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AS the world waits to see if the swine flu outbreak in Mexico will become a pandemic, biochemical engineers in London say that modular, decentralised production facilities could soon offer a novel manufacturing route for rapidly producing large volumes of vaccine.     

Talking at IChemE’s topical Biocontainment, biosafety, and biosecurity conference Andrew Sinclair and Peter Latham from consultancy BioPharm Services told delegates that engineering issues are hampering the rapid manufacture of vaccines to fight pandemics. The US Department of Defence wants to produce 3m vaccine doses in three months but process design, building, and validating production facilities can take up to two years, and repurposing current production facilities can take many months.

Latham says the solution to this problem is decoupling the building from the process, which could reduce process design to five weeks. Using single-use pre-qualified disposable units, as seen in pilot plant applications, engineers are able to design processes step-by-step, wheel skid-mounted equipment to where it is needed, and modify and configure facilities as necessary. In addition to meeting the 3m dose three-month target, the approach would also allow decentralised production of drugs in the infected region and speed up medicine delivery.

UCL advanced centre for biochemical engineering lecturer Tarit Mukhopadhyay says the current global capacity of this decentralised production is minimal but agrees it is has a future. “Speed is the key to producing vaccines,” he says “There is no point producing it after the first or second wave of the pandemic. Rapid availability of vaccine is essential to preventing disaster. For the first time ever, we are on the threshold of being able to stop a pandemic.”

Other conference highlights include case studies on the 2007 Foot and Mouth outbreak, HSE’s drive to develop a single regulatory framework for designing containment-level facilities, and advice from a government counter terrorism security advisor on the responsibilities of manufacturers to include the Home Office when planning containment level three and four facilities.

The conference was warmly received and highly-topical. So topical in fact that one of the keynote speakers was called away to a Cabinet Office meeting to brief ministers on the UK’s strategy for dealing with flu pandemics.