Flu Vaccine

U.K. to double flu-drug stockpile

Tracy Staton — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 10:31:44 -0400

Good news for Roche and GlaxoSmithKline: The U.K. is planning to double its stockpile of anti-flu meds to prepare for a possible pandemic. The government has secured enough drugs to dose about one-fourth of its population; now it wants to up that fraction, and so it's soliciting proposals from drugmakers who want to fill the gap. Roche, of course, makes Tamiflu, and GSK sells Relenza--the two antivirals governments tend to store against pandemic flu.

As you know, Roche recently introduced a program by which it would set aside Tamiflu for governments and companies that want to secure a supply; the drugmaker would keep the supply within date and ship it out on demand.

Antibiotics makers could benefit from the U.K.'s new stockpiling effort, too. The government plans to store those drugs to help treat complications of the flu, such as pneumonia. A recent study showed that during the last major flu pandemic, in 1918, bacterial illnesses that cropped up in flu patients killed more people than the flu virus did on its own.

- read the story in the Telegraph

Microbix teams with China on vaccine plant

Tracy Staton — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 10:08:01 -0400

More evidence that Asia is the place to be these days: Canada's Microbix Biosystems is plotting a $200 million flu vaccine plant in Hunan province. The cooperative deal puts Microbix in partnership with the Hunan government, which will put up $100 million of the funding. The rest will come from Microbix's licensing partners.

Considering the growing importance of Asian markets, the steady drumbeat of avian flu news, the fact that flu viruses tend to emerge first in Asia, and the burgeoning vaccine market worldwide, Microbix could find itself perfectly positioned when the plant is up and running in 2013. The plant will be capable of churning out 100 million doses of flu vaccine annually using Microbix's proprietary Virusmax technology, for which it garnered a Chinese patent last month.

In a funny little quirk, the deal includes a "token of goodwill and friendship" for the Chinese people onsite: a full-scale replica of the birthplace of Dr. Norman Bethune, a Canadian doctor who became a hero in China for his medical work with the communist army resisting Japan in the late 1930s.

- check out the Microbix release
- see the Canadian Press article

Garnier hangs up on BBC interview

Tracy Staton — Tue, 20 May 2008 10:18:18 -0400

The British press is abuzz today with the fact that outgoing GlaxoSmithKline CEO Jean-Pierre Garnier abruptly ended a BBC interview when it turned adversarial. Apparently, Garnier agreed to appear on the program to talk about GSK's new pandemic flu vaccine, Prepandrix. But host James Naughtie deviated from the subject, asking about the recent dust-up over Seroxat (Paxil). Garnier got increasingly agitated as Naughtie repeated the same queston--seven times!--then politely cut off the interview and hung up.

You'll recall that the U.K. government had been investigating GSK's handling of data about potential Seroxat safety problems in children; though investigators concluded the company hadn't broken the law, they said the real problem was that the law wasn't stringent enough, and scolded GSK for withholding data.

- read the item at The Guardian's TV and radio blog
- see the story in The Times
- get more from The Herald