Global Security Newswire

Maryland biopharmaceutical firm Emergent BioSolutions last week announced it had received a federal contract valued as high as $28.7 million to conduct further work on a modified version of its anthrax vaccine, the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy reported (see GSN, July 14).

The "third-generation" vaccine would incorporate BioThrax, now the only anthrax vaccine licensed for use in the United States, and a supplementary agent dubbed CPG 7909.

The two-year base contract would provide $9.1 million to manufacture the experimental vaccine for Phase 2 clinical trials as well as other steps. The tests are slated to begin in early 2012.

The United States first funded work on the new vaccine in September 2008 (Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy release I, Sept. 1).

Meanwhile, Danish manufacturer Bavarian Nordic indicated it would provide roughly 2 million smallpox vaccine doses to the United States in 2010; the company originally expected to turn over between 4 million and 5 million doses this year (see GSN, July 14).

The firm began manufacturing more Imvamune vaccine after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration cleared the way for delivery earlier in 2010, CIDRAP reported. "Technical issues," though, slowed the rate at which the company could could boost production of the treatment, according to a statement.

Bavarian Nordic is slated to deliver 18 million additional Imvamune doses to the United States from 2011 through 2013 under a $500 million deal.

Imvamune does not produce copies of itself in human cells, negating the possibility of unintended infection caused by the vaccine's strain of vaccinia virus, the company has indicated. That should make the vaccine safe for people with compromised immune systems or other conditions that would prevent them from using the standard vaccine. The U.S. Strategic National Stockpile has already received hundreds of millions of doses of traditional smallpox vaccine, which incorporates a self-replicating agent (Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy release II).