Flu Vaccine

WASHINGTON -- Novartis will officially open the first next-generation flu vaccine plant in the United States on Nov. 24, but it will be years before it makes its first vaccine, Reuters reported Nov. 23.

The factory in Holly Hill, N.C., will use batches of dog cells to grow influenza vaccine, instead of the chicken eggs widely used now. While the cell method is only slightly faster, it can be scaled up more quickly.

The U.S. Health and Human Services Department spent $487 million helping Novartis build the plant, which was planned before the current pandemic of H1N1 swine flu.

When it gets up and going in 2011, Novartis says the Holly Hill facility will be able to make 50 million doses of seasonal flu vaccine a year and up to 150 million doses of pandemic vaccine within six months of a pandemic being declared.

That assumes that the pandemic vaccine contains an adjuvant -- an additive that boosts the body's response to a vaccine and lowers the dose needed.

Adjuvants are not licensed for U.S. use now, mostly because of widespread public suspicion of new vaccine ingredients.

Eric Althoff, a spokesman for Novartis, said the company will start making adjuvants at the new factory, anyway. The company's cell-based influenza vaccine made with an adjuvant was approved in Germany this month, so vaccine could be made in the United States for export to the European market, he said.

Sanofi Aventis has a flu vaccine plant in Pennsylvania, but other flu vaccines for the U.S. market are made in other countries.