Flu vaccines have been made in the same way for nearly 70 years: based on growing the flu virus in chicken eggs or mammalian cells, which is then inactivated and processed to be made into vaccines.
The disadvantage of this approach is there can be much variability in the finished product – the virus can mutate during vaccine production – and the production process must be updated for every new strain.
The manufacturing process for the RNA vaccine is also simpler that the current vaccine technology. At research scale, Pfizer estimates RNA vaccine can be made eight days after the sequence of a new flu virus is first known.
Pfizer’s mRNA flu vaccine – also in partnership with BioNTech but started in 2018 before the companies’ COVID-19 collaboration – is set to enter human trials this month, said Frank A. D’Amelio, Pfizer CFO and executive VP of global supply, at the Morgan Stanley 19th Annual Global Healthcare Conference this week.
“Current vaccines for flu provide 40% to 60% protection,” said D’Amelio. “And it can be lower than that in vaccine years where there’s a poor matching of the strains, right, because it’s all about the matching of the strains when it comes to flu.
“So we think if we can provide a vaccine that provides much more protection, and when we can do more timely manufacturing of the known strains, that combination of that better manufacturing… [and]… strain knowledge manufacturing… we think that could provide much greater protection to patients relative to the flu.