At the end of the year 2019, a cluster of severe pneumonia of unknown cause was described in Wuhan (Eastern China) and a SARS-like acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) was noted in these patients. Early in January 2020, sequencing revealed a novel coronavirus (now termed SARS-CoV-2) as the causal factor for the disease designated as COVID-19. The pandemic caused by the virus has unforeseen effects on the global economy and modern society, leading to a global race to find a suitable treatment and a preventive vaccine.
SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine Development
A large number of companies contributed to the fast development of novel COVID-19 vaccines.
Several technology platforms were used, from RNA or DNA based techniques via peptides/proteins to a variety of vector technologies. One of the major challenges is the fast manufacturing of new SARS-CoV-2 vaccines on a large scale for global demand. So far, novel RNA based vaccines have shown outstanding efficacy and have contributed significantly to tame the SARS pandemic.
Only few companies use a conservative but tested approach of producing a classical inactivated vaccine, for which production capacity can be found easily. Several years ago this concept was demonstrated successfully by Baxter Bioscience (Spruth et al Vaccine 24 (2006) DOI: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2005.08.055), and manufacturing was already performed on a large pilot scale. Several companies such as Sinovac Biotech Ltd and Sinopharm (Beijing, China) have reported large-scale production of a purified inactivated SARS-CoV-2 virus vaccine in Vero cells that are licensed and widely used in Asian countries. As for vaccines manufactured in Vero cells, large manufacturing capabilities are available world-wide. This is an important step to fight COVID-19 and future pandemic viruses.
What Can Nuvonis Do?
We at Nuvonis provide ready-to-use Vero (monkey kidney) GMP cell banks that are state-of-the-art and allow unlimited production of novel vaccines/vectors. Therefore, the timeline to clinical trials can be shortened significantly, as our customers can immediately move into GMP production, relying on a fully tested Vero cell bank (Master Cell Bank and Working Cell Bank).
As Vero cells have a defect in the interferon pathway, they are a versatile substrate for virus and vector production. Importantly, the SARS-Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) can be grown in Vero cells to high titers, also in an industrial bioreactor setting. (P. Noel Barrett et al. 2017, DOI:/10.1080/14760584.2017.13574719).