What does a vaccine factory actually look like? Salon 12/30/2020 Photo provided by Pfizer Inc. Now that pharmaceutical giants Moderna, Pfizer, and BioNTech SE have released coronavirus vaccines, the biotech industry's next hurdle is manufacturing hundreds of millions of doses in order to inoculate millions and thereby create herd immunity. Yet the manufacturing process is hard to fathom for most, as vaccines aren't mass-produced in the same way as goods like cars and toys. Indeed, the reality defies the popular conception of a "factory": the vaccines aren't stamped out like radiators. That's because the vaccine's content is microscopic — nanometers-wide strands of artificially manufactured messenger RNA encased in a lipid (fat-like molecules) sheath made of nanoparticles.