Towards in silico Process Modeling for Vaccines

Chemical, manufacturing, and control development timelines occupy a significant part of vaccine end-to-end development. In the on-going race for accelerating timelines, in silico process development constitutes a viable strategy that can be achieved through an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven or a mechanistically oriented approach. In this opinion, we focus on the mechanistic option and report on the modeling competencies required to achieve it. By inspecting the most frequent vaccine process units, we identify fluid mechanics, thermodynamics and transport phenomena, intracellular modeling, hybrid modeling and data science, and model-based design of experiments as the pillars for vaccine development. In addition, we craft a generic pathway for accommodating the modeling competencies into an in silico process development strategy. The development of mechanistically oriented in silico processes would be useful for vaccines.Fluid mechanics, thermodynamics and transport phenomena, intracellular modeling, hybrid modeling and data science, and model-based design of experiments are pivotal competences for in silico process development.A generic pathway can accommodate these modeling competencies into an in silico process development strategy.