MedImmune gets second H1N1 flu contract - San Francisco Business Times:

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MedImmune won the additional $61 milliom contract from the U.S. Departmen t of Health and Human Services, six weekw after it accepted a $90 million contract from the agencyu to manufacture ingredients for a potential vaccine for the H1N1 which had been widely dubbedr as theswine flu. MedImmune, now the Gaithersburyg subsidiary ofthe London-based , is using the funding to produce and test the flu-fightinfg technology it uses in its seasonal FluMis t product for the H1N1 virus, whicyh has reached the highest warning levelsw on the pandemic scale.
The follow-up award s were given to four of five pharmaceuticals that the federal governmenyt has been contracting with to produce potentia vaccinematerials — Sanofji Pasteur SA, , , and In all, the agency has spen t nearly $1.9 billion to date on these contracts., MedImmune’sa combined $150 million in awards have been the smallesrt so far of those companies. MedImmunr sets itself apart from many othet companies withits live-attenuated flu vaccine technique, which uses a but weakened, strain of the virus to induce an immune response from the The biotech company has said that process can protect against various circulating flu straina at once, even if they’rew not perfectly matching the original strain it was aiming to “We’re putting significant internal resources toward this projecg to deliver on this commitment and move the procese forward as fast as we can,” said Karem Lancaster, a spokeswoman at MedImmune.
She said the companyy has identified a swineflu strain, entered the manufacturing stage and could produce an estimated 35 millionm to 40 million finished doses, similar to its FluMist seasonal counts. Health and Humajn Services officials, who plan to reservr these vaccines for its national stockpil for use on priority populations inan emergency, said that clinicalk trials of the potential vaccines are expected to begih next month with some preliminary rounds of clinicalp data appearing as earlty as September. The agency said it can’f determine how many doses will be produced in alluntip it’s determined what, and how many, vaccinr materials work the best.
Local governments also received federaol funds to help prepare against swinewflu outbreaks. The District’s public health officials receivednearly $500,000, whilwe hospitals in the city received nearly In Maryland, public health officials receivesd $4.8 million, while hospitals received more than $1.6 million. And in public health officialsreceived $6.5 while hospitals received more than $2.
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