A Waterloo Engineering researcher is part of an international coalition revolutionizing health-care delivery by developing technology for fast, on-site vaccine production.
Dr. Valerie Ward, a chemical engineering professor, plays a critical role in the coalition —her research focuses on ensuring vaccine purity during the autonomous manufacturing process.
The research team’s portable vaccine production unit aims to reduce vaccine manufacturing time from nine days to just one. By enabling fast, on-site production, the coalition is helping to establish swift and equitable responses to future epidemics and pandemics.
“We’re flipping the script —usually, with vaccines, you scale production up, not down. Here, we are doing the opposite to make life-saving vaccines more accessible,” Ward said.
The research coalition is led by the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) and received $2.8 million from the Coalition of Epidemic Preparedness Innovation (CEPI). The CEPI-CPI partnership backs the 100 Days Mission, a G7 and G20 initiative aimed at cutting vaccine development timelines in response to pandemics.
Go to Transforming vaccine production for faster outbreak control for the full story.