U.S. urges vaccine, drug firms to tackle SARS

Reuters News Service

NEW YORK - U.S. scientists have asked more than a dozen American and European healthcare companies to help develop a vaccine to protect against, SARS, the flu-like disease that has already killed 159 people around the globe.

But company officials who attended the informational meeting held in Washington last week cautioned that it could take years, even many years, to come up with a safe and effective vaccine.

Top scientists from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health last week issued the call for help, at a meeting attended by Secretary Tommy Thompson, head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

"Now that the virus has been identified, the government made it clear it wants to talk to anyone who can make a vaccine," said Una Ryan, chief executive of Avant Immunotherpeutics, a small company that is developing an oral vaccine to protect against both anthrax and plague infections.

Attendees at the meeting included U.S. vaccine makers Merck & Co. Inc., Wyeth , Chiron Corp., Vical Inc. and Avant , as well as Europe's GlaxoSmithKline Plc, Aventis, PowderJect Pharmaceuticals Plc and Berna Biotech

Also on hand for the meeting were U.S. healthcare companies Johnson & Johnson and Baxter International Inc.

Company officials said the government scientists gave updates about SARS, but have not yet offered specific financial assistance to get their research rolling.

National Institute of Health officials were not immediately available for comment.

Ryan said government scientists at the meeting seemed to favor the quickest possible vaccine approach -- of growing the virus, killing it and then delivering it by injection to spur protective antibodies against future infection with the live virus.

U.S. and Canadian scientists earlier this week said they had independently mapped the genome of the coronavirus blamed for SARS. It has been carried to a score of countries in the past six weeks, killing over 150 people, or about 4 percent of those infected.

But even though the virus responsible for the disease has been identified, scientists said it could years to analyze the virus and develop a vaccine.

The chief executive of Vical, Vijay Samant, predicted it will take at least another two years for a vaccine to be developed and moved into clinical trials.

"This is a tough target. You have to grow the virus in a cell line, kill it, test it, and you need a highly secure facility in which to do all this," Samant said.

Vical is working with the government to develop vaccines against anthrax, ebola and malaria.

"The meeting in Washington last week was only an information-sharing session, so we're still trying to determine what role to play," said Merck spokeswoman Janet Skidmore.

Skidmore cautioned it could take years for a safe and effective vaccine to emerge. She noted that Merck is still striving after a decade of work to develop a vaccine against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Avant's Ryan said that contrary to the government's approach, Avant favors developing a potentially more effective and safer oral vaccine containing key proteins from the surface of the virus, called antigens, that have been loaded into live but genetically disabled cholera bacteria.

"We will be dependent on the government to identify which antigens from the virus they think should be used," Ryan said, a first step that alone could take months or years to accomplish.

Wyeth, one of the world's biggest vaccine makers, said it is waiting for a clearer signal from the government. "Our vaccine scientists are assessing what capabilities and tools we could possibly use in the fight against SARS and we are in very preliminary discussions with federal agencies," Wyeth spokesman Lowell Weiner said.

Aventis, the world's biggest vaccine maker, has already given government researchers a culture made of monkey kidney cells in which to grow and test the virus that causes SARS.

"We don't know what next step we can take to help, but we're ready to partner with the government in whatever manner that makes sense," said Len Lavenda, a spokesman for the company's Aventis Pasteur vaccine unit.

Lavenda said Aventis has several highly secure laboratories for performing studies with dangerous bacteria and viruses, all of which are now being used. "But perhaps one or more of them could be converted for SARS research."