[HN Gopher] Exploring the Supply Chain of the Pfizer/BioNTech an...
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Exploring the Supply Chain of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna
Covid-19 Vaccines
Author : palcu
Score : 94 points
Date : 2021-01-19 19:46 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.jonasneubert.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.jonasneubert.com)
| satya71 wrote:
| I have been trying to find out why the supply of mRNA is limited.
| This article gives me hope that it can be scaled up with the
| right focus. As long as there is no fundamental science to be
| discovered, industrial processes can be scaled with enough money.
|
| It is not possible to grow chicken eggs faster. So it's been
| impossible to have anything less than a years lead time to get
| flu vaccines made in sufficient quantities.
|
| Planet money even did a show on the emergency chickens [1] (have
| they been called into service already ?). So we have the
| chickens, but no COVID vaccine that can be grown in eggs.
|
| [1] https://www.npr.org/2020/03/13/815307821/planet-money-why-
| th...
| CodeMage wrote:
| I know we're not supposed to discuss downvotes, but can anyone
| explain why this is downvoted so much? I want to know if
| there's some kind of misinformation here that I missed, so I'll
| spot it in the future.
| [deleted]
| MichaelRazum wrote:
| Wow amazing article. Thanks a lot. Interesting to see that most
| of the technology comes from Europe and US. Also interesting to
| see that it is complete independent from Asia.
| bawolff wrote:
| "The Moderna vaccine is also known as "mRNA-1273", but appears to
| lack a brand name other than "Moderna COVID-19 vaccine" which is
| what it says on the product label"
|
| Anyone else find that really refreshing?
| refurb wrote:
| It's not surprising. Desperate need for a vaccine and not
| enough supply means you don't really need branding. No doubt it
| will be branded once Covid is under control.
| vmception wrote:
| that's because Moderna is the brand, this is their first
| product and they plan to launch other vaccines under that brand
|
| they'll probably conform to the drugs themselves having brand
| names eventually like the rest of the industry
| exabrial wrote:
| ...Heartbleed, Spectre, Meltdown...
|
| VaxMod? I have no ideas :(
| linuxftw wrote:
| Interesting bits about the 'bottleneck' being the lipid envelope.
| This sounds highly proprietary and very, very new (eg, not widely
| tested). How can these products be QA'd by an independent lab to
| be free from significant defects?
|
| Are the doses being distributed produced on the same line with
| the same procedure as the doses in the trials?
| hef19898 wrote:
| This is one of the best supply chain articles I ever read. Cudos!
|
| As the article is mainly describing the supply chain, I'd like to
| add some of the challenges, especially downstream / last mile.
| The Biontech vaccine seems to be a royal pain to distribute. Cold
| chains are tricky to maintain, let alone at -70 C. Having doses
| packed in numbers larger than one makes it challenging to
| vaccinate people at the centers, the unfreezing takes some time,
| and the vaccine cannot be stored eternally once unfrozen. So you
| have to closely schedule appointments with the treatment of the
| vaccine itself for batches of people. Which cannot be allowed to
| wait in line because of COVID-19. It also means that existing
| infrastructure, doctors and care and nursing services, cannot be
| used to get the Biontech vaccine to the people. Yet another pain.
|
| At yet, we are only discussing the purchased doses. Not even the
| delivery schedules, just the total quantity. As if that was the
| real bottle neck right now.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| That's the wicked nature of this disease at this point in time.
| It's almost like it evolved to exploit the lunacy of modern
| society.
|
| The politicians are busy blaming each other, and the news
| people are busy looking for bullshit scoops.
| jcims wrote:
| >It's almost like it evolved to exploit the lunacy of modern
| society.
|
| I think you're actually correct. If the lunacy of modern
| society helped it succeed vs genetically similar organisms I
| would call that a successful adaptation.
| kart23 wrote:
| Like many others, I find the LNPs to be the most interesting
| part. It seems like Moderna was having issues with accumulation
| and toxicity issues, but changed something to make it safely
| degrade in the body. [0] Heres an interesting paper that shows
| some of the challenges. [1] 99% of it went over my head, but I
| still find the research intriguing.
|
| [0] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/12/can-multibillion-
| dol...
|
| [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7329694/
| rediguanayum wrote:
| Fantastic write up on the supply chain which is the overlooked
| challenge to these vaccines. I'll need to reread it (and again).
| Also good are the "In the pipeline" blog posts by Derek Lowe in
| Sciencemag about vaccine development:
| https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/
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