Platform Solutions Overcome Vaccine Challenges

Vaccines have been around and proven as important life-saving tools since the 1790s. Yet, at the start of 2020 new development programs were lagging and there was unfounded controversy over their value.

All that swiftly changed in the spring of 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold globally. Vaccines became one of the hottest topics in industry and mainstream media practically overnight. But what does it really take to produce great vaccines?

While there is no one-size-fits-all platform approach for vaccine production, all platform manufacturing processes are built to simplify, de-risk and accelerate the development and manufacture of drug substances. Despite the risk-aversity of this industry, iterative improvements to platform processes have helped to increase rates of adoption in the past five to ten years. Advances like single-use technology and continuous manufacturing technologies have enabled more flexibility and ease of use, though standardization remains in flux.