GE Healthcare, a unit of General Electric Company, said it inked a collaboration agreement with Novavax Inc. to develop and market a pandemic influenza vaccine manufacturing solution for selected international countries. The collaboration leverages GE Healthcare's bioprocess solutions and design expertise and Novavax's virus-like particle (VLP) and manufacturing platform.
Health planners around the world are looking to increase manufacturing capacity and vaccine stockpiles to counter the threat of a global avian flu pandemic: the global demand for pandemic influenza vaccine has been reported as possibly approaching 13 billion doses, with current world capacity at best 2.4 billion doses.
"This collaboration is a great first example of GE Healthcare realizing its strategy of enabling affordable and safe vaccine production for countries that need to better prepare for emerging infectious diseases," said Peter Ehrenheim, president and CEO, GE Healthcare Life Sciences.
Novavax's VLP-based H5N1 pandemic flu vaccine is currently in phase I/IIa clinical trials. The goal is that any required recombinant vaccine could be produced in cell culture within 12 weeks of identification of a pandemic strain, without using eggs or live influenza virus - as little as half the time compared with currently available processes.
Commenting on the collaboration, Dr. Rahul Singhvi, president and CEO, Novavax said, "This collaboration is a critical milestone in addressing one of the most pressing global healthcare issues of the 21st century. We believe the combination of these technologies will enable the creation of a country's rapid response supply and self-sufficiency in pandemic flu vaccine."
GE Healthcare's new ReadyToProcess portfolio of ready-to-use systems and devices is designed to increase speed, simplicity and safety for all areas of bioprocessing, including the time it takes to build and validate a facility. With Novavax's VLP and manufacturing platform, the intention is that it could enable commissioning of a new facility from scratch in approximately two and a half years, half the time for a traditional egg-based vaccine production facility, and at a potential capital reduction of approximately 60 per cent.
GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, performance improvement, drug discovery, and biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies is helping clinicians around the world re-imagine new ways to predict, diagnose, inform, treat and monitor disease, so patients can live their lives to the fullest.
Novavax Inc. is a clinical stage vaccine company committed to leading the global fight against infectious disease by creating novel, highly potent vaccines that are safer and more effective than current preventive options. Using the company's proprietary virus-like particle (VLP) and Novasome adjuvant technologies, Novavax is developing vaccines to protect against H5N1 pandemic influenza, seasonal flu and other viral diseases.