QUADRIVALENT FLU VACCINE PRODUCTION

Abstract

The overall goal of this project is to produce 50 million doses of a quadrivalent flu vaccine each year to reduce the outsourcing of vaccines from other countries. The facility being designed is an add-on to the existing Sanofi Pasteur plant located in Swiftwater, Pennsylvania. The process of producing a flu vaccine begins with obtaining the predicted flu strain from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Then the flu virus is injected into fertilized eggs, which serve as bioreactors. The eggs are incubated for 3 days and then the allotonic fluid is harvested, purified with multiple chromatography columns and tangential flow filtration columns, and then packaged to become the final flu vaccine. In order to produce 50 million doses the plant requires 928,000 fertilized chicken eggs. The facility is profitable at $70.5 million annually. The cost to make each vaccine is $0.25 and they are sold for $1.66, resulting in a $1.41 profit per vaccine. Since the number of people who receive the flu vaccine each year has been increasing over the past seven years, adding 50 million vaccine doses to the U.S market would be beneficial in case of outbreak or prediction of an incorrect flu strain.