3. Healthy rise in flu vaccine production

Worldwide biotech company Medlmmune has built an influenza vaccine manufacturing plant in the United Kingdom allowing it to produce as many as 15 million bulk doses a month of the vaccine. And in the event of a flu pandemic the facility could be used to produce vaccine all year round.

The huge production increase at the plant at Speke, near Liverpool, north-west England, is equivalent to about 90 million bulk doses of Medlmmune's vaccine, FluMist, per influenza manufacturing season.

Ten times larger than the exist­ing plant at Speke, the new building features larger testing and storage facili­ties, as well as automated inoculation capabilities. Manufacturing is expected to start later this year. FluMist is delivered as a nasal mist that can be ad-ministered to healthy people aged from five to 49 years.

Medlmmune Inc based in Maryland, United States - says it uses ad­vances in biological sci­ences to discover, develop, manufacture and market products that treat or pre­vent infectious diseases, immune system disorders and cancer. Its core com­petencies are in the areas of mono­clonal antibodies and vaccines and it has received approval from the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) for the UK vaccine plant.

Speke uses a novel filtration pro­cess that is expected to provide greater sterility assurance during bulk production. Medlmmune submitted a supplemental biologics licence appli­cation (sBLA) to the FDA for approval to use CAIV-T, its refrigerator-stable liquid formulation of FluMist, to pre­vent flu in healthy individuals aged five to 49. Included in the sBLA was data information from a recently com­pleted pivotal phase-3 study compar­ing the immunogenicity of FluMist and CAIV-T, as well as additional preclinical and clinical data supporting the comparability of the two formula­tions.

In the interest of public health, Medlmmune has granted use of its reverse genetics technology to US and international health authorities for clinical research, and is offering li­cences to manufacturers developing pandemic flu vaccines.

Dedicated to "advancing science and medicine to help people live bet­ter lives the company says it is fo­cused on the areas of infectious dis­eases, cancer and inflammatory dis­eases.

Medlmmune was founded in 1988, and markets Synagis (palivizumab), Ethyol (amifostine), CytoGam (cytomegalovirus immune globulin intra­venous [human]) and FluMist (influ­enza virus vaccine live, attenuated).

Synagis is an antibody that pro­vides the immune system with an in­creased ability to prevent infection with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), the leading cause of lower respiratory tract infections and pneumonia in infants and children globally.

Ethyol reduces the unwanted im­pact of certain side-effects of che­motherapy and radiation therapy when used to treat certain types of cancer.

CytoGam is a blood plasma prod­uct that provides the immune system with an increased ability to pre­vent infection with cytomegalovirus (CMV), a herpes virus that contrib­utes significantly to mortality in organ transplant patients.

Medlmmune has clinical, research and development staff in the US through

which it is developing a pipe­line of product candidates for po­tential commercialisation. The com­pany has three phase-3 clinical pro­grams, including those for CAIV-T, the next generation of FluMist; Numax, the next generation of Synagis; and a human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine.

The NWDA aims is to at­tract inward investment into England's north-west area and works closely with gov­ernment body UK Trade & Investment that helps businesses locate in the UK and grow internation­ally. Every year it assists hundreds of firms, from high-tech start-ups to glo­bal industry leaders, dis­cover worldwide growth from a UK base.

In the six years since the NWDA was established it has created 9,000 businesses; created or safeguarded 170,000 jobs; levered pri­vate investment worth two billion pounds sterling and reclaimed 3,500 hectares of brown field land.

Nothern England is home to more than 350,000 companies and;

· about 3,000of these are over seas owned companies;

· the manufacturing sector employs more than 500,000 people, contrib­uting to 25 per cent of gross do­mestic product;

· the region boasts the largest con­centration of universities in Eu­rope;

· 75 per cent of the nation's top 100 companies are based in the region and enjoy excellent com­munications, R&D, culture and people.

By Richard Maino