How Pandemics and Outbreaks Have Influenced the Adoption of Single Use Vaccine Manufacturing
In just the last decade, infectious disease experts, public health organizations, governments and the biopharmaceutical industry have had to mobilize quickly in response to outbreaks and pandemics of H1N1, Influenza, Ebola, MERS, Zika and now SARS Cov2 (Covid 19) While therapeutics are an immediate need, vaccines are the ultimate response in the fight against emerging infectious diseases. Unfortunately, vaccine development typically requires many years, and manufacturing large doses in an emergency remains a significant challenge. Preparing manufacturing plants to make a new vaccine can cost anywhere from $50 million to $700 million, according to a 2017 paper in Vaccine.i To reduce the risk of such a major investment, biopharmaceutical companies typically wait until a vaccine is in the advanced stages of testing, with promising results, before starting to manufacture it in large quantities. This conventional development strategy compresses during a pandemic (Figure 1) Bruce Gellin, president of global immunization at the Sabin Vaccine Institute noted in a Wall Street Journal article that "in a pandemic, you can't wait to start making your investment in the manufacturing until you're sure you have a product."ii