Articles

Boosting COVID-19 Vaccine Development and Efficiency

dec 08 2020

Quick Stability & Resuspendability Measurement of Adjuvants and New Vaccine Generation by Turbiscan

Some perspective on Covid-19 vaccines

As of early-December, there are 237 coronavirus vaccine projects¹ around the world, developed using very different techniques.
Some vaccines under development are using new methods without adjuvants such as mRNA based vaccines (Ex: Moderna, Pfizer). These vaccines can be developed faster but they require specific storage conditions and two injections to be effective.

Other vaccines are based on “classic” approaches such as using adjuvants but this requires a longer development period. Additionally, this classic approach is usually less expensive to manufacture.

Even if adjuvants are not used in the today’s COVID-19 vaccines, experts in the community believe ² that the next generation of COVID-19 vaccines will use adjuvants to boost immune response.

The first trucks carrying COVID-19 vaccines for widespread use in the United States left Pfizer’s Michigan facility on December 13, kicking off what the Associated Press ³ is calling “the biggest vaccination effort in American history.”

Time-saving method for vaccines

What if you could qualify the resuspendability of your adjuvant in under 30 minutes?

Traditional stability test qualification methods can take up to 24 hours. Thirty minutes versus twenty-four hours is a time-saving leap that can affect millions of lives and benefit your bottom line by allowing you to bring an effective vaccine to market sooner.

How is this time reduction achieved?

Formulaction offers a unique solution with Turbiscan, which measures the sedimentation rate, the agglomeration, and the resuspendability of adjuvants, at an early stage, without sample preparation or denaturation.

Adjuvants are key components of vaccines, used to stimulate immune response. Additionally, adjuvants reduce cost by decreasing the amount of antigen needed, which allows patients to avoid multiple doses. This is especially vital during a pandemic where pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer ⁴ and Moderna are racing to meet the overwhelming demand for fast, effective, low cost vaccines for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.

Turbiscan, used for R&D as well as QC of vaccines, offers a reliable solution for the development and control of vaccines and other pharmaceutical formulations. Additionally, Turbiscan measures the stability and size of encapsulated lipid nanoparticles (LNPs). The new generation of COVID-19 vaccines, such as those from Pfizer and Moderna, also use encapsulated LNPs.

Note: Recently a scientific publication from Pfizer Inc.⁵ refers to Turbiscan technology in the study of stability and resuspendability of adjuvants (Aluminium Salt).

How does Turbiscan work?

Turbiscan can test anything from pharmaceuticals to cosmetics to ink, including emulsions, suspensions, and foams. It can detect particle size variation and migration analysis, including sedimentation at an early stage, and puts no mechanical stress on your sample.

Some key features include:

- Simple stability index / rating
- Detailed stability data as required
- Sample scanned at user defined timed intervals
- Readings taken every 20µm
- Whole sample scanned bottom to top
- No sample dilution
- Results are up to 200 times faster than the naked eye

Turbiscan is the perfect tool for formulation to assess the stability of vaccines, whether you are monitoring particle stability and the size of encapsulated LNPs, as well as sedimentation and agglomeration, or traditional adjuvant-based vaccines.

To summarize…Turbiscan:

- Saves you time
- Characterizes encapsulated lipid nanoparticles (LNPs)
- Qualifies the resuspendability of adjuvant-based vaccines in less than 30 minutes