Health Insurance Coverage-Patient Assistance-Adult Vaccines-Medicines

Access Feature Story: Patient Assistance Programs

Merck firmly believes no one should go without the medicines or vaccines they need. We support policies to increase access to medicines and vaccines and are committed to assisting underinsured or uninsured people obtain the medicines or vaccines they need to improve their health. We have programs to provide our medicines and adult vaccines for free or at discounts to people who do not have prescription drug or health insurance coverage and who, without our assistance, cannot afford their Merck medicines and vaccines. We are proud of having these programs, and Merck is actively supporting healthcare reform that will ensure affordable healthcare coverage for all Americans. read more..

source:http://www.merck.com

Biopharmaceutical Industry-Venture Capital Investors-Cell Culture Products-Ge Healthcare

GE Healthcare moves further into biopharmaceutical field, buys Xcellerex

GE Healthcare is expanding its line of tools to sell to the biopharmaceutical industry.It said Wednesday that it is acquiring Xcellerex, a Marlborough, MA-based supplier of turn-key manufacturing systems for the biopharmaceutical industry. The acquisition of Xcellerex will allow GE Healthcare to expand its offering of products and services to the biopharmaceuticals industry just as more companies are looking to manufacture recombinant proteins, antibodies and vaccines.Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the company has raised about $55 million from such venture capital investors as Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, SCG Capital and VantagePoint Venture Partners, according to its website. The company, which has about 135 employees, had 2011 revenues of about $50 million.Xcellerex says its biomanufacturing systems and production-scale bioreactors are based around single-use components and can be up and running faster and at less cost than building a traditional manufacturing facility. It says more than 20 therapeutic proteins and vaccines have been manufactured for clinical trials using its technology.Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News points out that it's GE Healthcare's second acquisition in the category in 8 months. In August, it bought PAA Laboratories, which develops and manufactures cell culture products such as media, sera, growth supplements and reagents.- read the release
- here is GEN's storyRelated Articles:
GE jumps in to biologics, vaccine manufacturing game
CMO Gallus taps Xcellerex for single-use capacity read more..

source:http://www.fiercepharmamanufacturing.com/

Herd Immunity-Flu Vaccines-Vaccinations

Universal vaccine could cut flu across the whole community

Many vaccines do more than just protect individual vaccinated people. They also protect the whole community through what is known as "herd immunity" by cutting the number of sick people carrying the infection. However, this situation doesn't apply with standard flu vaccines because the virus mutates quickly, so vaccinations need to be effectively created anew each year. Vaccination campaigns have to target vulnerable people, rather than trying to vaccinate the whole population.A number of groups are developing so-called "universal" flu vaccines, which rely on targeting conserved parts of the virus--parts that change very little. Researchers at Princeton University are looking at these universal vaccines, and believe that they can be used across the whole population. Because of this, they may actually slow down the mutation rate of the flu virus, and may also be able to create herd immunity, reducing the levels of infection across unvaccinated as well as vaccinated people.Herd immunity only works if vaccinations are widespread, though. To create this level of protection, vaccinations need to be at levels of 83% to 94%, depending on the infection. For many diseases, the levels have dropped below this, and outbreaks of preventable viral infections are out there, putting elderly people, pregnant women and other groups at risk. While there will always be some risks from vaccination, there are also some quite major risks from what may seem to be trivial diseases. Flu isn't trivial for vulnerable people. So, bring on the universal vaccines. -- Suzanne Elvidge (email) read more..

source:http://www.fiercevaccines.com