Platform technologies: Accelerating vaccine development and production

The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that global health security relies on our capacity to rapidly develop, scale, and deliver vaccines. Platform technologies play a vital role in enabling fast, fair responses to emerging threats by significantly accelerating the development and production of new vaccines. 

CEPI will support a diverse set of vaccine platform technologies and embed them with manufacturers in lower- and middle-income regions to ensure these tools are in place and ready to drive quicker and more effective responses to future outbreaks -  wherever they arise.

CEPI’s long-term goal is to make sure that a range of proven platforms is readily available to lower and middle-income countries, so that effective disease defences can be developed and deployed for outbreak response within 100 days of the detection of a new threat. This is a critical part of CEPI’s 100 Days Mission and vital for truly global and equitable health security. 

We’re already supporting more than 20 early-stage platform technologies and building strong partnerships with biotech companies. We’re also helping to boost vaccine manufacturing across different types of technology, so that countries or regions with different capabilities and different skillsets can be ready for whatever disease threat comes next. 

No single technology can do everything. That’s why our CEPI 3.0 strategy includes a range of vaccine platform technologies. Each one brings something different—some are about development speed and the ability to make millions of doses quickly, others are about stability in a range of different climates or being easy to use in places with fewer resources. 

Over the next five years, CEPI will advance into clinical trials at least three additional platform technologies which have potential against a range of viruses, including known epidemic threats and prototype pathogens as ‘Disease X’ placeholders. We’ll also work with national and regional partners to embed proven platform technologies with regional vaccine manufacturers so they are ready for rapid use during emergencies. 

Because vaccines can only be used when regulators are confident that they are safe and effective, CEPI will work closely with regulators to build the evidence base around the platforms we support so that when the next outbreak hits, regulatory authorities already have the data they need to make fast, rigorously informed decisions. 

This approach to platform technologies is crucial to delivering speed, scale and access to outbreak vaccines. A broader, more accessible platform toolbox will mean stronger national and regional resilience and a far greater chance of containing future epidemics before they spread.