Vaccination News

Let's see, Sanofi invests  €160 million last year, then produces 170 million influenza shots this year. The price of a single shot varies between $10 and $15 (according to CDC). Gross profit would make $1.7 billion, at least. 800% ROI? Not bad.  What was the key factor of this outcome? A fear. Consumers' fear.

Don't forget that some pharma companies were doubling the price (Some Suppliers Jack Up Flu Vaccine Price, The Washington Post, Oct.14, 2006). And now there's a huge surplus of influenza vaccines stocked in clinics. Will we see another warning about some new virus, dangerous and deadly, for sure?

Sanofi pasteur, the vaccines business of the sanofi-aventis Group (NYSE: SNY; EURONEXT: SAN), announced that it completed production of more than 170 million doses of influenza vaccine in 2006. Sanofi pasteur confirmed its leadership as one of the world’s largest manufacturers of seasonal influenza vaccine, supplying a very significant portion of the estimated global production of about 350 million doses.

As the global influenza vaccine leader, Sanofi pasteur has been steadily increasing its manufacturing capacity. Since 2003, capacity has increased by more than 40% in line with the company’s commitment to serve a central role in the fight against a disease that causes between three and five million cases of severe illness and between 300,000 and 500,000 estimated deaths every year around the world according to the Word Health Organization. In addition, sanofi pasteur’s leadership position in developing and producing influenza vaccines places the company at the forefront of readiness against the threat of pandemic influenza. The company is committed to producing as many doses of sanofi pasteur’s most advanced vaccine in the shortest possible timeframe, should a pandemic be declared by the world’s health authorities.

Another vaccine for newborns and infants? Sounds like a plan. A plan to fulfill another plan. Such as Pfizer's plan to increases the global vaccine sales to 30+ billion USD by 2015.

I can only hope that vaccinations won't be made obligatory worldwide. Though this hope may die by the time 2015 will arrive.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Doctors said rotavirus is a contagious, gastrointestinal illness that is especially dangerous to infants.

Experts at Children's Mercy Hospital are encouraging parents to make sure their babies receive a new rotavirus vaccine as part of their immunization schedule.

Rotavirus is a common childhood illness, characterized by fever, vomiting and watery diarrhea. It can cause severe dehydration in infants and toddlers.

AMSTERDAM, Dec 27 (Reuters) - Dutch biotechnology firm Crucell (CRCL.AS, CRXL.O) said on Wednesday it has signed a cross-licensing agreement with U.S. drugmaker Merck (MRK.N) on its vaccine production technology.

"This agreement will make it possible to speed up the delivery of our malaria and TB vaccines to the people in need, and makes it realistic to do so on the mass scale required," Jaap Goudsmit, chief scientific officer at Crucell, said in a statement.

© Reuters 2006

Vaccine and medical test maker BioVeris Corp. said Tuesday it licensed a Baxter Healthcare Corp. meningitis vaccine for use in a combination vaccine that would require fewer injections per doctor visit.

Under the deal, BioVeris will receive nonexclusive, worldwide patent rights to the development, testing or use of the Neisseria meningitidis group C vaccine.

BioVeris did not disclose financial terms of the deal, but said it paid a license issue fee and may also make future payments for patent costs, milestone fees related to clinical trials and regulatory approvals.

2006 was a very big year when it came to health news. New drug approvals, new vaccines, health scares that never quite made it and health scares that keep coming back for more. They were all part of the big year in health news in 2006.

2006 could easily be named the year of the vaccine. Several new shots hit the market: the first shingles vaccine, a whooping cough, or pertussis vaccine, for adults and a new, safer rotavirus vaccine to prevent the common diarrheal illness in children.

The biggest news, perhaps, surrounded the cervical cancer vaccine. It's approved for pre-teen girls to prevent HPV--human papilloma virus--the sexually transmitted virus that triggers cervical cancer.

A study has found that men with advanced, often untreatable prostate cancer who received a therapeutic cancer vaccine went on to survive longer than those receiving a placebo.
Study findings showed the vaccine group lived up to an average of four-and-a-half months longer and had a greater than three-fold increase in survival at 36 months when compared to patients in the placebo group.

The study is published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

The double-blind, placebo-controlled phase III clinical trial was conducted to test the efficacy of the vaccine, called sipuleucel-T, in delaying disease progression and prolonging survival in patients with asymptomatic metastatic hormone refractory prostate cancer (HRPC).

Uganda has screened and vaccinated at least a quarter of the 50 babies needed for vaccine trial focused on prevention of HIV transmission from mother to child during breastfeeding.

