The federal Innovation Department said the Japanese owner of the defunct Quebec City vaccine company will refund part of the $173 million the government gave it to build a factory and give “key Medicago research and development assets, intellectual property and equipment” to Aramis Biotechnologies, a new firm. (The Logic)

Talking point: Medicago’s process for synthesizing vaccine ingredients in nicotiana plants produced a COVID-19 vaccine that worked, but not as well as competitors’. The World Health Organization rejected the vaccine due to Medicago’s then affiliation with tobacco company Philip Morris. And production problems meant it never delivered to the Canadian government, which had pre-purchased doses early in the pandemic. That ended up in a $150-million write-off and a blow to efforts to build up Canada’s bioscience research sector. Aramis, which is led by ex-Medicago employees, is named for one of the Three Musketeers, who spent a year remaking himself from a cleric into a swordsman to avenge a slight.