Prioritizing Safety While Accelerating Production of the COVID-19 Vaccine

Although the development process for vaccines is always intricate and time-consuming, the process of developing a vaccine for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) presents a myriad of new challenges, as researchers race to complete it in record time.

United States Pharmacopeia (USP) has played a unique role in these efforts, said Fouad Atouf, PhD, vice president of global biologics at USP. The organization has provided free technical assistance to developers, including trainings and other support for investigators to use the publicly available standards that USP produces.

“This is part of the USP public quality standard’s support, which can provide scientists, developers, manufacturers, and regulators with tools to ensure the quality and development of vaccines and other treatments that the public can trust,” Atouf said.

Once the vaccine is released, Atouf said pharmacists will play a vital role both because of their accessibility and because of their various roles throughout the pharmaceutical industry and manufacturing space.

“I think the group of pharmacists that work across the group of stakeholders will help ensure quality of the drugs and the development with all of those aspects that we discussed earlier,” Atouf said.