In June 2023 CEPI announced a new partnership agreement to “advance and accelerate” RVAC’s manufacturing process for next-generation mRNA vaccine platform technology. The platform is developed in collaboration with Micropore Technologies and could speed up the manufacturing of mRNA vaccines for future epidemic or pandemic responses. This partnership is the first award from the May 2023 Call for Proposals to advance manufacturing innovations and technologies to reduce vaccine development timelines.
$3 million project
CEPI is going to provide $3 million to support process improvements for the novel mRNA platform that leverages Micropore’s crossflow micromixing technology. If the project aims are successful mRNA vaccines could be produced faster with less waste and lower costs. This would encourage equitable access to mRNA vaccines, which are notoriously expensive to produce.
The key to future responses
Anand Ekambaram, CEPI’s Executive Director of Manufacturing and Supply Chain, is “excited” at the potential to make vaccine manufacturing “faster and less costly”.
“mRNA vaccines will be key to tackling future pandemics, but there is scope to improve this relatively new technology so the world has access to mRNA vaccines even more quickly.”
At the “heart of the 100 Days Mission”, an effort to compress vaccine development timelines to just 100 days, are “speed and access”, says Ekambaram. Dr Sean Fu is RVAC’s Co-Founder and CEO. He is “delighted” to partner with CEPI on their “critical work of pandemic preparedness”.
“With CEPI’s support, we plan to establish and validate a continuous process for the development of mRNA vaccines.”
This is part of RVAC’s commitment to “democratising” vaccines and aligns with CEPI’s goal of promoting equitable access to vaccines. If you’re interested in learning about how this works at CEPI, check out our interview with Dr Matthew Downham here. Make sure you subscribe to our weekly newsletter for more on investing in technology and new partnerships.
