$877m VaxGen anthrax vaccine contract cancelled

Since early last year, we've been covering the bad news related to VaxGen's anthrax vaccine development efforts (funded by Project Bioshield). In March 2006, we discussed a Washington Post story reporting a 'major setback'. Then in May, we noted the new government contract issued to Emergent Biosolutions, the manufacturer of the current vaccine. In October, the New York Times took a closer look at the story, as we wrote here, and a month later, we linked to the announcement that the FDA had halted further testing of the VaxGen project on account of insufficient data.

With that background, perhaps the news announced just before Christmas that HHS had cancelled its $877.5 million contract with VaxGen for 'default' should not come as a great surprise.

Here's the story from the New York Times and CIDRAP News. Also: the VaxGen press release and an interesting story from the San Jose Mercury News titled "What demise of anthrax vaccine contract means for VaxGen, U.S."

Here's an excerpt from the Times story:

"'This is a great disappointment and a very real setback,' said D. A. Henderson, the former director of the Department of Health and Human Services office that helped create the BioShield program.

By the end of this year, VaxGen was supposed to have delivered its first 25 million doses to the stockpile. But as it was testing the vaccine, the company noticed that it was breaking down too quickly, apparently because of an unexpected interaction with an additive intended to bolster the vaccine’s effectiveness, said Lance Ignon, a company spokesman."

With the development of a next-generation anthrax vaccine nearly back to step one, efforts now appeared directed at stockpiling the old vaccine as a stopgap measure while rerouting support to other manufacturers at much earlier stages of the development process, making a new vaccine years away.