New platform to be developed to speed up vaccine production

The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and Imperial College London are partnering to develop a vaccine that fights against multiple viral pathogens.

The self-amplifying RNA vaccine platform called RapidVAC enables tailored—just-in-time—vaccine production against multiple viral pathogens. The two organizations are investing $8·4 million in the vaccine.

The idea is to harness the body’s own cell machinery to make an antigen, which is a foreign substance that induces an immune response, rather than injecting the antigen directly.

Through this partnership, CEPI is looking to develop vaccines against new and unknown pathogens, or Disease X, for clinical trials within 16 weeks from the identification of antigen to product release.

This platform, if successful, could transform disease preparedness against outbreaks by enabling rapid production of large volumes of effective “single-shot” vaccines in a matter of weeks.

“100 years ago, the worst pandemic in recorded history, the Spanish flu, killed an estimated 50 million people. Of course, our understanding of microbial threats has advanced immeasurably since then, but in many ways, we are as vulnerable as ever to sudden attack by unknown pathogens. We’ve now put a name to such threats: Disease X, listed by WHO as a priority infectious disease threat,” Richard Hatchett, CEO of CEPI, said.

The term “vaccine platform technology” refers to a system that uses the same basic components as a backbone, but can be adapted for use against different pathogens by inserting new sequences.

“Next to access to clean water, vaccines have provided the greatest public health impact in human history. Today they are needed more than ever—essential to outbreak response, biosecurity, and the ever-present threat of a Disease X scenario,” Robin Shattock, chair in Mucosal Infection and Immunity at Imperial College and Principal Investigator, said.

Shattock said the ‘just in time’ response to infectious outbreaks provide a way to redefine the timelines for vaccine production aggressively.