In the

pharmaceutical industry The pharmaceutical industry is a medical industry that discovers, develops, produces, and markets pharmaceutical goods such as medications and medical devices. Medications are then administered to (or self-administered by) patients for curing ...

, fill and finish (also referred to as fill finish, fill-finish or fill/finish) is the process of filling vials with

vaccine A vaccine is a biological Dosage form, preparation that provides active acquired immunity to a particular infectious disease, infectious or cancer, malignant disease. The safety and effectiveness of vaccines has been widely studied and verifi ...

, biological and pharmaceutical Drug Substances (DS) and finishing the process of packaging the medicine for distribution. Many vaccine manufacturers use third parties to fill and finish their vaccines. The fill/finish process is a common bottleneck in the manufacturing and deployment of vaccines. To address this problem, in 2013 the U.S. federal government created the Fill Finish Manufacturing Network, a network of third-party provider contracts intended to perform fill and finish operations for vaccines against future infectious diseases. As part of its response to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, the UK government has provided financial support for fill and finish operations.

References

Vaccination Manufacturing Drug manufacturing Packaging {{vaccine-stub