Word: flu
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...annals of pharmaceutical fumbles--and there have been some real doozies--the flu-vaccine shortage of fall 2004 occupies a special place. That crisis began when California biotech company Chiron was forced to dump 48 million doses of its flu vaccine, nearly half the U.S. supply...
Chiron's incompletely recovered operations contributed to a fifth consecutive year of initial vaccine shortages this flu season. But its largest shareholder, Swiss drug firm Novartis, did not dump its stake in the company. Quite the opposite. Novartis CEO Daniel Vasella decided to buy for $5.1 billion the 58% of Chiron that Novartis does not own, and the Federal Trade Commission approved the deal last month. But the California hedge fund ValuAct, which owns 5% of Chiron, has announced that it intends to vote against the deal, calling Novartis' $45 per share offer "tantamount to stealing the company." Vasella, however...
...vaccines have lately begun to look more promising. Wood Mackenzie expects the market to grow from $9 billion in 2004 to $13 billion by 2009. Why? Ironically enough, Chiron's 2004 snafu had a bracing effect on Capitol Hill. Beset by fears of a possible bird-flu pandemic, Congress last month approved $3.8 billion for flu-pandemic preparation, most of it earmarked for buying vaccines and medicines. The defense appropriations bill carrying the provision also controversially provides vaccine manufacturers with a virtually airtight shield from liability...
Although Chiron has won a $62.5 million government contract to develop a vaccine against the currently dreaded H5N1 bird flu, which has killed scores of people in Asia, Vasella says the pandemic scare isn't what drove his decision to buy the firm. He points out that there's still a lucrative market for new vaccines against viral and bacterial infections that afflict developed nations, like meningitis and, yes, the flu. "New vaccines for diseases prevalent in developed countries could be priced very differently," he says. And scientific advances, he adds, may soon make it possible to treat a range...
More than half of the $7.1 billion that President Bush wants to spend preparing for a flu pandemic is dedicated to finding better ways to make antiviral drugs and vaccines, an investment that scientists say is long overdue. Flu vaccines were being grown in chicken eggs more than 50 years ago, and that's how they're still made today. It's a painfully slow procedure that takes about nine months, with much of that time devoted to the hit-or-miss process of incubating viruses in the chicken eggs...