The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the need to rapidly develop, produce and distribute large quantities of new vaccines. A team of researchers at Purdue University and Merck & Co. Inc., known as Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp. outside of the U.S. and Canada, has now introduced a new analytical tool that could help pharmaceutical companies boost vaccine production with rapid monitoring and analysis. The research team, led by Mohit Verma, associate professor of agricultural and biological engineering at Purdue, validated the patent-pending tool in tests that successfully measured the quality and quantity of continuously flowing viral particles.