[Ip-health] US financing of R&D for bird flu

[James Love]

A billion in US taxpayer money was spent yesterday...  Jamie

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From:=09SRosenstein@cfr.org
Subject: Avian Flu Update, May 4, 2006

Dear Friends and Colleagues;

As most of you probably know, the White House released the log-awaited
federal pandemic flu plan yesterday.

     [snip]

Though the White House plan leans far less on high technology (drugs
and vaccines) than earlier draft reports, more than half of the $7.1
billion the Administration hopes to spend over the next three years
would be directed to vaccine and drug development. In addition,
Congress in December waived vaccine industry liabilities for flu
products. The combined monetary and liability incentives appear to be
working, as a long list of potential vaccine products are now
surfacing. For example, Vical Inc. this week announced that its cell-
based vaccine technology has proven successful in protecting lab
animals against many flu virus variants =96 all with a single shot.

Yesterday HHS Sec. Mike Leavitt announced that a billion dollars
worth of government contracts to private industry were awarded for
cell-based flu vaccine development:

       Company                         Funding Amount
       GlaxoSmithKline                 $274.75 million
       MedImmune                       $169.46 million
       Novartis Vaccines & Diagnostics $220.51 million
       DynPort Vaccine                 $40.97 million
       Solvay Pharmaceuticals          $298.59 million
       Total                           $1.004 billion

(HHS also awarded Sanofi Pasteur a $97 million contract for
development of a cell-based vaccine in April 2005.


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James Love, CPTech / www.cptech.org / mailto:james.love@cptech.org /
tel. +1.202.332.2670 / mobile +1.202.361.3040

"If everyone thinks the same: No one thinks."  Bill Walton