Canadian scientists to optimise vaccine process for faster outbreak response

OSLO/ OTTAWA, 16 Oct 2024 - Canadian researchers are launching a new scientific project to investigate whether they can speed up the creation of key vaccine ingredients to help respond faster to future epidemic and pandemic threats.

Experts at the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) are working with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) to bioengineer a commonly used approach to safely make protein antigens—components of vaccines that help trigger an immune response in the human body—in as little as two weeks. This is around eight to twelve times faster than the time currently taken to produce antigens for protein-based vaccines.

CEPI is providing up to CAD $850,000 and the NRC is providing up to CAD $308,000 (in kind) to establish proof-of-technology for this project.

Faster antigen production
To mass produce vaccines, manufacturers need a way to make sufficient quantities of vaccine components, such as antigens, at low cost. Mammalian cell lines are commonly used in vaccine processes and other types of modern medicine to express protein antigens, as they are easy to culture and have a high production yield.

However, despite these advantages, mammalian cell lines can take four to six months to develop and optimise for antigen production– resulting in a major challenge for experts and health officials aiming to get vaccines quickly developed in response to a fast-spreading viral outbreak.

Now, scientists at the NRC have developed a mammalian cell line which could be optimised for rapid antigen production.

“The NRC’s new research plans majorly accelerate the time taken to make infectious disease vaccines” said Ingrid Kromann, Executive Director of Manufacturing and Supply Chain (Acting) at CEPI. “If successful, this optimised cell line could help vaccine doses be more rapidly available for clinical trials and initial emergency use during future outbreaks, supporting CEPI’s goal—embraced by Canada, and other G7 and G20 nations—to respond to a novel virus with a new vaccine in just 100 days after its discovery and protect against disease spread.”

Their technology is also set to be suitable for transfer to low- and middle-income countries. Making the technology available in low-resource settings could enable local and rapid vaccine production close to the source of a future outbreak and improve accessibility to vaccine doses.

“Recognizing the critical need for rapid vaccine production during a health emergency, this research and development project in our labs will advance innovative technologies to improve biomanufacturing processes and increase the efficiency of large-scale manufacturing of vaccines and other biologics,” says Dr. Lakshmi Krishnan, Vice President of Life Sciences at the NRC. “We look forward to collaborating with CEPI to further develop our platform technologies into accessible tools that could help accelerate vaccine production around the world.”

CEPI and the NRC are committed to enabling equitable access to the outputs of this CEPI-supported programme, in line with CEPI’s Equitable Access Policy. This ultimately includes commitment to vaccines being available first to populations at risk when and where they are needed at an affordable price should a related vaccine be developed further using CEPI funding. Project results will be published in open access journals for the benefit of the global scientific community.

ENDS

Notes to Editors

• The research forms part of a Call launched by CEPI in 2023 seeking manufacturing technologies that can accelerate the time required to produce vaccines to enable a faster response to future epidemic and pandemic threats, in support of the 100 Days Mission.
• The 100 Days Mission seeks to compress the development of new vaccines to as little as 100 days. Achieving that goal could defuse the threat of a pathogen with pandemic potential, averting the type of catastrophic global public health and socio-economic impacts caused by COVID-19.

About CEPI 
CEPI is an innovative partnership between public, private, philanthropic and civil organisations. Its mission is to accelerate the development of vaccines and other biologic countermeasures against epidemic and pandemic threats so they can be accessible to all people in need. CEPI has supported the development of more than 50 vaccine candidates or platform technologies against multiple known high-risk pathogens or a future Disease X. Central to CEPI’s pandemic-beating five-year plan for 2022-2026 is the ‘100 Days Mission’ to compress the time taken to develop safe, effective, globally accessible vaccines against new threats to just 100 days.