New UW College of Engineering Course Examines Vaccine Manufacturing

Upper division University of Wyoming students will get an opportunity to learn more about the development and manufacturing of vaccines with a new elective offered at the university. 

Stages of vaccine production from discovery to commercialization are the focus of a new UW Department of Chemical Engineering elective course, titled “Vaccine Manufacturing.”

Scheduled for fall 2020, the course is for upper-division undergraduate students in chemical engineering, chemistry, microbiology, biology, pharmacy or pre-medicine, according to a UW press release.

UW Department of Chemical Engineering Professor Michael Pishko will teach the course Aug. 24-Dec. 4. The 15-week course will be presented through WyoCourses, the platform for UW online instruction.

“The course focuses not on the discovery of a candidate vaccine, but on the equally challenging topic of how does one take that laboratory discovery and produce it safely and reliably for millions of people,” Pishko said in the release.

Topics covered in the course will include a review of immunology; types of vaccines; manufacturing process development and scale-up; packaging; quality control; regulatory requirements; emerging technologies for rapid vaccine scale-up; and production.

“Students will learn how common vaccines are made, the process by which vaccines like those for COVID-19 are tested and approved, and emerging technologies that may lead to more reliable and rapid vaccine production,” Pishko said.

For more information about the “Vaccine Manufacturing” course, email Pishko at mpishko@uwyo.edu.