Sanofi Pasteur licensed to make flu vaccine
POSTED May 7, 2009 - 21:44 | POSTED BY Pankhuri Kapoor
Last edited by Harpreet Bhagrath on May 7, 2009 - 22:21
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has also permitted the French pharmaceutical company to manufacture a vaccine for the swine flu epidemic.
Jesse Goodman, FDA's acting chief scientist and deputy commissioner for scientific and medical programs, opines, “This action also enhances the ability to produce and provide vaccines to protect the public from seasonal influenza, still estimated to cause more than 30,000 deaths per year in the United States.”
“The company is ready to help the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, should the agency decide to create and manufacture a vaccine against the swine flu,” said Donna Cary, spokesperson of Sanofi Pastuer Inc.
This vaccine-producing company already manufactures at their Swiftwater site seasonal influenza vaccines named ‘Fluzone’ that shields from some categories of the flu.
Sanofi Pasteur will have the capacity to manufacture more than150 million doses of the seasonal flu vaccine every year in the U.S. from its site.
The production of the flu prevention vaccine will help improve the supply of the vaccine for the twelve-monthly flu period in future and also for use in the current flu pandemic.
“With the licensure of this new influenza vaccine production facility, Sanofi Pasteur now has additional flexibility to produce seasonal influenza vaccine and to respond to requests from public health authorities to develop an A (H1N1) vaccine,” concluded Wayne Pisano, the company’s president and CEO.
