LONDON (Reuters UK) - The decision to choose GlaxoSmithKline's Cervarix cervical cancer vaccine over Merck and Co's Gardasil could save the government 20 million pounds annually, researchers said on Friday. The study published in the British Journal of Medicine is some of the evidence the...
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Sanofi-Aventis SA SASY expects global vaccine sales to double to 22 billion euros ($34 billion) by 2016 and will invest 4 billion euros by then to expand its production capacity to meet rising demand, the head of...
One of the problems with most vaccine manufacturing processes is that they are animal based, posing contamination issues. Dow Chemical Co. (Midland, Mich.) is working with Fraunhofer USA's Center for Molecular Biotechnology (Newark, Del.) on a new manufacturing route where vaccine protein production will take place on the leaves of...
Japanese pharma is entering the brave new world of personalized medicine, and the BIO show in Chicago in April brought with it an innovative company that is exploring new cancer treatments. Established three years ago, Green Peptide Co., Ltd. (Fukuoka, Japan) is developing targeted immunotherapies for malignant brain tumors and...
Responding to improved market conditions, manufacturers of flu vaccine have been increasing production capacity and developing and acquiring new technology. These changes come after years of depressed margins, during which three manufacturers left the U.S. market. The most dramatic trend, with the greatest implication for future supplies and products, is...
Despite the buzz about "Process Understanding" and Process and Analytical Technology PAT, vaccine manufacturing remains defiantly un-PAT-able and an extremely risky business. This paper offers important lessons in due diligence, quality management, and Good Manufacturing Practices GMPs. However, it also points out an urgent need for incentives and regulatory flexibility.
For sudden twists of fate, abrupt collapses and the occasional stunning revival, it's hard to beat the biotech industry. Yesterday, for instance, the all-but-dead biotech VaxGen agreed to sell off its ailing anthrax vaccine to its East Coast rival Emergent BioSolutions --a company that spent much of this decade trying...
With avian influenza spreading from Asia to Africa and Europe, governments are under increasing public pressure to counter the threat of a potentially deadly pandemic. They are already stockpiling antiviral drugs and vaccines, buying options on vaccine production capacity, and even using private-public partnerships to build production plants. Well intentioned...
Globalization is likely to affect many aspects of public health, one of which is vaccine-preventable communicable diseases. Important forces include increased funding initiatives supporting immunization at the global level; regulatory harmonization; widespread intellectual property rights provisions through the World Trade Organization agreements; the emergence of developing-country manufacturers as major players...
Concern has been rising about the nation's preparedness to respond to vaccine shortages that could occur in future annual influenza seasons or during an influenza pandemic--a global influenza outbreak. This paper provides a statement on lessons learned from the 2004-05 vaccine shortage and their relevance to planning and preparing for...
The paper presents a systematic approach to search for an effective vaccination schedule using mathematical computerized models. Our study is based on our previous model that simulates the cancer vs. Immune System competition activated by tumor vaccine. This model accurately reproduces in-vivo experiments results on HER-2/neu mice treated with the...
Human beings have benefited from vaccines for more than two centuries. This paper explores the history of vaccines and immunization, beginning with Edward Jenner's creation of the world's first vaccine for smallpox in the 1790s. It then demonstrates that many of the issues salient in Jenner's era - such as...
During the past fifty years, the number of pharmaceutical companies making vaccines has decreased dramatically, and those that still make vaccines have reduced resources to make new ones. Pharmaceutical companies are gradually abandoning vaccines because the research, development, testing, and manufacture of vaccines are expensive and because the market to...
Vaccine development has historically relied on approaches such as live attenuated, subunit, and whole-cell vaccine designs to present antigens to the immune system. These strategies are no longer nimble enough to rapidly address public health threats, particularly emerging infectious diseases. New vaccines will require a strong scientific base partnered with...
Recent supply interruptions of childhood vaccines have had negative impacts on U.S. public health policies and vaccine delivery. To understand how manufacturers perceive production incentives and disincentives, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention CDC met with the four pharmaceutical firms that sold vaccines through CDC-negotiated contracts during 2002 and...
In U.S. vaccine markets, competing producers with high fixed, sunk costs face relatively concentrated demand. This tends to lead to exit of all but one or very few producers per vaccine. Detailed evidence of exits and shortages in the flu vaccine market demonstrates the importance of high fixed costs, demand...
Controversy over vaccine safety has achieved high visibility over the past decade. At the same time, however, levels of coverage for routinely recommended childhood vaccines in the United States are at their highest ever. The paper examines this apparent paradox. It considers the ways in which concerns over vaccine safety...
Adverse publicity that placed undue emphasis on a possible connection between autism and the measles-mumps-rubella MMR vaccine and vaccines containing thimerosal made parents in the United Kingdom reluctant to allow their children to receive the vaccine. The same concerns have played themselves out in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's...
Immunization is a great success of preventive medicine. In the United States, most vaccine-preventable diseases of childhood are at or near record lows while the number of diseases preventable by vaccination has increased. These successes result from a comprehensive system that includes basic research; developing and testing vaccine candidates; a...
The fragile processes that lead to the immunization of populations are increasingly subject to breakdown, as the U.S. shortages of influenza vaccine demonstrated the past two winters. These episodes are emblematic of an unrelenting series of vaccine shortages that have occurred over many years. For example, since 1998, nine of...
