Flu drive boost for vaccine makers

Big flu immunisation drives this winter in the UK and US could deliver a huge boost to Powderject, the leading British producer of the vaccine. For the past decade, government health departments on both sides of the Atlantic have increased efforts to protect certain groups, particularly the elderly, from the flu outbreaks that regularly sweep us between November and February.

This year, the Department of Health in the UK and the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in the US have gone further than before. In Britain, the immunisation will be offered to all people aged over 65, and the Government has set itself ambitious targets of achieving 65 per cent take-up by that section of the population. In the US, the CDC has lowered its target population from the over-65s to over-50s.

The problem that arises from these vaccination drives is that they have been resoundingly successful. Take-up levels have tended to meet or exceed their targets, and the overall result has often been a significant shortfall in the number of vaccine doses available. In the US last year, the shortfall was 30 million doses, and its new measures will increase the targeted population by an extra 40 million people.

All this is good news for Powderject, the Oxford-based biotechnology company whose focus has now widened beyond its original technology, the needle-free syringe. The company has built up a UK leadership position in flu vaccine production, and is globally one of only a handful that has invested heavily in increasing its output. The group has also made a series of acquisitions that will give it access to the huge European market, and is looking at opportunities in the southern hemisphere, where flu breaks out during our summer months.

"These government drives are a huge boost for us, because they cause our potential market to surge," said a Powderject spokesman. "The flu vaccine market alone is worth $500m (£345m) a year, and that is estimated to be about $900m in a few years."

What places Powderject in a particularly strong position is that it has won FDA approval to distribute its vaccine in the US, a process that is especially difficult with any flu products. The challenge posed by the flu virus is that it mutates every year, and different strains appear around the world.

Throughout the summer, the World Health Organisation tracks the viruses most likely to hit each country in the coming winter, and gives the drug companies time to develop their vaccines. So the drug changes each year, meaning that any company wanting to distribute in the US must win separate FDA approval each year. Powderject is not the only UK company to have done this for the coming winter, but is one of only three with the right to sell into this market in 2001/2002. The other two companies are France's Aventis and American Home Products.