Sartorius helps first vaccine candidate for novel coronavirus to enter clinical trials

German biotechnology firm Sartorius (SRT: ETR) has supported CanSino Biologics (HK: 6185) and Major General Chen Wei’s team at the Institute of Bioengineering at the Academy of Military Medical Sciences in China in their development of the first vaccine candidate against the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 to enter clinical trials.

CanSinoBIO and the Institute of Bioengineering used Sartorius’ BIOSTAT STR single-use bioreactor system for the upstream preparation of the recombinant vaccine, thus ensuring the rapid linear amplification of the adenovirus vector (Ad5-nCoV) and ultimately saving time during development.

The BIOSTAT STR single-use bioreactor system comes with updated BioPAT toolbox for process monitoring, as well as Flexsafe STR integrated, single-use bioprocess bags. It has been proven to be used for vaccine manufacturing because it offers rapid scalability and flexibility to adapt to fluctuating demand. The single use bags prevent cross-contamination, and reduce the time needed for washing and sanitation typical in stainless steel bioreactors. As such, the amount of time needed to prepare a vector for a vaccine is shortened from several months to (several) weeks.