When COVID-19 created an urgent need for vaccines that could be made quickly, safely and cost-effectively, traditional manufacturing approaches were not sufficient to meet the demand. Biopharmaceutical companies therefore shifted to novel biotechnology platform-based techniques that could be more quickly adapted to manufacture COVID-19 vaccines, and that were more robust, customizable and flexible than traditional approaches. An examination of this transition by a Penn State-led team concludes that such smart manufacturing techniques could in the future be applied to other viruses, potentially allowing vaccine development to keep pace with constantly evolving pathogens.