A month after swine flu was declared a global pandemic, the federal government has awarded MedImmune with yet another multimillion-dollar contract to test its nasal spray flu technology as a viable treatment for the new virus.
MedImmune won the additional $61 million contract from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, six weeks after it accepted a $90 million contract from the agency to manufacture ingredients for a potential vaccine for the H1N1 virus, which had been widely dubbed as the swine flu.
MedImmune, now the Gaithersburg subsidiary of the London-based AstraZeneca PLC, is using the funding to produce and test the flu-fighting technology it uses in its seasonal FluMist product for the H1N1 virus, which has reached the highest warning levels on the pandemic scale.
The follow-up awards were given to four of five pharmaceuticals that the federal government has been contracting with to produce potential vaccine materials — Sanofi Pasteur SA, GlaxoSmithKline PLC, Novartis AG, CSL Ltd. and MedImmune.
In all, the agency has spent nearly $1.9 billion to date on these contracts., MedImmune’s combined $150 million in awards have been the smallest so far of those companies.
MedImmune sets itself apart from many other companies with its live-attenuated flu vaccine technique, which uses a live, but weakened, strain of the virus to induce an immune response from the patient. The biotech company has said that process can protect against various circulating flu strains at once, even if they’re not perfectly matching the original strain it was aiming to treat.
“We’re putting significant internal resources toward this project to deliver on this commitment and move the process forward as fast as we can,” said Karen Lancaster, a spokeswoman at MedImmune. She said the company has identified a swine flu strain, entered the manufacturing stage and could produce an estimated 35 million to 40 million finished doses, similar to its FluMist seasonal counts.
Health and Human Services officials, who plan to reserve these vaccines for its national stockpile for use on priority populations in an emergency, said that clinical trials of the potential vaccines are expected to begin next month with some preliminary rounds of clinical data appearing as early as September. The agency said it can’t determine how many doses will be produced in all until it’s determined what, and how many, vaccine materials work the best.
Local governments also received federal funds to help prepare against swine flu outbreaks. The District’s public health officials received nearly $500,000, while hospitals in the city received nearly $300,000. In Maryland, public health officials received $4.8 million, while hospitals received more than $1.6 million. And in Virginia, public health officials received $6.5 million, while hospitals received more than $2.2 million.