--- description: Personalized cancer vaccines now have late-stage data. Scaling them depends on synthetic DNA starting material in days, not weeks of plasmid fermentation. title: "Pandemic Preparedness in 2026: We're Behind Where We Should Be" image: https://blog.artisbiosolutions.com/hubfs/Kates%20Article.png --- [![Artis BioSolutions](https://blog.artisbiosolutions.com/hubfs/logo_artis_landscape%202.svg)](https://artisbiosolutions.com) - [Home](https://artisbiosolutions.com) - [Contact](https://artisbiosolutions.com/contact) #### [← Back to Blog](https://blog.artisbiosolutions.com) ![](https://blog.artisbiosolutions.com/hubfs/Kates%20Article.png) [Synthetic DNA](https://blog.artisbiosolutions.com/tag/synthetic-dna) [Thought Leadership](https://blog.artisbiosolutions.com/tag/thought-leadership) [mRNA](https://blog.artisbiosolutions.com/tag/mrna) # Pandemic Preparedness in 2026: We're Behind Where We Should Be ![Image of Kate E. Broderick Ph.D](https://blog.artisbiosolutions.com/hubfs/1705601848264%20(2).jpg) ###### Kate E. Broderick Ph.D October 19, 2026 I could talk about this for hours, but the thing that frustrates me most is how short our collective memory has been. It's been six years since we were plunged into a global pandemic. That should still feel completely fresh in everyone's mind. Instead, people talk about it like it happened a generation ago, and we've ended up in a worse position than we were in 2019 because of how much funding for infectious disease R&D has been cut. We're not in the position of saying we never imagined this could happen. We lived through it. And we've pushed that experience out of our collective consciousness to the point where we're less prepared, not more. Hantavirus. Ebola. Those outbreaks aren't registering for most people because they haven't reached a developed country yet. That's exactly why they won't stay in the news. But they're the visceral reminder of why this matters, and it would only take one more outbreak reaching a major population center for everyone to understand exactly what was lost over these last few years. ## What COVID Exposed That Still Hasn't Been Fixed The complete dependence of the vaccine development ecosystem on a handful of fermentation CDMOs whose capacity was immediately overwhelmed. No distributed manufacturing infrastructure. No print-on-demand capability. No fallback when the supply chain concentrated under sudden demand. The approval architecture designed for a world where vaccine development takes years, not months. Both of those gaps remain substantially unfixed. The policy conversation has improved. BARDA, ASPR, and their equivalents are starting to understand that you need to buy capacity, not doses. Can you produce this volume when I need it? That's the right question. But the infrastructure to answer it credibly, distributed manufacturing nodes, rapid synthesis capability, standardized platforms, isn't yet in place at the scale the threat environment requires. ## The Surveillance Gap Pathogen surveillance that used to be managed through WHO frameworks has had US funding withdrawn. We're now doing remarkably little meaningful surveillance of emerging pathogens, which means we're on the back foot before an outbreak even starts. That's not a problem Artis can fix directly; it's a funding and political decision at a level above any single company. What it does mean is that the case for rapid-response manufacturing is even stronger. Without months of advance warning from a functioning surveillance system, you need technology that can compress the development timeline dramatically once a threat is identified. Since we can't currently buy back the surveillance window, the most practical investment is buying back the manufacturing window. ## The Sovereignty Asymmetry Japan, Israel, most of Southeast Asia, and the Gulf states have essentially zero plasmid fermentation infrastructure. They're entirely dependent on a small number of Western or Chinese CDMOs for the starting material required to develop genetic medicines or mount a vaccine response. That's a strategic vulnerability those countries understand and are acting on, in many cases more urgently than the United States. Australia and Canada have made deliberate investments to be better positioned for the next pandemic. In Europe, the Middle East, and APAC, investment in DNA and RNA manufacturing sovereignty is outpacing that in the US right now. Yes, there are real challenges in the US around R&D funding and regulatory bandwidth at the moment. But the rest of the world sees the potential of this technology and is moving toward it. I find hope in that, even when the domestic picture is complicated. ## What Synthetic DNA Changes for Pandemic Response It enables the shift from stockpile to print-on-demand. Cell-free enzymatic synthesis breaks the dependency on centralized fermentation. You can place small-footprint synthesis capability at regional manufacturing nodes and produce the starting material for a vaccine response within days of a sequence being identified. That's a genuinely different response-speed scenario from 2020. Instead of waiting months for plasmid, you're talking about a compressed timeline that could allow a vaccine program to reach clinical dosing within weeks of a novel pathogen being characterized. Practically, what we're hoping is that developers come to Artis, or to another synthetic DNA provider, the moment a pathogen is identified, because they recognize they don't have the runway for a historical plasmid cloning process. That shortened timeline, getting clinical batches manufactured much faster, is where synthetic DNA plays in a surveillance gap we can't fix ourselves. ## Key Takeaways  **We're Less Ready**  Six years after COVID, infectious disease R&D funding has been cut significantly. The field is in a worse position today than in 2019 in terms of preparedness infrastructure.    **The Surveillance Gap**  US funding for WHO pathogen surveillance has been withdrawn. Without advance warning, rapid-response manufacturing capability becomes even more critical.    **Buying Capacity, Not Doses**  The policy shift from stockpiling doses to buying manufacturing capacity is happening but hasn't resulted in the distributed infrastructure the threat environment requires.    **The Sovereignty Bottleneck**  Japan, Israel, most of Southeast Asia, and the Gulf states have zero plasmid fermentation infrastructure. Synthetic DNA is the most practical path to manufacturing sovereignty for those countries.   **Who's Moving Faster**  Australia and Canada have invested deliberately to be better positioned for the next pandemic. APAC and European urgency around DNA and RNA manufacturing sovereignty is outpacing the US.   **What Synthetic DNA Enables**  Cell-free synthetic DNA synthesis enables distributed, print-on-demand manufacturing capability that didn't exist in 2020, potentially compressing vaccine development timelines from months to weeks.  ## Frequently Asked Questions  **What did the pandemic expose about gaps in global biorisk response that still haven't been fixed?** Complete dependence on a small number of fermentation CDMOs whose capacity was immediately overwhelmed. No distributed manufacturing infrastructure. No print-on-demand capability. An approval architecture designed for years-long development timelines. Both the manufacturing and regulatory gaps remain substantially unfixed. The policy conversation has improved, but the infrastructure hasn't caught up.   **What's the biggest misread in Washington and Brussels on biodefense right now?** The focus on stockpiling doses rather than building manufacturing capacity. For years, the procurement logic has been: buy ten million doses and put them on a shelf. That model is broken for a world of novel and rapidly mutating pathogens. The right question is: can you produce this volume when I need it? That requires distributed manufacturing infrastructure and rapid synthesis capability. Synthetic DNA is the input that makes distributed manufacturing technically possible.  What is the actual production bottleneck for personalized cancer vaccines? The starting material must be synthesized in days, not weeks. If you are using plasmid DNA as the starting material for the RNA template, you are looking at weeks of lead time at best, potentially months if the bacteria do not cooperate with your sequence. With synthetic DNA, you can go from sequence to starting material in days. When you are working in a four-to-six-week window from biopsy to dose, that compression is not optional. It is what makes the program commercially viable.  **Where do you see the sharpest asymmetry in biosecurity preparedness between regions?**  The sovereignty bottleneck. Japan, Israel, most of Southeast Asia, and the Gulf states have essentially zero plasmid fermentation infrastructure. They're entirely dependent on a small number of Western or Chinese CDMOs. That dependency is a strategic vulnerability, and those countries know it. Many of them are pursuing synthetic DNA as an industrial policy response more intensively than the United States is right now. Australia and Canada have made deliberate investments to be better positioned. That asymmetry in urgency is itself concerning.    **How does synthetic DNA connect to pandemic preparedness specifically?** It enables the shift from stockpile to print-on-demand. In 2020, distributed manufacturing was conceptually discussed but technically unfeasible because the upstream DNA synthesis step still relied on centralized fermentation. Synthetic DNA removes that dependency. You can now place small-footprint synthesis capability at regional nodes and produce the starting material for a vaccine response within days of a sequence being identified. That's a genuinely different response-speed scenario from anything available in 2020. --- [**Connect with the Artis BioSolutions team**](https://artisbiosolutions.com/contact/) [**inquiries@artisbiosolution.com**](mailto:inquiries@artisbiosolution.com) **| artisbiosolutions.com** [Synthetic DNA](https://blog.artisbiosolutions.com/tag/synthetic-dna) [Thought Leadership](https://blog.artisbiosolutions.com/tag/thought-leadership) [mRNA](https://blog.artisbiosolutions.com/tag/mrna) [Learn More](https://artisbiosolutions.com/) Share this post [mailto:?subject=Check%20out%20this%20post&body=https://blog.artisbiosolutions.com/pandemic-preparedness-in-2026-were-behind-where-we-should-be](mailto:?subject=Check%20out%20this%20post&body=https://blog.artisbiosolutions.com/pandemic-preparedness-in-2026-were-behind-where-we-should-be) ## Keep reading ### [![](https://blog.artisbiosolutions.com/hubfs/Blog%209-9%20Image.png) Synthetic DNA Thought Leadership mRNA Personalized Cancer Vaccines: The Science Is Ready. 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