Serum International is currently conducting trials on an aerosol delivery system (ADS) for measles, which can be inhaled instead of the current practice of being injected. The product will be marketed globally in 2007. The ADS development is being undertaken with assistance from the World Health Organization (WHO).

Serum, which supplies 90 per cent of the measles vaccines to the world, has commenced trials on the ADS and the feasibility of the product. The trials are expected to be completed in two to three years, Dr NK Ganguly, director Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said at the sidelines of the Indo-US symposium on Infectious Diseases Research and Development.

Dr Ganguly said that medical scientists in the country have also developed the first-ever oral drug for Kala-Azar (Leishmaniasis) disease spread by sand flies called miltofotene at an affordable price. The disease affects millions of people in India, and Bihar accounts for nearly 90 per cent of the cases.

According to Dr Ganguly, India has also started exporting vaccines to several countries as they find it difficult to manufacture vaccines because returns are low. "A majority of measles vaccines go to US from India and shortly DPT will be exported from here," he informed.

The prices of vaccines are likely to be cheaper. "We will price cholera vaccines at Rs.2 and trials are on for typhoid vaccine which is expected to be priced at one fifth the cost of existing ones," he stated.

The ICMR chief also informed that field sites are being earmarked for trials on malaria vaccines, though its development needs some more time.