Preparedness for Pandemic Flu Outbreak: A Case for Business Continuity and Technology-Transfer Planning

To succeed in a pandemic flu outbreak, the biopharmaceutical industry must unite, disregard proprietary and competitive issues, and forge a preparedness plan to ensure adequate vaccines. A business continuity plan is essential. Such a plan must address three key areas: maximum tolerable disruption period, recovery-time objective, and process resilience. Technical and regulatory hurdles must be overcome, in through the pursuit of new vaccines, including those that use cell-culture and recombinant manufacturing An effective pandemic preparedness plan would involve manufacturing scale-up, production optimization, and shared capacity among organizations.