Immunization

WASHINGTON -- The Senate Intelligence Committee met late yesterday to review proposed compromise legislation that would strengthen court oversight of eavesdropping on Americans while granting telephone and Internet companies legal immunity for their role in assisting government surveillance programs since 2001. Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the Democratic chairman, and Sen. Christopher S. Bond of Missouri, the Republican vice chairman, reached a tentative agreement Wednesday on the compromise measure.

About 900 city students remained barred from school yesterday for failing to get state-required immunizations - a number that officials say they expect will continue to dwindle in the coming weeks. The Baltimore school system barred 2,500 students Sept. 14, the district's deadline for students through 10th grade to have hepatitis B and chickenpox shots. Since then, city school and Health Department nurses have vaccinated nearly 1,600, most of them high school students. All high schools have health centers staffed with nurses and Health Department representatives ready to administer the shots.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said yesterday that MedImmune has addressed problems at its FluMist manufacturing plant in Europe. The move clears the way for the agency to also consider an application requesting that a new version of the influenza vaccine be approved for use in children younger than 5. In May, the FDA sent a warning letter to the Gaithersburg company and said it would withhold approval of the drug for younger children until problems...

Baltimore students and teachers head back to school today, undoubtedly amid equal doses of optimism and anxiety. But before students can sit comfortably at their desks, they must be properly immunized. City school and health officials have been doing their part to reach out to families and to make vaccines available - in a worthy effort to avoid the crisis that disrupted classes for thousands of students after new vaccine requirements went into effect during the last school year. It's now up to parents to ensure compliance - or else their children might be shut out of class.

MedImmune Inc. failed to address multiple problems - including bacterial contamination - identified last year at a FluMist manufacturing plant in Europe, "substantially increas[ing] the risk of product failures" in batches of its nasally inhaled influenza vaccine, according to a warning letter released by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration yesterday. Last week, the Gaithersburg biotechnology company said the federal agency was withholding approval of its application to expand FluMist's use to include most children younger than age 5 until the concerns are resolved.

A flu spray made by Gaithersburg-based MedImmune Inc. is effective for young children, the Food and Drug Administration said yesterday, signaling that the company might soon win approval to market the vaccine for use in children younger than 5. Some health experts say FluMist would be a welcome tool in combating the flu because it would help immunize children who could otherwise get the illness and spread it to others. An FDA advisory panel will take up the issue tomorrow, with the expectation that the agency will make a decision before the end of May. Approval could greatly increase sales of the nasal spray vaccine by MedImmune, which agreed last month to be purchased by London-based AstraZeneca PLC for $15.6 billion.

Scientists working independently in Cambridge, England, and Cambridge, Mass., have discovered an unexpected regulatory network that affects the entire immune system. The regulatory network might provide new clues to the working of the body's defenses and the generation of a class of cancers known as lymphomas, which include Hodgkin's disease. The network depends on a genetic element known as a micro-RNA. RNA is the versatile chemical cousin of DNA; the micro snippets are too short to make genes but can interfere with the much longer messenger RNAs, which are transcribed from the DNA and used to direct the synthesis of proteins.

When MedImmune Inc. agreed to be purchased by AstraZeneca PLC over the weekend, the state was served notice that it will essentially lose its flagship biotech - the one officials have relied on for years as a selling tool to draw similar businesses. The Gaithersburg company's profits and high-profile products (FluMist and blockbuster treatment Synagis for babies) have led governors to herald it as an industry leader, mayors to praise the jobs it provides and economic development leaders to tout MedImmune as the example all biotechs should follow.

The game at MedImmune was over on Valentine's Day, we can now see, when Carl C. Icahn disclosed that he had bought stock in the Gaithersburg biotech company worth $89.8 million. He didn't threaten a proxy fight against MedImmune until March, he later told The Washington Post, but he hardly needed to. Mere news that Icahn has taken a stake in your company delivers as message as obvious as a severed horse's head: Place all or part of your company up for sale, or prepare for war. On Monday, MedImmune agreed to sell itself to AstraZeneca for twice its stock market value from a few months earlier.

MedImmune is the only Maryland biotechnology company to develop a blockbuster drug, establishing itself among the upper tier of the industry. It also spread around its money and influence to help other Maryland companies get started. Through its venture capital arm, MedImmune Ventures Inc., the company has invested $152 million in 16 companies, three of which are in Maryland. A fourth company, Micromet Inc., is moving its U.S. headquarters to Bethesda this week from Carlsbad, Calif., because of its close relationship with MedImmune.