Critical Needs for Animal-Vaccine Manufacturing
An Expert Interview
Brian Gazaille and Sarah Stefancin, with Gustavo Mendes
This article was originally published in BioProcess International's Vaccines featured report, February 2026.
Demand for vaccines has reached unprecedented levels, driven especially by the need to protect livestock. Yet such vaccines have distinctive production requirements compared with those of vaccines for human use. Corning Life Sciences offers its clients trusted products for success at every stage of development and manufacture. Speaking with BPI editors, Gustavo Mendes (senior cell biologist at Corning Life Sciences) discusses his company’s work in the animal-vaccine industry and the workflows involved in such products’ manufacture.
Historically, how has your company supported manufacturing for animal vaccines?
Corning has worked closely with the animal-vaccine industry for many years, serving as a pioneer in both glass and plastic technologies that have enabled the industry’s growth. For years, Corning has partnered with animal-vaccine manufacturers to develop and supply reliable, high-quality products essential for vaccine research, development, and production. Our organization has established a reputation for delivering dependable solutions that support the evolving needs of the vaccines market, helping manufacturers scale and innovate with confidence.
How would you describe current demand for animal vaccines? What types of vaccines are most in demand and for what species or applications?
The global meat industry is expanding rapidly, with rising economic growth enabling more countries to increase animal-protein consumption than ever before. In regions where meat was once less accessible due to cultural or economic factors, increased wealth and market development have driven significant growth in animal production. As production methods have modernized to meet that demand, animals often are raised in well-managed, high-density environments. Although such advances support efficient food production, they also require careful attention to animal health. Vaccination therefore has become increasingly important as a proactive strategy to help maintain healthy herds and flocks. Demand for animal vaccines has reached unprecedented levels, driven by the need to protect livestock against diseases that threaten large-scale operations and food-supply stability. The most in-demand vaccines typically target major livestock species such as poultry, swine, and cattle.
How are such animal vaccines manufactured? What processes and equipment types are involved, and how significantly do those differ from processes and materials used to produce human vaccines?
The production of animal and human viral vaccines shares a common foundation: both typically begin with the cultivation of host cells to propagate viruses, which are then harvested, purified, and formulated. However, there are important distinctions in approach, technology, and regulatory requirements.
For animals, attenuated (live but weakened) vaccines are especially common. Their production usually involves cultivating large numbers of mammalian or avian cells, either in suspension cultures or, quite frequently, on adherent cell lines grown on surfaces such as roller bottles, multilayer vessels, and advanced systems that provide high surface area per footprint. The virus is introduced to those cell cultures and allowed to replicate before being harvested and processed for vaccine formulation. Additionally, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is responsible for regulating animal vaccines. The overall workflow tends to be more streamlined and less complex compared with those for many human-vaccine processes, owing in part to less stringent regulatory oversight and a focus on established vaccine types.
Although similar vaccine modalities are used, human vaccine manufacturing requires an array of bioprocessing technologies, such as advanced bioreactors for large-scale cell culture, specialized purification systems, and complex downstream processing steps. Human-vaccine production is also subject to far more rigorous regulatory scrutiny compared with that of animal-vaccine production, with strict controls on safety, purity, and consistency at every stage. Such vaccines are regulated by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Key equipment types for both animal and human vaccine manufacturing include cell-culture vessels (roller bottles, multilayer flasks, modules that provide high surface area per footprint for adherent cells, or stirred-tank bioreactors for suspension cultures), systems for viral infection, and downstream purification equipment such as filtration and chromatography systems. However, human vaccine production often leverages higher degrees of automation, closed systems, and singleuse technologies to meet regulatory expectations for containment and sterility.
Do animal-vaccine processes raise distinctive requirements for sera, culture media, and so on?
By contrast with the human-vaccine industry, which is moving rapidly toward alternatives to fetal bovine serum (FBS), the animal-vaccine sector still relies heavily on FBS and traditional basal media formulations. Roller bottles remain the most prevalent cell-culture platform for animal-vaccine production, followed by multilayer flasks and stirred-tank bioreactors.
What are some key challenges in animal vaccine manufacturing? How do those compare with challenges in producing human vaccines, and how does Corning help manufacturers to overcome those distinctive factors?
Animal-vaccine manufacturers face the dual challenge of remaining competitive in a demanding market while embracing new technologies to improve efficiency and reduce contamination risks. With rising demand, producers are expanding capacity, often operating multiple vessels and scaling up production lines, to serve both livestock and domestic animal-vaccine markets. All of those activities must be accomplished under significant economic constraints; for example, poultry vaccines are typically priced between US$1 and $5 per 1000 doses, putting constant pressure on cost-effectiveness, quality, and innovation. Although the human-vaccine industry deals with many of the same issues, such as technology adoption and contamination control, it generally benefits from pricing flexibility and a different market dynamic, allowing for broad investment in complex manufacturing solutions.
