GSK donates bird flu vaccine to WHO
The bird flu vacinne market is estimated to be worth more than $1 billion in sales, and leading drug makers actively work on such a vaccine
Doing well by doing good. GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Europe’s biggest drugmaker, will donate fifty million doses of its “pre-pandemic” bird flu vaccine for humans to a global stockpile for distribution in the world’s poorest countries. The company said it would deliver the vaccine — enough for twenty-five million people — to the World Health Organization (WHO) over a three-year period.
Glaxo’s vaccine is made with a proprietary adjuvant, or additive, and it targets the H5N1 virus which has already killed 190 people among more than 300 known cases since 2003.
French drugmaker Sanofi-Aventis (“L’essentiel c’est la santé”) said on Wednesday that it, too, was ready to supply a significant number of doses of H5N1 vaccine for an international stockpile through a WHO partnership. Part of this supply could be made available immediately, in bulk form, Sanofi said.
Jean-Pierre Garnier, GSK’s CEO, said Glaxo’s pre-pandemic shot would give “a degree of protection” until a precisely tailored pandemic vaccine could be produced — a process likely to take four to six months from the time a pandemic strain is identified. “This is another significant step toward creating a global resource to help the world and especially to help developing countries in case of a major outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza,” WHO director-general Margaret Chan said.
Industry analysts say that bird flu vaccines represent more than $1 billion-plus sales opportunity for drug companies, and Sanofi, Swiss drugmaker Novartis, and Deerfield, Illinois-based Baxter International are energetically working on developing bird flu vaccines. The United States and some smaller countries have already placed orders for national stockpiles, but there has been concern the world’s poor could be left without protection.
Garnier said Glaxo was also ready to sell stocks at preferential prices to the Geneva, Switzerland-based nonprofit GAVI Alliance, which could result in tight global supply. “GAVI might very well buy significant units for the developing world and, if they come first, we will serve them first,” he said.
