Optimizing the productivity of the whooping cough, diphtheria, and tetanus vaccines’ manufacturing processes: software and hardware-based solutions

The current key challenges in manufacturing of pharmaceuticals in general and vaccines in particular is the lack of rapid measurements for monitoring the processes in real time, lack of understanding of the correlation between operating conditions to the productivity of antigens composing the vaccines and contaminations that affect the purification processes. This proposed research program addresses these challenges through 3 projects as follows i) development of model based estimators in combination with rapid measurements for monitoring upstream and downstream manufacturing processes; (ii) elucidation of correlations between media composition and productivity in upstream operations by a combination of models and metabolic flux data (iii) Statistical control for vaccine upstream and downstream manufacturing processes using a combination of models and data. The research focuses on 3 vaccines: Tetanus, Diphtheria and Whooping Cough.

Faculty Supervisor:

Hector Budman;Luis Ricardez Sandoval;Qinqin Zhu

Student:

Mohammad Aghaee Foroushani;Abhishek Mishra

Partner:

Sanofi Pasteur

Discipline:

Engineering - chemical / biological

Sector:

University:

University of Waterloo

Program: