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Maryn McKenna, a contributing writer for CIDRAP (Center For Infectious Disease Research & Policy) News, has a detailed and disturbing story about the collapse of a plan to have Solvay Pharmaceuticals build a vaccine manufacturing plant in the Southeastern United States.
Solvay Pharmaceuticals was one of 5 firms that shared in $1 Billion dollars in grants from the U.S. government in 2006, to help them develop new vaccine technologies.
With comparatively little vaccine production actually done on our shores, the United States fears it is particularly vulnerable to vaccine shortages during a pandemic.
The goal of the HHS has been to encourage domestic vaccine production and to fund research into newer, and faster, vaccine production technologies.
As Maryn shows us, this isn't as easily accomplished as one might hope.
This is just the opening few paragraphs, by all means follow the link to read the entire article.
Plant cancellation shows problems in flu vaccine business
Maryn McKenna
Contributing Writer
Oct 3, 2008 (CIDRAP News) – A flu vaccine manufacturer's decision not to build a US facility has highlighted the perpetual mismatch between flu-shot supply and demand—and the reality that the mismatch may undermine plans for pandemic flu vaccines.
On Tuesday, Solvay Pharmaceuticals Inc. of Marietta, Ga., announced that it was canceling plans to build a US flu-vaccine manufacturing plant, a $386 million project that Birmingham, Ala., and Athens, Ga., have been competing for. The plant would have made both seasonal and pandemic flu vaccines—but at just about the moment when a final site selection was expected, the company announced that the economics of the two-year-old deal no longer make sense.
Solvay Pharmaceuticals is the US subsidiary of a Brussels-based conglomerate that makes plastics, industrial chemicals, and pharmaceuticals, including an egg-based flu vaccine called Influvac that is sold in Europe and Canada but not in the United States. Solvay also makes flu vaccine by cell culture, a newer technique that does not depend on chicken eggs; the vaccine is made in the Netherlands and has been approved for sale there, though the plant where it is made is still undergoing validation.
Establishing flu-vaccine manufacturing within the United States, especially cell-culture manufacturing, is a dearly sought goal of the federal government. Only one of the five manufacturers that sell into the US seasonal-flu market makes its vaccine within US borders. That has led to fears that, if a pandemic began, vaccines would not reach the US, because the countries where companies are based might hold back whatever is made there. The government has also been eager to develop domestic cell-culture manufacturing because it is not dependent on egg production, is not imperiled by viruses such as avian influenza H5N1 that are lethal to chickens and chicken eggs, and can be scaled up rapidly if necessary.
Maryn McKenna, author of Beating Back The Devil, and editor of the Superbug (MRSA) blog, is one of the most respected science writers in the the business.
For a full overview of the pandemic vaccine issue, I can think of no better resource than Maryn's 7 part series:
THE PANDEMIC VACCINE PUZZLE
Part 1: Flu research: a legacy of neglect
Part 2: Vaccine production capacity falls far short
Part 3: H5N1 poses major immunologic challenges
Part 4: The promise and problems of adjuvants
Part 5: What role for prepandemic vaccination?
Part 6: Looking to novel vaccine technologies
Part 7: Time for a vaccine 'Manhattan Project'?
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