_(14579564429).jpg) The Varsity (newspaper) magazine feature on Connaught Farm and Laboratories, 1917 | |
| Founder(s) | John G. FitzGerald |
|---|---|
| Established | 1914 |
| Formerly called | Antitoxin Laboratory (1914), Connaught Antitoxin Laboratories and University Farm (1917) |
| Location | , Ontario , Canada |
The Connaught Medical Research Laboratories was a non-commercial public health entity established by Dr. John G. FitzGerald in 1914 in Toronto to produce the diphtheria antitoxin. Contemporaneously, the institution was likened to the Pasteur Institutes in France and Belgium and the Lister Institute in London. It expanded significantly after the discovery of insulin at the University of Toronto in 1921, manufacturing and distributing insulin at cost in Canada and overseas. Its non-commercial mandate mediated commercial interests and kept the medication accessible. In the 1930s, methodological advances at Connaught updated the international standard for insulin production.[citation needed]
Efforts at Connaught to purify heparin for human clinical trials lay the foundation for various critical surgeries including vascular surgery, organ transplantation and cardiac surgery. During the First and Second World Wars, the Labs produced various antitoxins that became crucial due to increased risks of injury infection and exposure to diseases in other parts of the world, including the typhus vaccine and penicillin. Connaught's production technologies also enabled the mass-scale field trial of Jonas Salk's polio vaccine and its subsequent expansion. The institution played a particularly important role in restoring U.S. public faith in the polio vaccine after a production mishap at California-based Cutter Laboratories.
In 1972, the University of Toronto sold Connaught Laboratories to the Canada Development Corporation (CDC), a federally-controlled corporation charged with developing and maintaining Canadian-controlled companies in the private sector through a mixture of public and private investment. The sale continued to stir controversy in the following years as the Labs increased prices on its products and came under allegations of mismanagement and deteriorated manufacturing standards. In 1986, the Labs were transferred to private ownership as the CDC was dismantled as part of the Mulroney government's program of privatization. Connaught was merged with Institut Mérieux in 1989, and in 1999 it was transformed into the Canadian component of "Pasteur Mérieux Connaught", owned by Rhône-Poulenc. A series of acquisitions since then have transferred ownership of what used to be the Connaught Laboratories to the global vaccine business of Sanofi.