An Expedited Development And Manufacturing Process To Support A COVID-19 Vaccine

By Kevin Thompson, Technical Director, Process Engineering Project Management Group, at Pall

Over the years, I’ve worked on countless projects with many customers – each one unique. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, we had the opportunity to work with the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca by supporting the rapid development and scale up of their COVID-19 vaccine, ChAdOx1-S /AZD1222 (now sold under the brand names Vaxzevira and COVISHIELD) – and that felt truly different. We joined a consortium led by the University of Oxford’s Jenner Institute to develop, scale up, and manufacture the vaccine. The process development and manufacturing work took place while clinical trials were still ongoing – typically, a huge risk, but one that was worth taking given the significant public health threat posed by SARS-CoV-2.