Integrated Technologies To Accelerate Process Intensification For Viral Vaccine Manufacturing

By Piergiuseppe Nestola, Ph.D., Sartorius Stedim Switzerland AG, Tagelswangen, Switzerland

With the increasing world-wide demand for viral-based vaccines (VBVs) which includes attenuated and inactivated viral vaccines, as well as viral vector vaccines to protect against the coronavirus known as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), faster development times are required to progress VBVs more rapidly into clinical development and then to market. This has meant VBV manufacturing is changing and is being driven by the need for increased speed and greater flexibility. The requirement for greater flexibility has led to new types of manufacturing facilities which can accommodate a growing range of different types of VBVs and can be reconfigured easily to take high clinical trial attrition rates into account. To meet these challenges, vaccine manufacturers, for example those developing SARS-CoV-2 vaccines in cell culture are adopting strategies including process intensification as they believe this will help achieve higher product titers while reducing manufacturing footprint thus making larger numbers of doses of VBVs more readily available. To deliver on this, there is a need for products that can facilitate process intensification and operate under these conditions when manufacturing VBVs. To facilitate process intensification of VBVs including SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidates, an integrated portfolio of technologies developed by Sartorius is detailed in this article.