CU Boulder Today: Why developing a successful COVID-19 vaccine is only half the battle

23 Apr CU Boulder Today: Why developing a successful COVID-19 vaccine is only half the battle

By Kelsey Simpkins
CU Boulder Today

Photo courtesy of CU Boulder Today.

Step 1: Create a vaccine for COVID-19. Step 2: Distribute it across the world.

This second step may be even more challenging than the first, which is why CU Boulder researchers and the CU spinoff VitriVax Inc., are so focused on finding a way to get vaccines to 7.8 billion people.

This multidisciplinary team is working to build a pilot-scale system capable of producing 10,000 to 100,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines per run that would be ready for use as human trials of vaccines begin in the next year. The research team is able to do so with funding, licensing and startup support from Venture Partners at CU Boulder, the university’s commercialization arm. They also received a recent grant from the Boettcher Foundation, which has awarded nearly $1 million to researchers from Colorado’s top universities and hospitals to help combat the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It has to be a solution that is suitable for the entire world,” said project lead Theodore Randolph, Gillespie Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and co-director of the Center for Pharmaceutical Biotechnology.