Division/Committee: [BIOT: Division of Biochemical Technology]

The pandemic helped to highlight the inequitable access to vaccines that exists for patients in underserved communities worldwide based on both local resources and community location. Beyond vaccines, access to diverse therapeutic interventions including small molecule drugs, protein-based biologics like monoclonal antibodies, cell and gene therapies and disease diagnostics of all kinds are seriously limited largely due to the significant costs associated with the legacy manufacturing of these products in high income countries (HICs). The democratization of healthcare for patients in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) or underserved communities within HICs will require advances in manufacturing, potentially deployable in-region, that cost effectively produce therapies intentionally addressing the specific needs of each community, including storage conditions, ease of use and access, and regionally predominant comorbidities. This session will highlight recent innovative manufacturing technologies that support target product profiles for therapies relevant to underserved populations globally. We welcome abstracts that touch on platform technologies and broadly deployable innovations that could improve patient outcomes through greater accessibility to diverse products through lower costs, increased scale or improved process and/or product simplicity. These manufacturing innovations may include advancements in specific aspects of the production, formulation, delivery or analytical assessments of a therapeutic intervention. Involvement of underserved communities in the creation of their own healthcare solutions is top of mind, thus innovations that contribute to distributed manufacturing (DM) approaches for products are particularly of interest.

Ujwal Patil

University of Houston

Appearances