CEPI: funding opportunity to speed up vaccine manufacturing

In this blog, Win-Yan Chan, Business Development Manager in the Access and Private Partnerships team at CEPI who is responsible for identifying, forming and tending strategic alliances to deliver CEPI’s mission, elaborates on the CEPI – Funding Opportunity and need for innovations to fast-track vaccine manufacturing.

The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) invites research teams, vaccine developers, and others from around the world to apply to the scientific programmes to advance the development of vaccines and tools against epidemic and pandemic threats.

Why does  CEPI exist?

CEPI’s vision is of a world in which epidemics and pandemics are no longer a threat to humanity. Launched in 2017, the organization’s mission is to accelerate the development of vaccines and other biologic countermeasures against epidemic and pandemic threats so they can be accessible to all people in need.

Vaccines are one of our most powerful tools in the fight to outsmart epidemics. The development of vaccines can help save lives, protect societies, and restabilise economies. We saw an unprecedented level of cooperation between global organisations and industry during the pandemic. Industry partners play a critical role in the global health architecture, and partnerships are core to CEPI achieving its mission.

Since its launch CEPI has made investments in 21 vaccine candidates against its priority pathogens (Lassa, MERS, Rift Valley Fever, Nipah, Chikungunya and Ebola), 14 COVID-19 vaccines and an array of enabling science projects. The organisation has also invested in the development of rapid response platforms to develop vaccines against Disease X (the threat of an unknown virus).

CEPI 2.0 and the 100 Days Mission

CEPI has embarked upon an ambitious US$3.5bn five-year plan – called CEPI 2.0 – to dramatically reduce or even eliminate the future risk of pandemics and epidemics, potentially averting millions of deaths, and trillions of dollars in economic damage.

Central to the plan is CEPI’s ambition to compress the time taken to develop safe, effective, globally accessible vaccines against new threats to just 100 days. Achieving this ‘100 Days Mission’ would give the world a fighting chance of tackling and containing outbreaks close to the source before they spread around the world and become pandemics. It is therefore a vital investment in global health security for the benefit of all.

The need for speed

CEPI is seeking to speed up the manufacturing of vaccines as a critical part of its 100 Days Mission – a goal to dramatically accelerate the development and manufacturing of vaccines against a future disease outbreak, potentially preventing a new pandemic.

Through a Call for Proposal, CEPI will identify and advance manufacturing innovations and technologies that can accelerate the time required to produce vaccines, so that they can be made more rapidly available for clinical trials and initial emergency use during future outbreaks of diseases with epidemic or pandemic potential. An estimated US$25 million will be made available to support the innovations over up to 3 years. Focus areas include:

• Platform process development, optimisation, standardisation, and acceleration.
• Analytical technologies to accelerate drug substance/product batch release and availability of master cell bank/master viral stock.
• Methods to accelerate cell-based manufacturing steps, including synthetic approach, and
• Any other manufacturing-related innovations that can accelerate clinical trial material availability.

The Call is open for submissions until 15 December 2023. 

"Achieving the 100 Days Mission would give the world a fighting chance of tackling and containing outbreaks close to the source, before they spread across the globe and become pandemics. This Call for Proposals invites manufacturing innovations that can speed up vaccine manufacturing and will be crucial if we are to condense vaccine development timelines to 100 Days. It is these innovations, whether across speed, scale and access, that will cumulatively and ultimately contribute to the success of the 100 Days Mission."

             Anand Ekambaram, Executive Director of Manufacturing and Supply Chain.

Achieving equity

Enabling global equitable access to vaccines is central to CEPI’s work and at the heart of the 100 Days Mission. Infectious diseases do not respect borders. That’s why CEPI’s mission is to accelerate the development of vaccines and other biologic countermeasures against epidemic and pandemic threats so they can be accessible to all people in need.

Future funding opportunities

For additional funding opportunities including the chance to submit candidates to an adjuvant screening library, to develop controlled human infection models for beta-coronaviruses, among others, please see our website, or get in touch for more information.

You can  read more about how the world can work together to #endpandemics, on DISEASE X – The 100 Days Mission to End Pandemics, by CEPI’s Chief Scientific Writer Kate Kelland. All author proceeds go to the World Health Organization Foundation’s COVID-19 Response.