At Corning, our commitment to customers extends well beyond supplying high-quality products. When our partners face process challenges (such as minimizing contamination risk, expanding production, or implementing new technologies) we provide practical, hands-on support. Such support includes technical guidance, sharing protocols, tailored training, and collaborative troubleshooting to address specific needs, including those related to domestic animal vaccines. Our goal is to work alongside our customers to help them achieve reliable, scalable, and efficient manufacturing outcomes. We believe that this approach — combining technical expertise with true partnership — creates lasting value in the evolving animal-vaccine industry.
What can vaccine manufacturers gain by leveraging customization services and related offerings (e.g., for custom culture media)?
Although all manufacturers must meet the same regulatory standards, the underlying needs of each company can differ significantly, even when producing the same type of vaccine. For example, imagine two companies use the same cell type to manufacture a vaccine. On paper, their processes might appear identical, but each cell line could come from a different source, be at a different passage number, or have unique growth characteristics. Those subtle differences can make a process require tailored supplementation, guidance, and optimization to achieve optimal results. Complexity increases further when factoring in the requirements of the specific virus or bacteria being produced. Customization services, such as designing specific culture media formulations or process adjustments, enable manufacturers to address those unique variables and ensure robust, efficient, and high-quality production that a standard solution might not deliver.
What are the most significant scalability barriers for animal-vaccine programs, and how do you support scale-up for such programs?
A central challenge in animal-vaccine manufacturing today is the distinction between scaling up and scaling out. Historically, most production sites in the industry were designed decades ago around roller-bottle technology and can run thousands of bottles per batch. That approach made sense for the market at the time, but as demand has grown, those sites have reached their physical and operational limits. Scaling out, which adds production lines and/or space, has become increasingly difficult due to footprint limitations and infrastructure constraints.
Modern solutions focus on scaling up, which involves increasing the production capacity of each vessel to reduce the overall facility footprint and operational complexity. Technologies such as modules that provide significantly large surface areas within the same facility footprint, such as the Corning CellCube system, offer manufacturers the ability to consolidate production, increase yields per batch, and enable both efficient scale-up and manageable scale-out. By adopting such advanced systems, producers can overcome legacy barriers, meet growing market needs, and position themselves for flexible, future-ready manufacturing.
What would you say are the biggest opportunities ahead for animal-vaccine manufacturing? In what ways will such processes continue to modernize, and how will Corning support that?
The animal-vaccine industry stands at a pivotal moment of opportunity, with modernization shaped by true partnership and practical innovation. Corning is committed to supporting modernization efforts in a number of ways.
Communicating and Enabling Customization: Listening to manufacturers is essential. Customization services help companies to get more from their current sites and equipment, which can extend the lives of existing facilities.
Co-Creating the Next Generation: The most useful ideas for new products and methods come from conversations with people who work directly in production. By staying close to teams on the ground, we gain real insight into what’s needed for the next generation of manufacturing and use that feedback to guide future development.
Supporting Practical Transitions: There is a clear need to move beyond roller bottles toward controlled and scalable systems, such as modules that provide significantly large surface areas within the same facility footprint. Not every technology fits every budget, so it’s important to focus on practical improvements that make a real difference in day-today manufacturing. Through our commitment to listening to our customers, tailoring bespoke solutions, and support for stepwise modernization, Corning is dedicated to helping the animal-vaccine industry move forward with efficiency, flexibility, and readiness for future challenges.
What unique role do animal vaccines play within the broad vaccine industry? The needs, challenges, and realities of animal-vaccine producers are distinct, and it is important to consider when developing solutions. Real change comes from understanding those differences and offering support that improves what manufacturers can achieve.
From my years of experience in vaccine manufacturing, I have seen the value of introducing new technologies. Gradual adoption works best when it happens step by step, respecting the pace and priorities of each producer. Many Corning customers are not just clients, but also close collaborators. We work together to improve current processes, discuss future possibilities, and provide service as a team. Ongoing partnership is key to making meaningful progress in animal-vaccine manufacturing.
Gustavo Mendes is a senior cell biologist at Corning Life Sciences, 836 North Street, Building 200, Tewksbury, MA 01876. Brian Gazaille, PhD, is managing editor at BioProcess International; brian.gazaille@informa.com. And Sarah Stefancin is associate technical editor at BioProcess International; sarah.stefancin@informa.com.