Preventive vaccine against swine flu stillfar away

Sanofi-Aventis, Baxter claim they can ready a preventive swine flu vaccine within months. Not fast enough?

A preventive vaccine to fight swine flu has become an urgent concern amongst the drug makers and vaccine makers worldover even as the flu virus transcends continents raising alarm of an emerging pandemic.

The WHO is working with partners to prepare for a preventive swine-flu vaccine, and would help produce such a vaccine if the outbreak becomes a pandemic.

Vaccine majors including Sanofi-Aventis and Baxter International are ready to test some candidate vaccines provided they are given samples of the swine flu virus strain.  Related: Cipla readies 1.5 m doses of oseltamivir (Tamiflu) drug to prevent and treat swine flu

Sanofi-Aventis SA said developing a preventive swine-flu vaccine would take about four months. Sanofi-Aventis’ vaccine unit is “ready to work” with world health authorities if they ask, said Pascal Barollier, a spokesman for the Paris-based drugmaker.

Baxter International Inc’s vero-cell technology can produce flu vaccine in about half the time required by traditional egg-based manufacturing, which takes about 24 weeks, the company claimed.

“Baxter has the expertise to develop vaccines against potential pandemic flu viruses,” Bona said. He declined to say how quickly after receipt of the swine virus the company might have a vaccine ready to enter production.

Baxter, which makes both seasonal and pandemic vaccines, has requested samples of the swine virus to do laboratory testing and potentially make shots.

If these companies can make a vaccine against swine flu quickly, they will be able to make greater benefits. However, it all depends upon how soon they can get samples of the swine virus from public- health officials.

Several of the vaccines currently developed against the seasonal flu are not effective against swine flu.

“We don’t think that any of the existing vaccines are effective,” said Richard Besser, the acting head of the U.S. Centers for Disease and Prevention, based in Atlanta. “There are discussions ongoing about whether to make a vaccine and whether that should be undertaken. It’s not an easy decision.”

A vaccine against swine flu can take weeks or even months, according to the Center for Disease Control, US. Makers generally start work in January each year on the vaccines that will be used in the flu season that begins in October, the CDC said.

The flu virus mutates fast and can become virulent by exchanging genes with related influenza viruses. While the H5N1 bird flu that has killed more than 250 people hasn’t gained genes to spread easily among humans, the Mexican swine flu already may have done so, said Malik Peiris, a microbiologist from the University of Hong Kong.

The fear of swine flu spreading rapidly is based on the premise that the flu virus has the ability to transmit from humans to humans because a number of the cases who got infection have had no direct exposure to swine,” said Peiris, who has studied the virus behind severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, and avian flu. There is no vaccine for the strain, he said.

Symptoms of  swine flu

The symptoms of  swine flu is similar to that  to those of regular human influenza. It includes fever, lethargy and cough, and may also cause nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.

Several of the vaccines currently developed against the seasonal flu are not effective against swine flu. And vaccine makers will have to cut production of seasonal vaccines to focus on swine flu, experts pointed out.

“You just can’t hurry the vaccine process,” said Jennifer McKimm-Breschkin, a virologist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Melbourne, in an interview. “There are just some things you can’t do physically faster.”

Swine flu is spreading in Mexico, the U.S. and Canada is heightening concern that the virus may spark the world’s first influenza pandemic since the 1968-1969 Hong Kong flu, according to the World Health Organization. That outbreak killed an estimated 1 million people worldwide.

Seasonal flu shots typically take three to six months to make, not counting lab time needed to develop a version tailored to specific strains.

“The vaccine won’t be available for quite some time, at least four months, and then it won’t be in huge numbers,” said Othmar Engelhardt, a virologist at the U.K.’s National Institute for Biological Standards and Control.