OSLO/SHEFFIELD, UK, October 9, 2024 — Researchers at a leading UK university have secured funding for an infectious disease technology that will make life-saving vaccines more easily available around the world.
Scientists at the University of Sheffield have been awarded up to £3.7 million (US$4.8 million) from the Epidemic Preparedness Innovations Coalition to establish proof of concept for RNAbox™, a specialized process designed to scale up the production of messenger RNA. (mRNA) vaccine at local vaccine manufacturing sites.
This easily adaptable and automated process aims to improve global pandemic preparedness by increasing equitable access to different future mRNA vaccine doses if needed. It also has the potential to accelerate the response to future emerging infectious disease outbreaks and contain them before they escalate to epidemic or pandemic proportions.
“The University of Sheffield’s versatile RNAbox™ builds on the ‘vaccine revolution’ experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic,” explained Ingrid Kromann, Acting Executive Director, Manufacturing and Supply Chain at CEPI. Masu. “By helping to quickly and easily produce high-quality, low-cost vaccines closer to the source, this plan addresses many of the scientific hurdles that have resulted in poor countries facing devastating vaccine inequalities. The aim is to overcome.”
Compared to traditional designs, mRNA vaccines can be more quickly tailored to different diseases and different variants of diseases. This smart technology has the potential to fight many other diseases, including emerging infectious diseases, by harnessing the body’s own machinery to produce proteins that trigger an immune response, rather than injecting vaccines themselves. I am.
However, compared to other types of vaccines, mRNA vaccines are currently expensive to produce with high product quality. These vaccines also require complex cold-chain storage and transportation infrastructure, making it extremely difficult to deliver vaccines to remote and low-resource settings.
RNAbox™ aims to address these challenges through a bespoke manufacturing process designed to overcome the need to ship vaccines and instead manufacture mRNA vaccines locally at small-scale production sites around the world. That’s what I’m aiming for.
Rather than the common approach of manufacturing vaccines in batches, the RNAbox™ process runs continuously, allowing for 7 to 10 times more mRNA to be produced at one time, allowing for more efficient use of raw materials. This rapid and optimized vaccine production is part of the 100-day mission, a goal led by CEPI and accepted by the G7 and G20 to accelerate the development of vaccines and other countermeasures in as little as 100 days from the identification of future viruses. very important for.
CEPI’s investment will explore using this technology to develop vaccines against CEPI priority pathogens, including viruses that cause deadly diseases such as Ebola, Lassa fever, MERS, and Nipah.
Dr Zoltan Kiss, from the School of Chemistry, Materials and Bioengineering at the University of Sheffield, said: “The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us the importance of preparing for future pandemics and the need for the necessary tools to respond quickly. Diseases can spread across borders. Therefore, we need to tackle the epidemic in an equitable manner around the world.
“Our RNAbox accelerates the development and mass production of new vaccines against a wide range of diseases. This innovative technology provides much-needed vaccines for a variety of unmet needs during non-epidemic and pandemic It can also be used to develop vaccines in the event of a new outbreak/pandemic, allowing RNAbox to be quickly adapted to produce vaccines to combat the outbreak. We will be able to adapt our development and manufacturing capabilities to meet local needs.”
Researchers designed the RNAbox™ process to use digital twin technology. The technology models a virtual replica of the vaccine manufacturing approach in real time on a computer through smart sensors that collect data on the physical product. This helps professionals optimize their operations by understanding what is happening on the production line.
Researchers at the University of Sheffield will also work with vaccine manufacturers in low- and middle-income countries to ensure the technology is fit for purpose in low-resource settings.
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Note to editor
CEPI’s award to the University of Sheffield falls within a call for vaccine innovation to help the world prepare for future epidemics and pandemics.
The development of RNAbox™ has already been supported by a grant from Wellcome’s Leap programme, co-funded by Innovate UK and CEPI.
RNAbox™ results, methodologies and standard operating processes are open for the benefit of the global scientific community, recognizing the commitment of both parties to enable fair access to the results of the CEPI and University of Sheffield partnership. Published in Access Journal. In line with CEPI’s fair access policy.
About CEPI
CEPI is an innovative partnership between public, private, philanthropic and civil society organizations. Its mission is to accelerate the development of vaccines and other biological countermeasures against infectious diseases and pandemic threats, and to make them available to all who need them. CEPI has supported the development of more than 50 vaccine candidates and platform technologies against multiple known high-risk pathogens and future Disease X. At the heart of CEPI’s five-year plan to overcome the pandemic 2022-2026 is the “100-day mission” to compress vaccines. It takes just 100 days to develop a safe, effective, and globally available vaccine against a new threat.
University of Sheffield
The University of Sheffield is a leading Russell Group university and enjoys a world-class reputation. More than 30,000 students from 150 countries study at Sheffield. In a truly global community, they study alongside more than 1,500 of the world’s leading scholars.
Sheffield’s world-shaping research is at the heart of its teaching excellence. Students will learn about the cutting edge of discovery from researchers working on today’s biggest global challenges.
Driven by our talented people, our staff and students share a commitment to changing the world for the better through the power and application of ideas and knowledge.
From the first recorded use of penicillin as a treatment in 1930 to the creation of Europe’s largest research-led manufacturing cluster, Sheffield’s inventive spirit and top quality research environment set it apart.
Current research partners include Boeing, Rolls-Royce, Unilever, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Siemens and Airbus, as well as many government agencies and charities.
The University of Sheffield has been named University of the Year 2024 at the Whatuni Student Choice Awards, the UK’s largest annual student-voted university awards. This award reflects a commitment to world-class education and an outstanding student experience. The Student Union, which has over 350 societies and clubs, was also named Best Student Union for the seventh year in a row.
More than 300,000 Sheffield graduates from 205 countries have a huge impact around the world, and our former staff and students include six Nobel Prize winners.
For more information please visit www.sheffield.ac.uk.
