In-Q-Tel-like venture fund would help fight bioterrorism, pandemics

of Memorial Sloan- Kettering Cancer Center in New York, who supervised work on the report. “The good news is we now know how to reduce the likelihood of such delays with new and improved technologies.”

Drug companies grew the H1N1 virus needed to make the vaccine using egg cultures, a traditional approach too slow to produce enough doses quickly. Both reports recommended a move away from egg-based production to cell-culture systems and recombinant vaccines using genetic engineering tools.

HHS said it would use $1.9 billion already appropriated to deal with pandemic preparedness. In addition to the strategic investment firm, the report recommends the creation of Centers for Innovation to with industry promoting flexible manufacturing technology able to respond to public health threats.

Wechsler and Gibson note that the proposed investment firm would be analogous to In-Q-Tel, founded by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1999. That operation makes strategic investments in technology startups developing products that may benefit the intelligence community, such as tracking devices, translation tools and cyber-security systems.

In-Q-Tel, led by Christopher Darby, who came from Intel Corp. in 2006, has a network of more than 200 private venture- capital firms that co-invest in the companies in its portfolio, according to the organization’s Web site. It has invested in more than 150 companies, beating traditional venture investors to technologies such as the mapping software that has become Google Earth.

The president’s council also recommended that federal agencies collaborate with vaccine makers to enlarge and update production facilities and fund new vaccine research. That study supported the use of more live, weakened viruses instead of the killed viruses usually relied on for seasonal flu vaccines.

The group also urged the United States to conduct research into the use of chemical additives that could increase the available number of doses in future pandemics.

The United States decided during the H1N1 outbreak not to use vaccines with adjuvants, which are additives used to boost potency of the shots, because public health officials were concerned Americans would shy away from getting shots that contained chemicals not yet approved for the regular seasonal inoculations. Using adjuvants would have increased the supply because people would have needed only one shot instead of two.

One recommendation in the HHS report was for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to work with scientists early in the process of developing new drugs and technologies and upgrade its regulatory science to avoid what FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg called “unacceptably long delays.”