Forward Thinking

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Event mission

Our world needs innovation in vaccine manufacturing

Aug 16th, 2022

The COVID-19 pandemic has emphasized the urgent need for science and technology to develop effective and affordable solutions to make vaccines accessible quickly and on a global level. However, poor manufacturability remains one of the major bottlenecks that often prevents great science from reaching public health objectives.

At the end of August in 2022, Prof. Florian Wurm and the ExcellGene’s team organized a symposium with the goal to highlight Manufacturing Sciences in Vaccine Development. Wurm had invited his peers, Prof. Patrick Soon-Shiong from USA, Prof. Rino Rappuoli from Italy, Prof. Dr. Jamie Triccas from Australia and his ExcellGene colleagues, Dr. Maria Wurm and Dr. Paco Pino to present their reflections and suggestions on this topic.

The Symposium “Modern Vaccines, Manufacturing Bottlenecks, from DNA to product” was offered by ExcellGene on the occasion of its 20th anniversary to an interested health community. At the SwissTech Convention Center in Lausanne, more than 200 attendees joined the event including scientists, healthcare professionals, regulatory experts, media, investors, officials and politicians. Participants observed a full day of discussions on the topics of science and technology, in which the panel shared input on their collective mission to lower barriers for efficient approaches in developing vaccines and therapeutics on a global scale. The meeting also represented a cross-category networking opportunity and a first initiative of this kind in manufacturing sciences, a topic that ExcellGene will continue to pursue for years to come.

Motivated by the great success of the 2022 event and positive feedback by attendees, a follow-up Symposium on Manufacturing Sciences in Biologics Production, sponsored by ExcellGene SA, is envisioned for the year 2024.

A different kind of scientific

symposium

Conferences on bioprocessing for biological products often seem to miss the main reasons why manufacturability is a key factor that hinders progress to clinical trials.

Good ideas are not lacking, but getting things done is cumbersome. To explore and ensure effective
discussion on the subject, this symposium focused on:

Getting all sides of the story: a pragmatic view 
Bringing together people that share their experience across industry, academia, regulatory, politicians …etc.

Problem-solving through lively discussion
By engaging everyone in the discussion, we aim to get answers to complex questions, balancing opportunities and risks.

Discussion Points & Opening Questions

1. Manufacturing of protein-based antigen from clonally derived cell lines?
2. Needs to show removal of theoretical virus load from CHO cells that never had an issue with virus loads in harvests of cell culture?
3. Proof of clonality: an unnecessary exercise due to misunderstanding by regulatory examiners?
4. Purity in antigen preparations for recombinant vaccines: how far must we go?
5. Cell line stability studies: 3 month of wasted time?
6. FiM studies with microgram-quantities of protein, do we need non-human primate studies first?