Continuous manufacturing of viral particles

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd Cell-based production of viral particles has gain interest in the last years due to promising therapeutic applications. In the field of vaccination, novel vaccines are required to face the new pathogen outbreaks, and rapid and more efficient processes are required to respond as fast as possible to the vaccination demand worldwide. On the other hand, viral vector-driven gene therapies have demonstrated to be efficient and safe in numerous clinical trials, and three of them are already approved for commercialization. However, viral vector production is still a bottleneck in the road to the clinic. Although batch and fed-batch culture modes are preferred in industry, continuous culture strategies have demonstrated to improve viral titers and to reduce the bioprocessing costs. Therefore, there is increasing interest in exploring and optimizing continuous strategies in order to intensify viral vector production bioprocesses. This review is a summary of how continuous cultures have been applied to viral particle production (viral vaccines and viral vectors), the improvements achieved so far and the future perspectives in this field.