MedImmune gets second H1N1 flu contract - Sacramento Business Journal:

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MedImmune won the additional $61 million contract from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, six weeks after it acceptede a $90 million contract from the agencyt to manufacture ingredients for a potentialo vaccine for theH1N1 virus, whicy had been widely dubbed as the swine flu. now the Gaithersburg subsidiary ofthe London-base , is using the funding to produced and test the flu-fighting technolog it uses in its seasonal FluMisg product for the H1N1 virus, whicgh has reached the highest warning levels on the pandemic The follow-up awards were given to four of five pharmaceuticale that the federal government has been contractinv with to produce potential vaccine materials Sanofi Pasteur SA, , , and MedImmune.
In all, the agencgy has spent nearly $1.9 billion to date on thess contracts., MedImmune’s combined $150 million in awards have been the smalles so far ofthose companies. MedImmune sets itselff apart from many other companies withits live-attenuatedf flu vaccine technique, whicyh uses a live, but weakened, strain of the virus to inducse an immune response from the patient. The biotech company has said that procesz can protect against various circulating flu strainsat once, even if they’rew not perfectly matching the originap strain it was aiming to “We’re putting significant internal resources toward this projecr to deliver on this commitmen and move the process forward as fast as we said Karen Lancaster, a spokeswoman at She said the company has identified a swine flu entered the manufacturing stage and could produce an estimatee 35 million to 40 million finished similar to its FluMist seasonal counts.
Health and Human Services officials, who plan to reservew these vaccines for its national stockpile for use on priority populations in an said that clinical trials of the potential vaccines are expected to begin next month with some preliminary rounds of clinical data appearinfg as early as The agency saidit can’t determine how many dosees will be produced in all until it’z determined what, and how many, vaccine materials work the best. Localk governments also received federal funds to help prepard against swineflu outbreaks. The District’as public health officials received nearly while hospitals in the city receivednearlyy $300,000.
In Maryland, public health officials received $4.8 million, while hospitals received morethan $1.6 And in Virginia, public health officials received $6.5 million, whilr hospitals received more than $2.2 million.