The first baby in the vaccine trials was enrolled in October and by last week 14 of them had received either the vaccine or placebo saline solution (for control) while 16 have been screened to participate. 

Health technician Hamit Öztürk has been paralyzed due to thenflu vaccine. Öztürk stayed at the hospital for 15 days. He was saved by cleansing of his blood from antigens. Öztürk got the flu shot in the corporate office of the government doctor of the ministry of health on November 21.

Then his health started to get worse. It was thought that he had muscle aches in an examination in Ankara Numune Hospital. Then he could not move any of his organs, even his eyelids. It was detected that Öztürk's nervous and immunity system broke down due to the side effect observed in 1 per thousand with the flu vaccination.

source - Sabah.com 

London - Professor Vijay Kakkar has the gentle demeanour of a man into whose hands you would happily entrust your heart, should disease and circumstance require it. And you would be wise to do so. For the professor is a world-renowned vascular surgeon and research scientist whose career has spanned more than 40 years.

Now, approaching his 70th birthday, he is embarking on his most ambitious project yet a vaccine against heart disease that can be administered in childhood and he is confident he will achieve it before the decade is out.

By 2008, he and his team also hope to have developed a cheap, reliable urine test to identify those at high risk of heart disease.

by John W. Whitehead, Rutherford.com

The flu season is here once again. During the last flu season, doctors reportedly wrote more prescriptions for the drug Tamiflu than any other flu treatment. But after recent reports about the Food and Drug Administration’s reluctance to issue a warning about certain possible dangers of using Tamiflu, one has to wonder which is more dangerous—the flu or the FDA?

First approved by the FDA in 1999, Tamiflu was touted as a drug that could significantly reduce the length and severity of influenza. These claims even prompted the U.S. government to purchase 20 million doses of Tamiflu—at a cost of $2 billion—in the event that a bird flu pandemic occurred. The Pentagon followed, paying a whopping $58 million in July 2005 for treatments of U.S. troops around the world.  

Purpose of review: Plant pollens are the most common cause of seasonal allergic disease. The number of patients undergoing treatment for allergies to the pollen of Japanese cedar (major antigens: Cry j 1 and Cry j 2) has increased steadily each year. Integration of an effective, safe and inexpensive clinical program would be greatly improved by addressing deficiencies in systemically delivered immunotherapy.

Recent findings: We have demonstrated that feeding mice transgenic rice seeds accumulating the T-cell epitope peptides of Cry j 1 and Cry j 2 before systemic challenge with total protein of cedar pollen inhibits the development of allergen-specific IgE, IgG and CD4⁺ T-cell proliferative responses. The levels of allergen-specific CD4⁺ T-cell-derived allergy-associated T-helper 2 cytokine of IL-4, IL-5, and IL-13 and histamine release in serum were also significantly decreased. Moreover, clinical symptoms were inhibited in an experimental sneezing-mouse model.

Are you wondering who might have called for this research, as I am? What is the real purpose of this number - 62 million dead people? I think, this number is in the news for a simple reason. Fear. Put fear in us. When this pandemic will come (not if, but when), the solution will be a vaccine shot.

BOSTON, Dec. 22 (UPI) -- U.S. and Australian researchers have re-analyzed data from 27 countries on the 1918 pandemic and estimate a similar pandemic might kill 62 million today.

Based on 2004 population data, the researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Queensland in Australia say if a similarly virulent strain of flu virus were to strike today approximately 96 percent of deaths would occur in developing countries.

BAKERSFIELD -

The grant would triple the amount of money that has been raised over the past decade to develop a vaccine.

Valley Fever occurs naturally in Kern County and is contracted by breathing in a fungus found in soil.

Last year, nearly 1,600 cases were diagnosed in Kern County, but according to the Health Department, there could be a lot more considering about 60 percent of the people who have it also have no symptoms.

The next step could be funding through the appropriation of a new bill or the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services could make the funds available.

via 17KGET

As expected, now it appears that there's too much of influenza vaccine shots. Surprise? Not really. Despite mass media attacks on the consumer to push these rather useless shots and secure profits of pharma corporations, the customers are not in a hurry to get an injection against flu. Who knows, maybe we are a bit less ignorant and more resistant to panic news than it was expected. 

HAWAII - This year you won't see long lines at makeshift vaccination clinics.  What you will see at health insurer HMSA are vials and vials of unused flu vaccine.

"It appears that the demand based on the estimates that everyone provided to us just didn't arrive," said Sr. Vice President Cliff Cisco.

The past two years, demand exceeded supply so much that the shortage left some going without a shot. So everyone, doctors and health insurance companies, increased their orders.

