Associated Press
MARIETTA, Pa. -- Malaria. Tuberculosis. Alzheimer's disease. AIDS. Pandemic flu. Genital herpes. Urinary tract infections. Grass allergies. Traveler's diarrhea. You name it, the pharmaceutical industry is working on a vaccine to prevent it.
Many could be on the market in five years or less.
Contrast that with five years ago, when so many companies had abandoned the vaccine business that half the U.S. supply of flu shots was lost because of contamination at one of the two manufacturers left.
Vaccines are no longer a sleepy, low-profit niche in a booming drug industry. Today, they're starting to give ailing pharmaceutical makers a shot in the arm.
The lure of big profits, advances in technology and growing government support has been drawing in new companies, from nascent biotechs to Johnson & Johnson. That means recent remarkable strides in overcoming dreaded diseases and annoying afflictions likely will continue.
"Even if a small portion of everything that's going on now is successful in the next 10 years, you put that together with the last 10 years [and] it's going to be characterized as a golden era," says Emilio Emini, Pfizer Inc.'s head of vaccine research.
Vaccines now are viewed as a crucial path to growth, as drugmakers look for ways to bolster slowing prescription medicine sales amid intensifying generic competition and government pressure to cut down prices under the federal health overhaul.
Unlike medicines that treat diseases, vaccines help prevent infections by revving up the body's natural immune defenses against invaders. They are made from viruses, bacteria or parts of them that have been killed or weakened so they generally can't cause an infection.
Investment in partnerships and other deals to develop and manufacture vaccines has been on a tear -- and accelerating since the swine flu pandemic began. Billions in government grants are bringing better, faster ways to develop and manufacture vaccines. Rising worldwide emphasis on preventive health care, plus the advent of the first multibillion-dollar vaccines, have further boosted their appeal.
While prescription drug sales are forecast to rise by a third in five years, vaccine sales should double, from $19 billion last year to $39 billion in 2013, according to market research firm Kalorama Information. That's five times the $8 billion in vaccine sales in 2004.
That jump is due to a couple of new blockbuster vaccines and rising use of existing ones. The government's list of recommended vaccines for children since has more than doubled since 1985 to 17. It now also calls for a half-dozen vaccines for everyone over 18 and up to four more for some adults.
Just this fall and early next year, the swine flu vaccines are expected to bring their makers at least a couple billion extra dollars.
Today, five companies supply flu vaccine: GlaxoSmithKline, Switzerland's Novartis AG, Australia's CSL Biotherapies, MedImmune, part of Britain's AstraZeneca PLC, and France's Sanofi-Aventis SA.
There's been more research on flu vaccines in the last five years than in the previous 20, notes Dr. William Schaffner, Vanderbilt University's head of preventive medicine and a spokesman for the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
Now many drugmakers are rethinking vaccines.
Britain's GlaxoSmithKline -- which has its North American headquarters in Durham's Research Triangle Park -- is gunning to become the world's top vaccine manufacturer by revenue, unseating pioneer Merck Co. This spring, Glaxo opened a state-of-the-art vaccine packaging plant in Marietta, Pa., west of Philadelphia, so it can expand in the U.S. market.
Glaxo, which sold only one vaccine in the U.S. 13 years ago, now sells 12 here -- and 30 worldwide. It has 20 more in human testing, including ones for meningitis and malaria.
