Vaccine manufacturing

PER.C6® technology is a much-needed alternative to traditional vaccine production  on animal-derived substrates such as fertilized chicken eggs or mouse brains. Problems with these traditional methods include limited production capacity, long processing times and safety concerns.

For example, influenza viruses for flu vaccines are currently grown in eggs. This is a very laborious and time-consuming production method, as the egg supply is unreliable, viruses do not grow well in every egg and contamination of a single egg means that thousands of doses have to be thrown away. Also, virus harvested from eggs has a trace of egg protein, so anyone with an egg allergy cannot receive the vaccine. A PER.C6®-based flu vaccine would overcome all these limitations, enabling flu viruses for vaccines to be grown in an unlimited supply—and much faster than is now possible, which would be crucial for fighting deadly pandemic strains.

A wide variety of viruses that cause disease in humans have been shown to grow to high titers in PER.C6® cells. PER.C6® technology enables the cost-effective production of vaccines of all kinds: those made with inactivated whole virus or live-attenuated virus, live vector vaccines, split and subunit vaccines, and recombinant vaccines.