I'm a senior at a bioprocess major. I have a capstone course project about building a mini-plant for COVID-19 vaccine. The professor told me that the main point is the production aspect, not the clinical and R&D of the vaccine itself. I would like to ask your opinion, input, and answer some assumptions that I make:

1. I choose protein-recombinat subunit vaccine (SARS-CoV-2 RBD with GST tag), because of the current development trend.

2. I choose E. coli over yeast, although yeast has better post-translational translational machinery. I choose a more common technique (more publication?), faster production, and ease in downstream purification.

3. I don't know what nutrition medium is used on an industrial scale to grow E. coli. So I assume LB with extra glucose. Or do you know which company that usually sells medium or they just make it themselves?

4. What type of chromatography should i use. The only reference that I have is only on the lab scale. They don't tell the exact volume of elution and wash buffer as well

5. Does anyone has done research about quantifying the yield of RBD SARS-CoV-2 purification. all I found is quantitative (SDS-PAGE)

Thank you for your time looking forward to reading your answer, stay healthy

Best regards FA