

An Ottawa biotech’s answer to a costly bottleneck

Virica Biotech, an Ottawa-based biotechnology company, has been developing innovative ways to address these issues by optimizing the biomanufacturing process — an inherently complex and resource-intensive undertaking. This complexity creates a domino effect, extending development timelines, increasing costs, and delaying improvements in manufacturing yields.

In April 2026, the company launched Viric.AI™, a new active learning platform designed to accelerate biomanufacturing optimization by combining machine learning with iterative experimental data. This research technology not only improves biomanufacturing efficiency but also supports stronger public health preparedness and health security, including the ability to respond to future health threats.

Mitacs-funded collaboration with the University of Ottawa

The new platform helps biopharma teams identify optimal production conditions earlier in the research process. It was developed with support from Mitacs through a collaboration with Dr. Francesco Gentile’s lab at the University of Ottawa that began in 2025. Dr. Gentile, a principal investigator at the Ottawa Institute of Systems Biology and assistant professor in the University of Ottawa’s Department of Chemistry and Biomolecular Sciences, used the funding to support talent development and early-stage innovation research.

Virica’s manufacturing expertise, experimental datasets, and real-world insight into the current challenges facing viral vector production were complemented by the team in Dr. Gentile’s lab and its cutting-edge knowledge of machine learning, computational modelling, and active learning. Together, the teams helped develop the Viric.AI platform to accelerate the discovery of optimized biomanufacturing enhancers.

The Mitacs award created the opportunity for the lab to recruit highly qualified academic talent and have them contribute to the early development of the Viric.AI platform while complementing Virica’s internal research and development work.

“Through Mitacs, we were able to access top talent from the University of Ottawa, who contributed meaningfully to our product development. This reinforces the importance of investing in Canada’s next generation of scientific innovators.”

Jondavid de Jong, Senior Vice-President, Scientific Operations, Virica Biotech

Viric.AI works alongside Virica’s existing technologies, including its Viral Sensitizers (VSE™), which transiently lower host-cell defences to improve viral infection, transduction, and replication. It also leverages Virica’s High-Throughput Virology (HTV™) platform and design of experiments (DoE) capabilities to inform experimental design and rapidly identify optimal production conditions.

Already at work: inside the Pandemic Preparedness Hub

The Viric.AI platform is currently being used by the Canadian Pandemic Preparedness Hub (CP2H), a research hub co-led by the University of Ottawa and McMaster University, in partnership with the Ottawa Hospital. CP2H is using Viric.AI to support the discovery of novel enhancers for adenovirus production.

In this environment, the platform helps researchers extract more value from experimental data, identifying the most promising conditions, and informing future research studies.

While there are other machine-learning and AI tools being used in the biotechnology space, Viric.AI’s focus on viral vector and biomanufacturing optimization is meaningful for Canada’s life sciences sector. The work at CP2H, for instance, highlights the platform’s dual-use potential to support both Canadian commercial biomanufacturing programs and broader public health preparedness efforts.

Conventional screening in biomanufacturing research often requires multiple rounds of trial-and-error testing. Viric.AI can make that process more efficient by combining machine learning with iterative experimental feedback, helping researchers predict the most productive conditions and focus subsequent testing on the most promising opportunities.

About Mitacs

For over 25 years, Mitacs has helped grow the economy and develop the workforce of tomorrow, connecting industry with academia and global partners to solve real-world challenges. We support business-academic research collaboration through internships, co-funded with businesses, for undergraduate to graduate students and post-doctoral fellows.

As a national innovation connector, Mitacs takes a talent-first approach to strengthen innovation capacity and drive global competitiveness. We serve as an essential research-commercialization bridge, accelerating market entry and growth for new products and services.

This is a critical time for Canada to think big and take bold action. Mitacs is ready to help build a strong and resilient Canadian economy, powered by ideas, talent and innovation.

Mitacs is funded by the Government of Canada, the Government of Alberta, the Government of British Columbia, Research Manitoba, the Government of New Brunswick, the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, the Government of Nova Scotia, the Government of Ontario, Innovation PEI, the Government of Quebec, the Government of Saskatchewan, and the Government of Yukon.