sIPV process development for costs reduction

Polio is expected to be eradicated within only a few years from now. Upon polio eradication, the use of oral polio vaccines, which can cause circulating and virulent vaccine derived polio viruses, will be stopped. From this moment onwards, inactivated polio vaccines (IPV) will be used for worldwide vaccination against polio. An increased demand for IPV is thus anticipated. As a result, process development studies regarding the IPV production process, developed in the 1960s, have intensified. Studies on yield optimization aiming at costs reduction as well as the use of alternative polio viruses, which are more biosafe for manufacturing, are actual. Here our strategy to setup a new IPV production process using attenuated Sabin polio virus strains is presented. Moreover, aspects on reduction of the costs of goods and the impact of process optimization on sIPV costs are reviewed.