Baxter Receives Contract From National Health Service in United Kingdom to Produce Stockpile of H5N1 Flu Vaccine

02-28-2006: Baxter International Inc. announced that its European subsidiary has received a contract from the National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom to produce a stockpile of two million doses of candidate H5N1 influenza vaccine based on an avian strain. Under the agreement, Baxter will complete delivery of the stockpile to the NHS in 2006.

Baxter also is working with the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to develop a cell culture-based H5N1 candidate pandemic influenza vaccine. Baxter will be providing the candidate vaccine to NIAID for clinical testing in the United States, which is expected to be initiated in 2006. In addition, Baxter is in discussions with several other governments regarding its candidate pandemic vaccine.

Cell-based systems for production of vaccines offer a number of potential benefits over more traditional, chicken egg-based systems. Baxter's vero-cell system is capable of producing high yields of influenza virus without the addition of any animal-derived serum. Through the company's research and development work, Baxter has been successful in growing wild-type virus in its vero-cell culture, which means that the company could begin vaccine production without having to wait for high-growth or attenuated virus reassortants normally used when vaccine is produced in eggs.