Anthrax Vaccine

Despite pledges two years ago to maintain a stockpile of drugs to protect Americans in the event of a bioterrorism attack, the federal government has so far set aside only 159 vials of anthrax vaccine for the civilian population, enough for only 530 people, according to congressional and administration officials. The officials said the failure to transfer more of the vaccine from military to civilian control was caused by legal and bureaucratic wrangling among government agencies. They also cited the government's desire to buy a new vaccine that is potentially both cheaper and more efficient.

Emergent BioSolutions Inc. of Rockville said Monday it won a five-year contract worth up to $1.25 billion to provide millions of doses of an anthrax vaccine for government stockpiles. The company said it would supply 44.75 million doses of BioThrax, the only vaccine licensed by the Food and Drug Administration to prevent anthrax infection. The company makes the vaccine at a facility in Michigan. Emergent is renovating a facility in Baltimore, where it plans to produce a tuberculosis vaccine, the company said.

WASHINGTON -- At least a dozen Marines in California and 30 Air Force Reserve pilots in Washington state have something in common: They refused to take the Pentagon's mandatory anthrax vaccine, calling it unsafe and ineffective.But while the active-duty Marines are being court-martialed and face strong disciplinary action, the National Guard and Reserve pilots are merely taking the summer off from their flying duties, according to interviews with officers around the country.Since they are not on active duty, the Guard and Reserve pilots refusing the shots cannot be court-martialed, officials said.

PharmAthene, the Annapolis biodefense company, announced Tuesday that its federal contract has been expanded to provide $78.4 million in additional funding. The company, which develops medical countermeasures against chemical and biological threats, is working on an anthrax vaccine to be stockpiled by the U.S. government. This is a second-generation vaccine that's less expensive and faster-acting than the current vaccine in the stockpile, said spokeswoman Stacey Jurchison. PharmAthene's original contract from 2003 was worth $118 million.

WASHINGTON -- More than one-quarter of the pilots in a California Air Force Reserve squadron are choosing to quit rather than take the Pentagon's mandatory anthrax vaccine, the latest protest in a service-wide revolt that could threaten the readiness of Guard and Reserve air squadrons.The loss of at least 11 cargo and refueling pilots at Travis Air Force Base near San Francisco follows the resignations last month of eight Air National Guard combat pilots in Connecticut who also refused to take the vaccine.

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon's mandatory anthrax vaccine program, troubled by a wave of resignations and courts-martial of personnel who refuse to take the shots, now has another problem: The sole manufacturer of the vaccine is in financial trouble.Bioport Corp., of Lansing, Mich., "has a serious cash flow problem" and is about five months behind in its deliveries, due to an "overly optimistic business plan," the General Accounting Office, Congress' watchdog arm, told a House hearing yesterday.

The nation's sole licensed producer of anthrax vaccine will open a plant in Frederick, a potential $100 million facility that adds to Maryland's growing strength in vaccine research and production. Officials of Emergent BioLogics Inc. -- a unit of newly created parent Emergent BioSolutions of Gaithersburg -- said yesterday that the plant will employ 100 workers in its first phase and eventually as many as 300 to produce BioThrax, the only anthrax vaccine approved for use in the United States.

WASHINGTON -- The commanding general of the Maryland Air National Guard rescinded yesterday a letter to about 40 Guard pilots that warned them they had to agree to take the Pentagon's anthrax vaccine or face paying back about $30,000 for training on new aircraft next spring. Brig. Gen. David A. Beasley, head of the state's Air Guard, pulled the Jan. 9 letter that some pilots dismissed as "blackmail" in favor of a toned-down letter that focuses instead on training and removes any reference to the anthrax vaccine.

WASHINGTON -- Air Force Capt. Michelle Piel says she lives with headaches and an aching fatigue while her colleague Capt. Jon Richter complains that he rises each day with painful joints that cause him to limp during his first waking hour.The two C-5 Galaxy cargo plane pilots at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware told Congress yesterday that their health problems started soon after they took the Pentagon's mandatory anthrax vaccine, designed to guard all 2.4 million active and reserve soldiers against the lethal biological agent.

MEMBERS of each branch of the U.S. armed forces, both active duty and reserve, share concerns about the military's Anthrax Vaccine Immunization Program.Some of these concerns relate to health, safety and the vaccine's unknown relation to Gulf War illness. Some feel that the vaccine might not effectively protect against anthrax weapons that could be used in biological warfare.Others question why we are using an outdated vaccine to defend against a military threat that has existed for decades.

