London: Researchers at the University of Sheffield have been awarded funding for their infectious disease technology that could make life-saving vaccines more readily available to the world. The team, led by Dr Zoltan Kis from the University’s School of Chemical, Materials and Biological Engineering, will receive up to GBP 3.7 million (USD 4. 8 million) from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations to establish proof-of-concept for RNAbox, a specialised process designed to scale up production of messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines at regional vaccine manufacturing sites.
The easily adaptable and automated process aims to improve the world’s pandemic readiness by helping to increase equitable access to future doses of different mRNA vaccines as and when needed. It also has the potential to speed up the response to future emerging outbreaks, containing them before they spread to epidemic or pandemic proportions.
“The University of Sheffield’s versatile RNAbox builds on the ‘vaccine revolution’ experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic” explains Ingrid Kromann, Acting Executive Director of Manufacturing and Supply Chain at CEPI.
“It aims to overcome a number of scientific hurdles which resulted in poorer countries facing devastating vaccine inequity by helping to make high-quality, low-cost vaccines quickly and easily close to the source of an outbreak.”
Compared to traditional designs, mRNA vaccines can be more rapidly tailored to different diseases, or different variants of a disease.
By using the body’s own machinery to make proteins that will trigger an immune response rather than injecting the vaccine itself, the smart technology holds promise for tackling a number of other illnesses, including emerging infectious diseases.
However, relative to other types of vaccine, mRNA vaccines are currently expensive to manufacture at a high product quality. These vaccines also require complex cold-chain storage and transportation infrastructure, making them extremely difficult to deliver to remote areas or low-resource settings.
The RNAbox aims to combat these challenges through its bespoke manufacturing process designed to overcome the need to deliver the vaccine and instead have the mRNA vaccines locally manufactured at small production sites worldwide.
Rather than the typical approach where vaccines are made in batches, the RNAbox process will run continuously which could create 7-10x more mRNA at a time and enable more efficient use of raw materials.
This fast, optimised vaccine production is critical to the 100 Days Mission, a goal spearheaded by CEPI and embraced by the G7 and G20 to accelerate the development of vaccines and other countermeasures to as little as 100 days from identification of a future virus.
CEPI’s investment will explore using the technology to develop vaccines against CEPI priority pathogens, including the viruses causing deadly diseases like Ebola, Lassa fever, MERS and Nipah.
Dr Zoltan Kis, from the School of Chemical, Materials and Biological Engineering at the University of Sheffield, said: “The Covid-19 pandemic demonstrated the importance of being prepared for future pandemics and that we need the necessary tools to respond quickly. We need to tackle outbreaks equitably around the world, as diseases can spread across country borders.
“Our RNAbox will accelerate the development of new vaccines and their mass-manufacturing against a wide range of diseases. This transformative technology can also be used to develop much-needed vaccines against a range of unmet needs during non-epidemic/pandemic times. In case of a new epidemic/pandemic, the RNAbox can be quickly adapted to produce vaccines to tackle outbreaks. This will enable vaccine development and manufacturing capacity locally in countries around the world to serve local needs.”
Researchers have designed the RNAbox process to use digital-twin technology, where a virtual replica of the vaccine manufacturing approach is modelled on a computer in real-time through smart sensors collecting data on the physical product. This can help the experts optimise their operations by understanding what is happening on the production line.
University of Sheffield researchers will also work with vaccine manufacturers in low- and middle-income countries to ensure the technology is fit-for-purpose in lower-resource settings.
