Bioprocess optimization for cell culture based influenza vaccine production

Uncertainties and shortcomings associated with the current influenza vaccine production processes demand attention and exploration of new vaccine manufacture technologies. Based on a newly developed mammalian cell culture-based production process we investigated selected process parameters and describe three factors that are shown to impact productivity, process robustness and development time. They are time of infection, harvest time and virus input, or multiplicity of infection (MOI). By defining the time of infection as 4-5 days post cell seeding and harvest time as 2-3 days post-infection and comparing their effect on virus production, MOI is subsequently identified as the most impactful process parameter for live attenuated influenza vaccine (LAIV) manufacture. Infection at very low MOI (between 10⁻⁴ and 10⁻⁶ FFU/cell) resulted in high titer virus production (up to 30-fold productivity improvement) compared to higher MOI infections (10⁻³ to 10⁻² FFU/cell). Application of these findings has allowed us to develop a platform process that can reduce the development time to approximately three weeks for an influenza vaccine manufacture process for new strains.