A Maryland maker of anthrax vaccine said Friday that it has bought a 55,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in East Baltimore that it will use to expand its operations, potentially creating as many as 125 jobs in the city over the next five years that initially were expected in Frederick. Emergent BioSolutions Inc., a 600-person bio-pharmaceutical company with headquarters in Rockville, bought the East Baltimore facility for $7.85 million from the MdBio Foundation, a charitable and educational foundation that supports the state's bioscience industry.

Two state firms win anthrax vaccine contracts Two Maryland vaccine developers have received the green light from Washington to continue development of a third generation of recombinant anthrax vaccine, contracts worth nearly $114 million. PharmaThene Inc. of Annapolis said yesterday that it has received a multiyear contract worth $83.9 million from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to continue work on an advanced vaccine for the civilian bio-defense stockpile that can be stored for up to three years at room temperature.

Eli Rody Vuicich, a scientist, athlete and restaurateur who co-owned Ordell Braase's Flaming Pit and seemed to always be pulling someone's leg with a wink and a smile, died of congestive heart failure Sept. 2 at his home in Timonium. He was 86. Mr. Vuicich grew up in Hibbing, Minn., where - as he often recounted - he delivered milk and papers to help support his mother, two brothers and a sister after his father died. A star athlete in high school, he was inducted into the Hibbing Hall of Fame for basketball and baseball.

Drug companies based in Annapolis and Rockville are battling for potentially lucrative federal contracts to supply at least 25 million doses of new, improved anthrax vaccine to protect Americans against another bioterror attack like the one in 2001. PharmAthene Inc. of Annapolis, which is also developing drugs to protect against chemical nerve agents and the plague bacterium, says it could begin delivering its SparVax vaccine to the Strategic National Stockpile as early as 2012. In Rockville, Emergent BioSolutions Inc. announced that it, too, had a recombinant anthrax vaccine in development.

Bruce E. Ivins, the government biodefense scientist linked to the deadly anthrax mailings of 2001, stood to gain financially from the huge federal spending in the fear-filled aftermath of those killings, the Los Angeles Times has learned. Ivins is listed as a co-inventor on two patents for a genetically engineered anthrax vaccine, federal records show. Separately, Ivins is also listed as a co-inventor on an application to patent an additive for various biodefense vaccines. Ivins, 62, died Tuesday, apparently in a suicide.

Anthrax vaccine maker Emergent BioSolutions Inc. announced plans yesterday to eventually sell shares of stock to the public on the Nasdaq market in an initial offering that could raise as much as $86 million. Three Maryland biotechnology companies have gone public this year, and another - Neuralstem Inc. of Rockville - is planning to do so in the fall. But it's been a tough debut for such businesses. Nationwide, 11 biotech companies have gone public this year but only two have met their stock pricing goals.

It was a pariah among vaccines. More than 100 U.S. soldiers, hearing reports of side effects ranging from migraines to memory loss, were court-martialed after refusing to take it. Hundreds more resigned rather than be inoculated. Now, as the nation reels from a string of anthrax attacks, the decade-long controversy over the safety of anthrax vaccine has been drowned out by a discussion of how fast people can get it. Laboratory workers testing suspicious powders and cultures want it. So do some postal workers, rattled by the knowledge that colleagues have contracted the disease from mail or equipment.

Eli Rody Vuicich, a scientist, athlete and restaurateur who co-owned Ordell Braase's Flaming Pit and seemed to always be pulling someone's leg with a wink and a smile, died of congestive heart failure Sept. 2 at his home in Timonium. He was 86. Mr. Vuicich grew up in Hibbing, Minn., where - as he often recounted - he delivered milk and papers to help support his mother, two brothers and a sister after his father died. A star athlete in high school, he was inducted into the Hibbing Hall of Fame for basketball and baseball.

WASHINGTON -- The threat of bioterrorism, along with the global spread of infectious diseases such as avian flu and SARS, has put a spotlight on the critical need to improve America's fragile public health system. Outstanding progress has been made during the last year in biodefense and pandemic planning, but the United States needs to be ready for any significant worldwide threat. More preparation is still necessary. In biodefense, the Department of Health and Human Services has acquired 10 million doses of safe, FDA-licensed anthrax vaccine to better prepare for another attack like the one in October 2001.