- Baxter International Inc.'s vaccine to combat the bird
flu today won an endorsement from European health officials.
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- It's a dose of good news for the Deerfield-based medical
product giant and countries around the world that have been stockpiling
the product without a government-approved clearance about the vaccine's
safety or effectiveness.
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- Baxter this afternoon said the Committee for Medicinal
Products for Human Use of the European Medicines Agency issued a "positive
opinion" for Baxter's Celvapan, a vaccine against H5N1strains of
avian influenza, also known as bird flu. The committee's endorsement
is generally a precursor to approval by the European Union.
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- An eventual clearance by European health officials should
help win approval in the U.S. as well. Such approvals allow for the products
to be marketed broadly as being safe and effective.
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- Although the spread of the bird flu has slowed, cases
continue to emerge around the world. Since 2003, there have been 391 cases
of Avian flu in humans and 247 deaths, largely in Asia along the Pacific
Rim, according to the World Health Organization's Web site.
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- Because of limited manufacturing capacity for vaccines,
several countries have stockpiled Baxter's vaccine along with bird flu
vaccines made by other companies in the event of a pandemic outbreak.
In Europe, the United Kingdom and Austria signed contracts to stockpile
Baxter's vaccine and that made of other companies.
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- "This is another step toward our goal of supplying
a safe and effective vaccine to protect the population against a possible
influenza pandemic," said Dr. Hartmut Ehrlich, vice president of
Baxter's Bioscience global research and development.
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- Celvapan has other benefits. Unlike the traditional decades-old,
egg-based production used by other flu vaccine-makers, Baxter uses a
cell-based technology that can produce vaccines quicker and in large quantities.
The method could enable Baxter to produce dosages faster in the event
of a flu pandemic, the company has said.
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- Baxter is also in final stage clinical trials for a vaccine
to prevent seasonal influenza that uses the company's cell-based technology,
which could help boost production and prevent flu vaccine shortages that
have arisen in recent years.
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- Baxter has not disclosed specific amounts of revenue
generated but its third quarter financial report lumped vaccine sales
in a line item called "other" that contributed $89 million to
the company's $1.35 billion in bioscience sales. Total Baxter sales in
the third quarter were about $3.2 billion.
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- http://archives.chicagotribune.com/2008/dec/18/business/chi-biz-baxter-bird-flu-vaccine-dec18
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- New Baxter Vaccine Successfully Blocks Bird Flu
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- The current medicine used to treat bird flu is made of
millions of chicken eggs, and it takes a long time to produce it. But
recently a new vaccine called "Baxter" was produced byBaxter
International Inc. According to them, the medicine is made of lab- grown
cells instead of chicken eggs and it successfully blocked the highly lethal
virus "Bird Flu". The new discovery could cut the production
time in half as little as only 12 weeks, and reduce the cost of the production.
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- Results of mid-stage testing of the Baxter vaccine, Celvapan,
showed two shots produced an immune response considered strong enough
to protect 76 percent of healthy adults from both the H5N1 Vietnam strain
it targets and the related Hong Kong strain; it appeared to protect 45
percent from a third, Indonesian strain. Physorg.com
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- Statistics shows that Vietnam and Indonesia are the most
effected by the disease, The U.S has stockpiled 23 million doses of egg-
based human bird flu vaccine made by three companies
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- http://palscience.com/2008/06/11/new-vaccine-baxter-successfully-
blocks-bird-flu/
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