Responding to the COVID-19 Crisis: The Making of Vaccines

By Kelley Christensen, Michigan Tech Science and Technology Publications Writer
Posted April 2, 2020, on Michigan Tech News
Reprinted in part with permission

Caryn Heldt, director of the Michigan Tech Health Research Institute and the James and Lorna Mack Chair in Bioengineering, works with graduate student Ashish Saksule in her lab. Heldt and her collaborators are looking at both short-term and long-term solutions to more resilient vaccine manufacturing. (Photo courtesy Michigan Tech University)

HOUGHTON -- New purification methods may streamline the vaccine manufacturing process and make scaling up production easier.

A vaccine for COVID-19 is still being developed -- but when it is available, it will be manufactured in a standard three-step process. First, virus molecules for the vaccine are grown in cell cultures inside bioreactors. Second, the virus molecules are extracted from the cell cultures through a process called purification. Third, the vaccine is stabilized for shipping and storage. Researchers at Michigan Technological University are creating new processes to improve the purification step -- which often accounts for 50 percent to 70 percent of a vaccine’s manufacturing costs.

Current vaccine purification relies on ultracentrifugation, or spinning the cell cultures at high speed until their components separate. With this method, the only way to scale up production is by running 24 hours a day and buying more centrifuges. Caryn Heldt, director of the Michigan Tech Health Research Institute and the James and Lorna Mack Chair in Bioengineering, has studied ways to purify viruses without using ultracentrifugation for more than 15 years -- and her methods could be just as effective, faster and more efficient. ... Click here to read the rest of this article on Michigan Tech News.