Meeting the UK demand for COVID19/SARS-CoV-2 vaccines via integrated manufacturing and supply chain optimisation

With the world's exit strategy from the current Covid-19 pandemic dependent on developing herd immunity through mass vaccination, there is imminent need to develop a roadmap for vaccine rapid manufacture and distribution at unprecedented scale. We seek funding to develop a blueprint for ramping up production, distribution and administration of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines based on a stratified vaccination strategy that starts with front-line personnel all the way to mass vaccination of the general UK population.

To do this, we will combine process modelling with supply-chain optimisation to ensure (a) drug product and final drug substance availability, and (b) that production goes hand-in-hand with immediate availability for progressively larger parts of the population.

Our models will be open-source and publicly available, and they will subsequently be extended to describe European manufacturing capabilities and vaccination campaigns. We are members of both the UCL-Oxford VaxHub and Imperial's Future Vaccine Manufacturing Hub (FVMH) and have had early access to data for the viral vector vaccine developed by the Jenner Institute and the saRNA vaccine developed by the Shattock group. As such,we have already developed manufacturing models and have been working on optimisation and scaling up strategies.

With these two technologies being the global frontrunners in the race to clinical trials (e.g. Moderna in the USA is in Phase I clinical trials, NCT04283461 and Curevac in Germany is aiming to enter clinical trials in early summer 2020), our models will be applicable to any of these vaccines that receive regulatory approval.