Techno-Economic Evaluation of Novel SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine Manufacturing in the Insect Cell Baculovirus Platform

Abstract

The need to increase the COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing capacity at low to middle-income countries (LMIC) led to a growing focus on Novavax (NVX-CoV2373), a thermostable protein subunit vaccine manufactured using a baculovirus and insect cell system (BICS) platform. This study aimed to conduct a techno-economic analysis to assess the BICS platform of vaccine manufacturing and compare it to the mRNA and the saRNA platform. The data from the Novavax patent for the COVID-19 vaccine formulation and the manufacturing steps were used to simulate the BICS vaccine production in SuperPro Designer. From the techno-economic analysis, the productivity of all platforms was compared in terms of doses/day per L production scale. The saRNA platform’s productivity is about 1,000-fold of the BICS platform and 20-fold of the mRNA platform. BICS is a feasible option for LMIC to produce vaccines because the cost per dose is like the saRNA platform, while the mRNA platform’s cost per dose is 7 times higher than the BICS and saRNA platforms. However, further optimization is necessary to improve the productivity of the BICS platform to match saRNA’s platform.

Keywords

• baculovirus
• covid-19
• insect cell
• techno-economic analysis
• vaccine