If some of you remember Chancellor John Sharp - and let's all pray for him right now, so sad for him because of the loss of his wife, for goodness sakes - talking to Hunter Goodwin on TexAgs about the BARDA Biotechnological Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Grant. I was told that the funding to those three sites was significantly lowered in recent years but I don't know that for sure. Isn't vaccine manufacturing one of the things they were supposed to kick butt at? Isn't that why, in part, they were built? To mass-produce vaccines and cures and get them out not only to us here in the U.S. but the entire world? Does anybody know what's going on with that?

My company manufactures our viral gene therapy vectors in college station. We were told when we started that the capacity could be taken by the government in case of an emergency, but I don't think it's happening. The equipment/process/people are specialized to the point that even switching from seemly related products takes a long time.

The whole thing was a boondoggle pushed by Perry for A&M. Once all the buildings were built they realized there was no way the government was going to use all the capacity, so they all got leased to private bio manufacturing companies. Win/win since it's a boost to the local economy and a great spot for recent grads to work.

I have to assume there is some vaccine work going on, but I don't think anything like what was originally pitched for the site is happening.