CFPs: Innovative Analytical Platforms for Faster and More Accessible Vaccine Manufacturing

The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) is seeking proposals to develop broadly applicable analytical platform technologies that can accelerate vaccine manufacturing and improve global access during viral outbreaks. The call offers up to US$1 million per project across proof-of-concept and development phases, with a maximum project duration of 30 months.

The call focuses on reducing the time and cost required to release manufactured vaccines through faster, automated, and widely deployable analytical technologies, while expanding vaccine characterisation capabilities that generate actionable insights across different vaccine types. Proposed solutions should preferably work across multiple vaccine modalities, including RNA vaccines, protein-based vaccines, and viral vector vaccines, and should address multiple quality attributes and assay types.

CEPI launched this funding call to accelerate the development and deployment of innovative analytical platforms for vaccine manufacturing.

The initiative supports CEPI’s goal of making safe, effective, scalable, and globally accessible vaccines available within 100 days of identifying a viral outbreak.

Existing vaccine analytics can require considerable time, specialist skills , laboratory infrastructure, and financial resources. CEPI is therefore looking for technologies that can simplify, automate, and accelerate analytical processes across different vaccine platforms.

CEPI has allocated a total budget of US$10.7 million to the call.

Selected projects may receive funding through two stages:

Proof-of-concept stage: Up to US$200,000 for a maximum of 12 months.

Development stage: Up to US$800,000 for a maximum of 18 months following successful proof-of-concept results.

Maximum total funding: Up to US$1 million per project.

Maximum project duration: Up to 30 months across both stages.

Progression from the proof-of-concept stage to the development phase is conditional. Projects must demonstrate successful results before applying for additional development funding.

Developers of analytical technologies currently used in non-vaccine applications.

Organizations developing technologies that could be commercialized within three years.

Applicants should have the technical expertise and capacity to develop analytical technologies capable of improving the speed, affordability, accessibility, and scalability of vaccine manufacturing.

Be broadly applicable across different vaccine platforms.

Substantially reduce the time required for vaccine analytics.

Lower analytical testing and product-release costs.

Reduce dependence on highly specialized personnel.

Be automated or capable of supporting greater automation.

Be deployable across different manufacturing and laboratory environments.

Address multiple vaccine quality attributes or assay types.

Support faster vaccine characterisation and manufacturing decisions.

Have a realistic pathway to commercialization within three years.

Technologies already available for non-vaccine applications may be proposed if applicants can demonstrate how they will be adapted for vaccine analytics.

CEPI encourages solutions that are agnostic to vaccine modality and can be used across multiple vaccine types, including:

Other relevant vaccine manufacturing platforms.

Proposals offering broad applicability across several modalities may contribute to faster responses against different viral threats.

Priority Area One: Faster Vaccine Product Release

The first priority is to reduce the time and cost required to release manufactured vaccine products.

Proposed technologies should support faster, more automated, and widely deployable analytical processes. Solutions should reduce delays between vaccine production and product release while maintaining the analytical information required to assess vaccine quality.

Relevant approaches may reduce reliance on time-consuming assays, specialized infrastructure, or highly trained personnel.

Priority Area Two: Expanded Vaccine Characterisation

The second priority is to improve vaccine characterisation capabilities.

Technologies should generate useful and actionable information about vaccines across different modalities. These insights should support manufacturing decisions, quality assessment, process development, or product release.

Applicants are encouraged to develop platforms capable of examining multiple quality attributes and supporting different assay requirements.

Proposals must include a clear development plan that can be implemented within the programme’s timeline and budget.

A defined analytical technology or platform.

Measurable technical objectives and results.

Broad relevance to vaccine manufacturing.

Applicability across multiple vaccine modalities, attributes, or assays.

The potential to reduce time, cost, and workforce requirements.

A realistic pathway to deployment or commercialization.

The potential to improve vaccine availability during viral outbreaks.

Rapid vaccine manufacturing depends not only on developing a vaccine candidate but also on efficiently testing, characterising, and releasing manufactured products.

Analytical technologies that work across multiple vaccine platforms could reduce duplicated development efforts and shorten the time required to manufacture and distribute vaccines during an outbreak.

By supporting faster and more accessible analytics, this initiative could help manufacturers deliver scalable vaccines more quickly and strengthen equitable global access to outbreak-response tools.

Applicants should prepare a proposal describing the analytical platform technology and its relevance to vaccine manufacturing.

A competitive application should include:

A description of the proposed technology and its current stage of development.

An explanation of how the solution applies to vaccine analytics.

Details of the vaccine modalities, quality attributes, and assay types it can address.

Evidence of h