Most vaccines today are manufactured using technologies developed 40–50 years ago, often in facilities of similar antiquity, resulting in complex, uncharacterized products with relatively high production costs. As a result, the vaccine industry today is struggling to meet the challenges of improving existing products and developing new vaccines for unmet medical needs at an economical cost. The unique nature of each vaccine manufacturing process makes it difficult to develop standard platform processes and facility designs similar to those used in antibody manufacturing. While no single facility or process can meet the requirements of all vaccines, we have developed a new paradigm for vaccine manufacturing facilities which exploit the emergence and full acceptance of single use technologies, modern engineering and design concepts, and capabilities of modular construction. Modularization of facility design and construction and the application of single use technologies permit rapid construction and commissioning of vaccine facilities while significantly reducing the capital and operational expenditures required for such facilities. Using inactivated polio vaccine as a model, we present a new design concept which can be rapidly deployed in different locations adapted to market and/or tender strategies without incurring the risk or cost of excess process architecture and drug product changes.

Modern biotechnology has grown over the last 35 years to a maturing industry producing and delivering high-value biopharmaceuticals that yield important medical and economical benefits. The constantly increasing need for biopharmaceuticals and significant costs related to time-consuming R&D work makes this industry risky and highly competitive. This trend is confirmed by the important number of biopharmaceuticals that are actually under development at all stages by all major pharmaceutical industry companies. A consequence of this evolution is an increasing need for development and manufacturing capacity. The build up of traditional - stainless steel - technology is complicated, time consuming and very expensive. The decision for such a major investment needs to be taken early in the development cycle of a promising drug to cope with future demands for clinical trials and product launch. Possibilities for the reduction of R&D and manufacturing costs are therefore of significant interest in order to be competitive.In this chapter, four case studies are presented which outline ways to reduce significantly R&D and manufacturing costs by using disposable technology in the frame of a the transfer of an antibody manufacturing process, the preparation of media and buffers in commercial manufacturing and a direct comparison of a traditional and a fully disposable pilot plant.

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