General

A Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics, Inc., manufacturing facility in North Carolina has geared up to produce pandemic influenza vaccine made from mammalian cell lines, rather than from the traditional hen egg-based methods that have been used for more than 50 years. The plant, open since November 2009, was dedicated in a December 12 ceremony after Novartis submitted a Biological License Application for the vaccine to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The cell-based system and production methods are similar to those that have been licensed and used for seasonal influenza vaccine in Europe since 2007. More

Rubella vaccine developer and History of Vaccines advisor Stanley A. Plotkin, MD, appeared on CSPAN's Washington Journal on Thursday, 11/3/2011, to discuss the history of vaccination and the government's role in regulating vaccines. Dr. Plotkin described the long history of vaccination (and early immunization practices) in colonial America and United States, beginning with smallpox variolation. A number of callers then phoned in with questions about vaccine safety, how vaccines are tested, and whether Andrew Wakefield's work attempting to link MMR vaccination to autism has been vindicated. He also countered one caller's claim that new childhood vaccines are not tested as part of the complete immunization schedule by describing concomitant use studies that ensure that safety and immunogenicity are not compromised with the addition of new vaccines. More

Stanley A. Plotkin, MD, vaccine developer and History of Vaccines advisor, will appear Thursday, 11/3, on C-SPAN's Washington Journal around 9:15 am EDT. Dr. Plotkin will be discussing the history of vaccination and the role of the governement in supporting research and regulating vaccine production. You can watch live on C-SPAN, or live online at http://www.c-span.org/Series/Washington-Journal/. This is a call-in program, so please phone in to ask Dr. Plotkin questions about the history of vaccines. The program will be archived at the Washington Journal website, so if you miss the live show, you'll be able to view it later. More

The human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine has been recommended as part of the routine vaccination schedule for girls aged 11-12 since 2006 for the prevention of cervical cancer. In 2009, the FDA licensed the vaccine for use in males aged 9-26 years for the prevention of genital warts caused by two types of HPV, but the vaccine was not yet recommended for boys as part of the routine immunization schedule.

Meeting today at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted to recommend routine immunization against HPV for boys at age 11-12. ACIP members, experts selected by the Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, develop the recommendations that are used in the U.S. Recommended Childhood, Adolescent and Adult Immunization Schedules. More

Going to the movies is a time-honored way of getting away from the vagaries of work and home life and inhabiting a different and exotic place. I don’t know if car mechanics can really enjoy chase movies or cowboys can appreciate Westerns, but as a specialist in Infectious Diseases, I rarely get a chance to see someone plying my trade inside the multiplex. There are spoilers ahead, so read on cautiously if you have not yet seen Contagion and plan to go.

The new Steven Soderbergh movie, Contagion, is a fairly realistic guesstimate of what might happen if a highly contagious, new infectious agent started moving around the world and destroying people willy nilly like a marauding tornado. While there has never been an infection quite like “MEV-1” as depicted in Contagion, the question of how we would respond as a medical community and as a society is a worthy one to address. Whether the answer is right or wrong – well, let’s hope we never find out.

From an Infectious Diseases angle, the infection in Contagion is crafted to be highly transmissible and fatal. This would be like a hybrid of the 1918-1919 pandemic flu, Nipah virus and SARS. The end of the movie shows the mechanism via which MEV-1 began to infect humans, and it is highly reminiscent of Nipah and SARS. Thus has some built-in credibility as it builds on diseases that we already understand. It is also eerily reminiscent of the most recent big flu outbreak (A/California/2009 H1N1) where the virus contained elements that came from birds, pigs and people. The rapidity of spread lends the movie much of its terror, but is not far off the rapidity of spread of influenza. Similarly, the incubation period and time to death is also reminiscent of the 1918-1919 pandemic flu. So the film-makers have done their homework and created a plausible disaster scenario. More

Two important vaccine meetings were held September 11 and 12 at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. The September 12 meeting entitled Research Integrity Challenges in Vaccine Development and Distribution for Public Health Emergencies was sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of Research Integrity, Drexel University, University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics, and The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. Speakers focused on vaccine development and distribution for biological threats and how the emergency preparedness experiences with A/H1N1 provided lessons that might inform future preparation for similar public health emergencies. More

Two important vaccine meetings are being held at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. The first meeting occurs September 12, and is entitled Research Integrity Challenges in Vaccine Development and Distribution for Public Health Emergencies. Sponsors include the Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of Research Integrity, Drexel University, University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics, and The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. The second meeting on September 13 is part of the National Vaccine Program Office's effort to gather stakeholder input. Regional stakeholders are invited to attend sessions and share their experiences with immunization, particularly around racial and ethnic disparities, risk communications, and adolescent and adult vaccines. The information gathered at this meeting will help guide the implementation of the National Vaccine Plan as well as inform local and regional vaccine groups on barriers and successes in immunization. More

In October 2010, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) issued a new recommendation for Tdap vaccination -- the booster vaccine that provides protection against tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis (whooping cough). While the vaccine had previously been recommended as a one-time booster for adults up to age 64, replacing an individual tetanus booster, the committee voted to expand that recommendation: anyone older than 65 who had not received a prior dose of Tdap should receive one if they expected to have close contact with an infant younger than 12 months old.

This recommendation was made partially in light of the California whooping cough epidemic. While whooping cough is typically less severe in adults, the infection can still be passed to infants, for whom infections are much more severe. Study data has indicated that grandparents, for example, are the ultimate source of the infection in 6-8% of cases. However, the committee noted that there was a direct benefit to the individual as well, since whooping cough tends to be more severe in adults older than 65 than in younger adults. (For more details, see "Advisory Committee Votes for Expanded Pertussis Vaccine Recommendations" from the History of Vaccines blog.)

Although this recommendation was issued last October, some adults older than 65 who wanted to receive a Tdap booster had difficulties obtaining one due to confusion between the ACIP's recommendation and the FDA's approved label usage for the vaccine at the time. Neither of the two Tdap vaccines (Sanofi Pasteur's Adacel and GlaxoSmithKline's Boostrix) was approved by the FDA for use in adults older than 65. More

Just a week after a June 13 summit at which public and private donors committed $4.3 billion to continue funding the GAVI Alliance’s efforts to immunize the world’s poorest children, another vaccines summit played out in Seattle. The Pacific Health Summit, a yearly conference examining a different global health issue, convened June 21-23 with the goal of connecting decision makers in science, industry, policy, and public health to improve health by combining the latest in scientific advances with industrial innovation and effective policy. Past topics have included multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, maternal and child health, malnutrition, and pandemic influenza. More

Last December, the History of Vaccines blog covered the introduction of MenAfriVac to the African meningitis belt, an area stretching from Senegal to Ethiopia, where epidemic waves of meningitis occur and can last up to three years. In the largest of these epidemic waves in history, meningitis killed more than 25,000 people from 1996 to 1997.

Polysaccharide vaccines are sometimes used to try to control outbreaks after they have begun: so-called “emergency vaccination” efforts designed to keep meningococcal epidemics from spreading further. However, these types of reactive efforts are very expensive and difficult to manage, and polysaccharide vaccines do not induce long-lasting immunity against meningococcal bacteria. (For more about the different types of vaccines, see our article and Types of Vaccines activity.)

Within these African epidemics, between 80 and 85% of cases are caused by a single group of meningococcal bacteria: group A. In 2000, a group of global health leaders gathered together by the World Health Organization (WHO) determined that a meningitis vaccine could be developed specifically for use in Africa: a low-cost vaccine that would focus solely on the Group A bacteria. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided a ten-year grant for what would become the Meningitis Vaccine Project (MVP). More