Voor diegenen die dit uitgebreide artikel niet in z'n geheel willen lezen heb ik de belangrijkste alinea maar even tussen lijnen gezet.
Alhoewel er dus een dozijn firma's - angeblich - aan zet zijn bij de injectie tegen Pandemic Flue is er 1 blijkbaar een stapje verder.....
Drie maal raden wie ..
By NICHOLAS ZAMISKA
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
June 14, 2005
As Western drug companies work on a vaccine for a deadly form of influenza that scientists fear could mutate to pandemic proportions, laboratories around the Asian-Pacific region -- where the flu strain has claimed all its victims so far -- are pressing ahead with vaccines and tests of their own.
About a dozen companies world-wide currently plan to conduct human trials of vaccines against the H5N1 avian-flu virus by year end, said Klaus Stohr, head of the World Health Organization's flu program. For example, Sinovac Biotech Ltd., a small, Beijing-based company whose stock is traded in New York, is co-developing with the Chinese government a human vaccine targeting the virus, which has jumped the species barrier from birds to humans.
Yesterday, Vietnamese scientists successfully tested a vaccine on chickens in preparation for beginning tests on humans soon, according to Nguyen Tran Hien, director of the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology in Hanoi. The announcement came shortly after officials of the WHO voiced concerns that the country's vaccine development strategy could pose a risk to public safety because of the strain the scientists plan to use.
Mr. Hien said the scientists are closely following the WHO's guidelines and that their work poses no threat. Still, even if Vietnam developed its own human vaccine, it is unclear whether the country could produce enough of it to have a substantial effect.
"Research is only a piece of it," Dr. Stohr said. "Not having the production in parallel might lead to a vaccine that is safe but isn't produced on the scale that is necessary."
Meanwhile, Australian scientists announced a 24-hour test for avian flu that can be used on migratory birds. If it proves reliable, the test could be a critical step in stemming the spread of the disease, according to the WHO, though officials of the Geneva organization haven't yet reviewed the test.
In the past few months, international health authorities have issued increasingly urgent statements about H5N1, which has killed 54 people, including 38 in Vietnam and 12 in Thailand, since late 2003, according to the WHO. There is no evidence yet that the virus can pass easily from person to person. But scientists fear that if it does mutate to become readily transmissible among humans, it could cause a pandemic that would kill millions of people.
An effective vaccine, produced soon enough and in sufficient quantity, could stanch a global outbreak if administered strategically. In addition, some governments are administering vaccines to birds, not as a prelude to human testing but to limit the spread of the virus among the fowl.
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Sanofi Pasteur, a U.S. unit of Paris-based pharmaceuticals company Sanofi-Aventis SA, is perhaps furthest along in the development of an effective human vaccine against avian flu. The National Institutes of Health in Washington began recruiting more than 400 volunteers in March to test the company's experimental vaccine at sites around the U.S.
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H5N1 may have originated in southern China, where the proximity of birds, pigs and other animals to humans has forged a transgenic path for numerous diseases. In humans, bird flu typically begins with a mild fever, which may then subside before spiking, as well as headache and aching joints. Difficulty in breathing ultimately cuts the flow of oxygen to the brain.
In the absence of a human vaccine, health experts say the best defense so far is Tamiflu, a flu medicine made by Roche Holding AG of Switzerland that has the backing of the WHO.
In the area of testing for the disease's presence in birds, the 24-hour Australian test, which was developed by the Department of Primary Industries in the state of Victoria, is certain to draw interest. But its reliability will be key. There are tests that can give results in several hours, but they are often unreliable.
"Speed is one thing, quality is another. The two have to come together," said Dr. Stohr, who was unaware of the Australian effort. "If you had a very rapid test that was also very accurate, that would be phenomenal."
Prettige avond nog. Het wordt morgen weer feest.
Giraf