There’s no such thing as a general vaccine factory.
Out of curiosity, how true is that if we limit ourselves to mRNA vaccines (AKA what seemed to be the leading possibility from May-June onward)? The production processes for mRNA molecules themselves are quite general, and mixing the salts, acids, sugars, and stabilizers shouldn’t require unusual equipment. As I understand it the lipid production is more specialized, but it seems likely that the same or similar lipids would be needed for a wide spectrum of mRNA vaccines?
The production processes for mRNA molecules themselves are quite general, and mixing the salts, acids, sugars, and stabilizers shouldn’t require unusual equipment.
Mixing the mRNA molecules with the lipids needs specialized equipment. Derek Lowe writes in Myths of Vaccine Manufacturing:
My own guess as to what such a Vaccine Machine involves is a large number of very small reaction chambers, running in parallel, that have equally small and very precisely controlled flows of the mRNA and the various lipid components heading into them. You will have to control the flow rates, the concentrations, the temperature, and who knows what else, and you can be sure that the channel sizes and the size and shape of the mixing chambers are critical as well.
Out of curiosity, how true is that if we limit ourselves to mRNA vaccines (AKA what seemed to be the leading possibility from May-June onward)? The production processes for mRNA molecules themselves are quite general, and mixing the salts, acids, sugars, and stabilizers shouldn’t require unusual equipment. As I understand it the lipid production is more specialized, but it seems likely that the same or similar lipids would be needed for a wide spectrum of mRNA vaccines?
Mixing the mRNA molecules with the lipids needs specialized equipment. Derek Lowe writes in Myths of Vaccine Manufacturing: