Temperature Probes Help Keep Coronavirus Vaccines Alive in Transit, Experiment Shows

Temperature probes help keep coronavirus vaccines alive in transit, experiment shows

As scientists and drug companies clear the way to develop a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine, they won't be resting on their laurels. Instead, they will face another huge challenge -- making millions of doses and keeping them at extremely low temperatures. They'll get help, though, from temperature-monitoring technology that has advanced dramatically over the past few years.

Like most medicines, vaccines must be stored within a certain temperature range to remain effective. In the future, as the new crown vaccine travels from the factory to the pharmacy, small temperature probes will monitor what the vaccine encounters on the way and at its final destination. They will be embedded in packages, freezers and refrigerators at nearly every point in the vaccine transport process, and some will constantly transmit the temperature of the vaccine to officials tracking its path — a technological advancement that was not seen five years ago.

Michal Chojnacky, a member of the Thermodynamic Metrology Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, said: "The industry has just expanded at a frantic rate. Whether we know it or not, all this is preparing for this moment."

We will need billions of doses of an effective vaccine to mitigate the outbreak, but in the early days, vaccinations will be limited. Each is important to prevent someone from starting a chain of new coronavirus infections. But vaccines are fragile: It's estimated that about a quarter of vaccines that end up in doctors' offices show some signs of degradation, which doesn't mean they're unsafe, but it could mean they don't trigger an immune response strong enough to Protect people from disease. If the temperature of the vaccine is raised, it will cause the disease to worsen. It's even trickier for the two COVID-19 vaccines furthest along in development -- they must be stored at minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit.

Just a decade ago, distributing these vaccines on a large scale was much more difficult. "Back then, most drug temperature monitoring was done manually," said Kevin Riley, president of sensor company SmartSense. and clipboard."

For products like Moderna and Pfizer's vaccine candidates, which must be stored at ultra-low temperatures, this more traditional process can actually put a lot of harmful heat into the freezer. “You have to open the door to detect the temperature, and then the temperature changes — and a small part of the integrity of the product is lost,” said Joe Mundell, chief revenue officer at wireless monitoring company Sonicu.

Many pharmacies, pharmaceutical companies, and doctors' offices have begun switching to automated data loggers, which sit inside refrigerators or shipping containers and continuously monitor the internal temperature. But the data still needs to be downloaded from the device. "You have to plug it into a computer to download the data to see the temperature records," said Mark Sawicki, chief executive of Cryoport Systems, a maker of cold chain products.

Companies like SmartSense and Cryoport produce next-generation connected cold chain sensors. Small devices are inserted into transporters and freezers and continuously transmit temperature data to pharmaceutical companies and pharmacy managers. “We can now see incidents in the field that compromise packaging integrity,” Sawicki said. In some cases, this has allowed companies to make changes, such as adding dry ice, to keep products at the proper temperature.

Part of the recent push to automate temperature sensors actually started with a whole different kind of development in medical technology, one that didn't allow anything to go wrong. Gene therapies are designed for each patient and they are irreplaceable - losing product because of temperature issues is not an option. "It's forcing the industry to create better-suited platforms to support these types," Sawicki said.

Gene therapy and other treatments with extremely narrow temperature ranges are still very rare, at least compared to vaccines, so there are still many companies that have yet to adopt this new technology. "There's still a lot of manual data logging," Mundell said. But the pharmaceutical industry is ahead of other industries in adopting digital and networked displays. In 2018, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention mandated the use of digital data loggers for childhood vaccine programs. for Children Program,” Chojnacky said, “and that prompted changes in many doctors and pharmacies.”

"Many SmartSense customers, such as pharmacies and drug distribution centers, have ramped up their freezing capacity in response to the COVID-19 vaccine and higher demand for flu shots," Riley said. to make sure they're taking temperature accurately and that process is done on a regular basis. Many customers calibrate ahead of time so they don't have to do it in the winter when they distribute their vaccines. We've been rolling this out over the summer and some of the It is being rolled out at an accelerated pace.”

Distributing a COVID-19 vaccine remains a no-brainer -- officials need to manage the logistics of millions of doses and figure out how to get people to show up at vaccination sites. But as vaccine research heats up, technological innovations of the past decade are ready to help keep the final product cold.