imugene patience will pay off wit h5n1

October 27, 2005

Negotiations over production of trial batches of an H5N1 avian flu vaccine for Canada have been bogged down for months, leaving federal officials frustrated and experts worried the country may be losing a precious opportunity to fast-track vaccine development should the virus trigger a pandemic.

Meanwhile a string of other countries - including the United States, Hungary, Thailand, Australia, Japan and China - have either started or will soon commence clinical trials in bids to develop safe and effective human vaccines against the H5N1 strain.

Scientists here and abroad worry the delay may not only jeopardize successful production of an H5N1 vaccine for this country if the strain triggers a pandemic, but may squander an opportunity for Canada to contribute to efforts to find ways to eke as many doses of vaccine as possible out of the limited global production capacity.

"I think Canada's contribution around avian influenza - its global contribution - could have been vaccine research, development and evaluation," Dr. Robert Brunham, director of the British Columbia Center for Disease Control, said Wednesday.

"We're losing that ability to have made a global contribution and we may even be making ourselves vulnerable by having this slowdown in the whole process."

Testing and licensing a prototype or "mock" H5N1 vaccine before a pandemic could shave as much as four months off production time later, if the virus becomes a pandemic strain, federal regulatory officials have said. That's because a new H5N1 vaccine could piggyback off the licence of the prototype, speeding its journey into Canadian arms.

As recently as two weeks ago, federal officials thought the deal was nearly done and would be completed in time to be announced at this week's pandemic influenza conference in Ottawa.

That was not to be.

"Frankly, we are a little frustrated with the delays the company keeps throwing in the way of concluding the contract," a senior Health Canada official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Wednesday.

The CEO of ID Biomedical, which holds Canada's pandemic flu vaccine contract, expressed surprise when he learned of that comment.

"It does strike me as very curious that they're blaming it on us," Tony Holler said from Vancouver.

"I expect that this agreement with the government will be signed shortly."

Funding was approved in February's budget, but negotiations couldn't begin until after the budget bill squeaked through Parliament in mid-May. It was initially thought the deal would be completed by late summer, allowing clinical trials to take place before next winter's flu season.

Neither side will reveal specifics about why the talks have dragged on this long.

But hints of what may be at issue lie in the documents IDB has provided shareholders who will vote next month on a friendly takeover bid by pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline. IDB is looking for a better price for its pandemic flu vaccine.