JULY/AUGUST 2020 COVER STORY
13
THE RACE
FOR IMMUNITY
MM speaks to the boss of a new state-of-theart
biomedical manufacturing centre about the
challenges of developing and producing a
viable cure for COVID-19
BY CHRIS BECK
www.manufacturingmanagement.co.uk
As the world has struggled to get to
grips with the scale of the COVID-19
pandemic, attention has turned to
the race towards a viable vaccine.
At the time of writing, over 140
vaccine trials are underway globally,
with a handful (including one being developed
by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca)
undergoing testing on humans to determine
their effi cacy.
At the forefront of the UK’s eff orts in this
area is an institution that, technically, doesn’t
yet exist. The 7,000m2 Vaccines Manufacturing
and Innovation Centre (VMIC) in Oxford is
a collaboration between the London School
of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Imperial
College and the University of Oxford. Originally
due to open in 2022, events of the past few
months have seen the government give the
green light (and a £93 million grant) to fasttracking
the centre’s development, with opening
now set for 2021. It will play three core roles,
explains Dr Matthew Duchars, VMIC’s CEO.
“The centre’s primary purpose is to help
vaccine developers refi ne their processes and
manufacture material to get into clinical trials,
and then to scale those processes up for mass
production,” he says. “Secondly, it plays a role
and deepen the UK’s skillset.
“Thirdly, it has an emergency
response capability. The original
aim, pre-COVID, was to be able to
produce two to three million doses
of vaccine in a couple of months to
responders who’d be sent to highrisk
COVID, the government has asked
by about 20-fold. We’re now
able to produce 70 million
doses in four to fi ve months.”
Boosting UK capability
The centre was originally
announced in response to the
Ebola epidemic in North Africa
in 2015. In response to the
urgent need for a coordinated
development of an Ebola
vaccine, Innovate UK funded a
consortium grant through the
academic partners to build a
facility that would help to both
rapidly manufacture vaccines
and act as what Duchars
calls “a custodian of process
development and knowledge
around vaccine production.”
While the UK has a very
strong biomedical industry with
regards R&D (the UK currently
has more medical products in
development than any other
country in Europe, according
to government statistics –
https://bit.ly/3fsEZZm), its
in terms of transferring knowledge out
to the workforce at large to broaden
be able to undertake a so-called ‘ring
vaccination’ of key workers and fi rst
risk places. However, in response to
us to look at increasing the capacity
Pictured, right: construction on
VMIC has been fast-tracked, with the
centre now due to open in 2021
/www.manufacturingmanagement.co.uk
/3fsEZZm)