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$17.6 million grant supports development of global vaccine manufacturing platform

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The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awarded a $17.6 million grant to researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University College London and University of Kansas for the development of a global vaccine manufacturing platform that can produce certain vaccines for less than 15 cents per dose, according to a recent press release.

The platform is being developed through the “Ultra-low cost, Transferable Automated (ULTRA) Platform for Vaccine Manufacture Project,” which will focus on manufacturing recombinant protein vaccines for diseases such as hepatitis B, HIV, HPV, malaria and rotavirus. Researchers hope to standardize existing manufacturing techniques, which are currently unique to each vaccine. The platform is based on models combining engineered microbial cell factories and flexible purification strategies that some biopharmaceuticals use for antibody-based therapies.

“In the same ways that industry today enjoys platform manufacturing for monoclonal antibodies, we envision a new platform for current and future recombinant vaccines,” J. Christopher Love, PhD, associate professor of chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, said in a press release. “ULTRA should ultimately empower both a broad discovery portfolio and streamlined commercial development.”

(Left to right) MIT Professors Richard Braatz, J. Christopher Love, and Kripa Varanasi will collaborate with colleagues from the University College London and University of Kansas to develop a novel manufacturing platform to produce certain vaccines at affordable costs.

Source: Samara Vise

WHO estimates that 21.8 million infants worldwide lacked basic immunizations in 2013. Of the 5.2 million deaths that occur each year among children aged younger than 5 years, approximately one-third could be prevented by vaccines. Reducing the costs of vaccines may help improve global immunization rates, the release said.

“It’s an honor to take on this important challenge with the support of this team and world-class academics,” Love said in the release. “Together, we are committed to the global access of a powerful new approach for manufacturing low-cost vaccines.”

Reference:

WHO. Global Immunization Data. Summary: Global immunization coverage in 2013. http://www.who.int/immunization/monitoring_surveillance/global_immunization_data.pdf. Accessed February 24, 2017.

Disclosure: Infectious Disease News was unable to confirm relevant financial disclosures at the time of publication.