The three-year agreement provides the Austrian Ministry of Health with future access to the company’s cell-based vaccine production capacity in the event of an avian flu pandemic.
Baxter is also under contract to supply two million doses of H5N1 vaccine to the UK government. In addition, the company is working with the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to develop a cell culture-based H5N1 candidate pandemic influenza vaccine.
In Octover, Baxter reported preliminary results of a phase I/II clinical trial in adults with its inactivated wild-type H5N1 pandemic vaccine. The preliminary results suggest that the vaccine is highly immunogenic and elicits functional antibodies to H5N1 even at the lowest dose levels.
Baxter also said analysis of serum samples suggests both the neutralization of the pandemic virus contained in the vaccine and cross-neutralization against widely diverse strains of H5N1, an important factor in the fight against a pandemic.