As COVID-19 cases continue rising around the country, the push continues to get vaccines approved, manufactured and distributed to the population as soon as possible.
Texas A&M University System’s Center for Innovation in Advanced Development and Manufacturing (CIADM) will play a key role in vaccine manufacturing.
FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies, a Texas A&M University System subcontractor, has plans to mass-produce vaccines in agreement with the federal government.
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“There are two different processes going through here that have similar but somewhat different processes. So, the final yield depends on what we can do,” CIADM director Dr. Jay Treat said. “I’ll give you a range of somewhere between 20 million to 40 million doses a month with both of these systems running.”
Treat said the CIADM is working with pharmaceutical companies Novavax and Sanofi.
The facility is contracted through the federal government as a part of “Operation Warp Speed” with a $265 million order.
“What we’re doing here is producing what is called the antigen. The particle that actually helps create the immune process. It would be purified and but into a bulk,” Treat said. “We send it off to have the final product made where they have the vials to get to the hospitals, the doctors and areas that would then be put into the people.”
The facility has been preparing since July and should be set to begin the process for mass production by early January 2021 at the latest.
“We’re ramping up to make the product well before it necessarily gets approval. We will have material that we made and sent to be formulated and filled at the fill-finish site sitting there in inventory before you get final government clearance to do this,” Treat said.
