The BioSante presentation, “BioVant Calcium Phosphate (CaP) Nanoparticles: An Effective & Safe Adjuvant for Influenza Vaccines including H1N1 and H5N1,” showed that BioVant-adjuvant effectively enhanced the natural immune response to the swine flu, using a BioVant-adjuvanted matrix protein M1 vaccine, and to H5N1 (bird flu), using a BioVant-adjuvanted H5N1 vaccine delivered via intranasal administration.

Fears about swine flu have spurred more than 3,000 people so far to volunteer to take part in upcoming clinical trials of a new vaccine. That’s already more than the number scientists will need at eight different sites around the U.S. “We don’t generally ever get a response like this,” Dr. Lisa Jackson, the principal researcher in charge of the clinical trials being readied at Seattle-based Group Health Cooperative, which fielded more than a thousand calls from people in two days.

Analysts note that the pandemic couldn’t have come at a better time for Glaxo, one of the world’s largest vaccine makers. Generics have been steadily eating into the company’s margins, leaving Glaxo looking for new products to make up the shortfall.

Novartis is one of five big manufacturers preparing swine flu vaccines for the U.S. market, a CDC official says. Dr. Pascale Wortley, the CDC’s pandemic-vaccine coordinator, says that by October the U.S. expects to have between 40 million and 160 million doses of vaccine ready for use. That could mean that this fall, U.S. school children may be expected to get a seasonal flu shot as well as a double dose of swine flu vaccine.

Since 2004, HHS has contracted with manufacturers that currently hold U.S. licenses for flu vaccine as part of the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza. In May 2009, HHS issued new orders on these contracts to produce a bulk supply of vaccine antigen and adjuvant and to produce pilot (also called investigational) lots of a 2009 H1N1 vaccine.