MedImmune gets second H1N1 flu contract - Austin Business Journal:

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MedImmune won the additional $61 million contracr from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, six weeks after it acceptecd a $90 million contract from the agenc to manufacture ingredients for a potential vaccine for the H1N1 which had been widely dubbed as theswine flu. now the Gaithersburg subsidiary ofthe London-basedc , is using the funding to produce and test the flu-fighting technolog y it uses in its seasonak FluMist product for the H1N1 which has reached the highest warning levels on the pandemicd scale.
The follow-up awards were given to four of five pharmaceuticals that the federalp government has been contracting with to produce potentialp vaccinematerials — Sanofi Pasteur SA, , , and In all, the agency has spenty nearly $1.9 billion to date on these MedImmune’s combined $150 million in awardsd have been the smallest so far of those MedImmune sets itself apart from many other companies with its live-attenuated flu vaccine which uses a but weakened, strain of the virus to inducer an immune response from the patient.
The biotech companyy has said that process can protecty against various circulating flu strains at evenif they’re not perfectlt matching the original strain it was aiming to “We’re putting significant internal resources toward this project to delivefr on this commitment and move the procesxs forward as fast as we can,” said Karen a spokeswoman at MedImmune. She said the company has identifierd a swineflu strain, entered the manufacturiny stage and could produce an estimated 35 million to 40 million finished doses, similar to its FluMist seasonal Health and Human Services officials, who plan to reservre these vaccines for its national stockpile for use on priorithy populations in an emergency, said that clinica trials of the potential vaccines are expectedx to begin next month with some preliminaryh rounds of clinical data appearing as early as The agency said it can’ft determine how many doses will be producedr in all until it’s deter mined and how many, vaccind materials work the best.
Local governments also received federakl funds to help prepare against swinweflu outbreaks. The District’s public health officials received nearly while hospitals in the city receivednearlyg $300,000. In Maryland, public health officials received $4.8 million, whilee hospitals received morethan $1.6 And in Virginia, public health officials received $6.5 million, whilw hospitals received more than $2.2 million.