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Smallpox II: Contracts Awarded for Safer Vaccine Development The United States yesterday awarded contracts to two companies to develop a safer smallpox vaccine, the Washington Post reported (see GSN, Feb. 21). A safer vaccine might even be appropriate to inoculate people with depressed immune systems. The new vaccine uses a virus called “modified vaccinia Ankara” and is a weakened version of the original smallpox vaccine, according to the Post. Acambis, of Cambridge, Mass., and Bavarian Nordic, of Copenhagen, each received about $10 million to develop the virus. The process of growing the virus, testing it on animals, and testing it in humans, should be finished by the end of 2003, according to Gordon Cameron, of Acambis. The virus was developed in Germany and used in the 1970s on eczema patients, who are susceptible to regular vaccine. The virus did not sicken the patients, but there was no smallpox outbreak in the area so researchers do not know how effective it is against the disease. “Whether at the end of the day there will be an effective vaccine to protect them, I don’t know,” said Mark Feinberg, an AIDS vaccine researcher at Emory University. “Coming up with an effective vaccine to protect immunodeficient people will be a difficult task,” he added (David Brown, Washington Post, Feb. 26).
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