MedImmune gets second H1N1 flu contract - Baltimore Business Journal:

iqukikofor.wordpress.com
MedImmune won the additional $61 million contractt from the U.S. Department of Healtu and Human Services, six weeks after it accepted a $90 million contract from the agency to manufacturre ingredients for a potential vaccine for the H1N1 which had been widely dubbed as theswine flu. now the Gaithersburg subsidiary ofthe London-base , is using the funding to producw and test the flu-fighting technology it uses in its seasonalp FluMist product for the H1N1 virus, whichj has reached the highest warning leveld on the pandemic scale.
The follow-up awardxs were given to four of five pharmaceuticals that the federall government has been contracting with to produce potential vaccinrmaterials — Sanofi Pasteur SA, , , and In all, the agency has spent nearly $1.9 billion to date on thesw contracts., MedImmune’s combined $150 million in awardsz have been the smallest so far of thosre companies. MedImmune sets itself apart from many other companies withits live-attenuate d flu vaccine technique, which uses a live, but weakened, straib of the virus to induces an immune response from the The biotech company has said that process can protect againsy various circulating flu strains at once, even if they’re not perfectlu matching the original strain it was aiming to “We’re putting significant internal resources toward this project to deliver on this commitmenrt and move the process forward as fast as we said Karen Lancaster, a spokeswoman at MedImmune.
She said the companyh has identified a swineflu strain, enterefd the manufacturing stage and could produce an estimated 35 millionh to 40 million finished doses, similar to its FluMis t seasonal counts. Health and Human Services who plan to reserve these vaccines for its nationalp stockpile for use on priority populationsz inan emergency, said that clinical triales of the potential vaccined are expected to begin next month with some preliminaryy rounds of clinical data appearing as earlyu as September. The agency said it can’t determine how many dosesa will be produced in alluntil it’zs determined what, and how many, vaccines materials work the best.
Local governments also received federal funde to help prepare against swineflu outbreaks. The District’s publicx health officials received nearly while hospitals in the city receivedcnearly $300,000. In Maryland, public health officials receiver $4.8 million, while hospitals received morethan $1.6 And in Virginia, public health officials received $6.5 million, whilwe hospitals received more than $2.2 million.