Acambis developing universal flu vaccine
pharmafile | August 17, 2005 | News story | Research and Development |
Acambis has started developing a flu vaccine that could alter the market by offering permanent protection against influenza and guarding against potential flu pandemics.
The Cambridge-based biotech says its vaccine candidate would only need to be given once for permanent protection against both the A and B strains of influenza.
This would give it a major advantage over current flu vaccines, which have to be changed, usually annually, to cope with mutations to the different strains of influenza.
Scientists fear a pandemic could be caused by an outbreak of a new strain, especially one that is passed to humans from animals, such as the mutations seen in bird flu that have so far proved fatal in 51 cases in Asia.
The need to continually change vaccine formulations before beginning coverage already causes delays that can be seriously exacerbated by manufacturing problems, as was the case last year when Chiron's Liverpool manufacturing plant failed safety tests.
Commenting on the problems experienced by Chiron, Gordon Cameron, chief executive of Acambis, said: "The recent influenza vaccine shortages have highlighted the inadequacies of current influenza vaccines and their manufacturing methods."
Acambis and research partner the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology will begin human trials of the vaccine candidate later this year after acquiring it from Apovia earlier this year.
The candidate will first be developed to combat influenza A but this will eventually be expanded to cover both A and B strains of the virus.
Meanwhile, Acambis is bidding for a contract to supply the US government with 20 million doses of its phase II MVA3000 smallpox vaccine candidate as part of the US defence against bio-terrorism.
Acambis has already won two similar contracts from the US Department of Health and Human Services, one worth $9.2 million in February 2003 and a second in September 2004 worth $76.3 million, with an option for an additional $55.5 million worth of vaccine.
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