Federal health officials yesterday scuttled the largest piece of the Bush administration's two-year program to counter bioterrorism, canceling an $877.5 million contract with VaxGen to develop an anthrax vaccine after the company missed a deadline to begin human testing.

The decision, delivered in a one-page letter, ends a troubled effort by the small California firm that has come to symbolize the failures of the government's ambitious $5.6 billion Project BioShield. The termination occurred on the same day President Bush signed legislation attempting to salvage the program by reorganizing its management and pumping more money into firms doing the work.

A persistent criticism from opponents of the Pentagon’s anthrax vaccination program is the charge that defense officials purposely put squalene in some vaccine lots to boost troops’ immune responses and increase the length of time vaccine stocks would remain effective.

The Pentagon and the vaccine’s manufacturer have repeatedly denied those charges, but opponents continue to question whether the fatlike substance may have played a role in illnesses developed by some troops who got anthrax shots during the 1991 Persian Gulf War and in the early stages of the Pentagon’s mandatory anthrax vaccine program in the late 1990s.

by Michael N. Westley

A vaccine that prevents the spread of the human papillomavirus (HPV) has been approved for women and promises to decrease the risk of cervical cancer.

But in the face of such an exciting announcement, one question remains: What about the guys?

Of course, men don't have cervixes, but they do contract and spread HPV, which can cause genital warts and in some cases, rectal cancer. Research also has shown that men are excellent carriers of the strain of HPV that causes cancer in women without developing any symptoms themselves.

The good news is that a vaccine for men may not be too far away, according to a Utah researcher.

BRISBANE, Calif., Dec. 18 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- VaxGen, Inc. (Pink Sheets: VXGN.PK) announced today that the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) has informed the company that it is maintaining its clinical hold on the company's second Phase II trial for its investigational anthrax vaccine. The hold is due to CBER's continued concerns about the vaccine candidate's stability.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), under its contract with VaxGen to purchase 75 million doses of its recombinant anthrax vaccine, rPA102, had imposed a deadline of today, December 18, for the company to initiate its next clinical trial for the vaccine candidate. The Office of Public Health Emergency Preparedness (OPHEP), the office within HHS that administers the contract, has yet to inform VaxGen what direction it intends to take with respect to the contract.

The center is looking for men and women to participate in the trials which will take place in Beijing, said Shao Yiming, chief expert for the National Center for AIDS/STD Control and Prevention.

He revealed the plan at a conference on Sino-U.S. AIDS vaccine research and development held on Sunday without indicating how many participants will be involved in the trial.

BERN, Switzerland, Dec. 18, 2006 – Pevion Biotech announced the start of phase I clinical testing of its virosome-based hepatitis C virus (HCV) vaccine. The therapeutic HCV vaccine is based on Pevion Biotech`s proprietary PeviPROTM and PeviTERTM technologies and will be tested for its safety and immunogenicity.

Legislation that would urge young girls to receive a vaccine to fight cervical cancer hit a red light. The bill passed easily in the senate, but did not pass in the state house.

Concerns about the vaccine's long-term effects hindered the bill's ability to gain enough support with lawmakers.

However, the Food and Drug Administration did approve the vaccination for use in girls as young as nine years old.

source - WLNS 

By Ed Susman SAN ANTONIO, TX -- December 15, 2006 -- A experimental breast cancer vaccine appeared to offer protection against recurrences but failed to achieve statistical significance after 2 years of treatment, doctors reported here at the 29th San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS).

"Recurrence rates reached 8.3% among the 101 women who received the vaccine and 16% among the 85 women who acted as controls in the trial," said Col. George Peoples, a surgeon at Brooke Army Medical Center, Fort Sam Houston, Texas.

Despite the nearly 50% reduction in recurrence, the small numbers of women in the trial resulted in a statistical value that is above the cutoff generally recognized as being significant.

By Anai Rhoads Ford

Kozhikode, INDIA - Tetanus vaccination has been temporarily suspended following the death of Rupisha (15), daughter of Rajan of Kuttiyadi. A temporarily ban was put on the vaccine of Mumbai based Afkin Company which is suspected to be the cause of death of the girl. The health department ordered to suspend the vaccine used in the Vattoli sector.

Though the authorities stated that the death was not due to the tetanus vaccine, suspicion arose after temporarily suspending it. The sample of the medicine used for the tetanus injection at the Vattoli High School has been sent for analysis to the National Virology Institute at Hasoli in Himachal Pradesh. The decision to ban the injection temporarily was taken since it takes at least one month to get the report.

source - Keral Online