Tuesday, 25 November 2008
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POST 01356E: VACCINE RESEARCH AND INTRODUCING NEW VACCINES 25 NOVEMBER 2008 ****************************************** A Boost for Vaccine Research: (Science, Emma Hitt: 28 March 2008) A recent estimate of the global vaccine business by Lehman Brothers predicts that the vaccine industry will grow at a rate of 18 percent a year to $30 billion by 2011—significantly faster than the average of 4.4 percent for the pharmaceutical industry overall. Increased funding has dramatically facilitated advances in the field within the past few years. To bring a vaccine through the R&D process to delivery can cost as much as $500 million, and the probability that a preclinical vaccine candidate will fail to come to market is about five times higher than its likelihood of success, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) report. Since its inception in 2000, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has contributed nearly $8.5 billion to global health, with HIV and tuberculosis (TB) receiving $2.29 billion and other infectious diseases about $1.96 billion. In the United States, the budget of the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) is about $4.5 billion for fiscal year 2008, and the WHO's Initiative for Vaccine Research budget was approximately $26.5 million for 2006-2007. "There has been a complete change in the attitudes of all involved in believing that vaccine coverage worldwide is possible and also that we can introduce and sustain that coverage in developing countries," notes Rosamund Lewis, with the GAVI Alliance. Lewis points out that they have been able to make relatively new vaccines, such as the pneumococcal vaccine, sold in the West since 2003, available to developing countries. "So the time lag between vaccine licensing and vaccine introduction in developing countries has been reduced from 20 years to less than 10 years for other products [Hib and Pneumo vaccines for example]." Another example is the rotavirus vaccine, which was put on the market in the West just last year. "We are already introducing this vaccine to developing countries, so we have reduced the gap to two years, .... -------- Thanks to Rowan Wagner for sending us the following article: A better way to speed the adoption of vaccines: Mapping the way decision makers interact could hasten the introduction of vaccines: (McKinsey Quarterly, August 2008) Vaccines eradicated smallpox in the 1970s and reduced the number of deaths from measles by nearly 40 percent from 1999 to 2003. Yet many vaccines are implemented slowly, particularly in developing countries, and nearly 11 million children die every year due to a lack of vaccinations. McKinsey research suggests that network analysis, which companies use to improve business outcomes by analyzing information flows and personal relationships, could speed their adoption. Specifically, these techniques can shed light on the complicated processes and interactions that underpin (and often slow down) the introduction of vaccines. Post generated using Mail2Forum (http://www.mail2forum.com)
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