Overview of recent advances in Vero cells genomic characterization and engineering for high-throughput vaccine manufacturing

Background The Vero cell line is the most used continuous cell line for viral vaccine manufacturing with more than 30 years of accumulated experience in the vaccine industry. Nonetheless, virus production yield with Vero cells remains limited. Therefore, given Vero cell line infection susceptibility to a wide range of viruses, alleviating limitations of viral replication and increasing production kinetics in Vero cells could significantly reduce vaccine production time and cost.Conclusion Until recently, the lack of a reference genome for the Vero cell line has limited the understanding of Vero cells behavior in defined culture conditions as well as host-virus interactions underlying the affinity of the Vero cell line with emerging and re-emerging pathogens. Importantly this limited our ability to re-design high-yield vaccine production processes using Vero genome editing. The Vero cell line is the most used continuous cell line for viral vaccine manufacturing. Updated reference genome of Vero cells will enable editing of the cell line and cost effective production of viral vaccines for pandemic preparedness. image