Quadrivalent Flu Vaccine Production

Project goal: To design an expansion to an existing production line that increases production of the flu vaccine by 50 million doses. A shortage of vaccines with the correct strand predictions has made the 2017-2018 flu season more severe than usual. The vaccine is mass produced by pharmaceutical companies throughout the world using the strains predicted by the World Health Organization. The new expansion sought to cut the production period in half. The new design allows the quadrivalent vaccines to be produced on eight lines,each including a virus injector, egg incubator, and egg harvester to create the initial vaccine serum,with two lines per strain. The process after the egg harvester involves several filtration techniques, including tangential flow filtration, ion exchange chromatography and size exclusion chromatography, which yield serum standards pure enough to be mixed with an excipient in order to be absorbed fully by a human body. The final 50 million doses will be sent to distributors, clinics and hospitals nationwide to solve the vaccine shortage.