GlaxoSmithKline chief to meet with president over bird flu drugs

GlaxoSmithKline’s chief executive, Jean-Pierre Garnier, will meet President Bush in the next fortnight to discuss progress in the development of a bird-flu vaccine for the H5N1 vaccine.

Britain’s biggest pharmaceuticals company has been researching the vaccine for release next year. France and the UK have already ordered 60 million doses between them, while the US is in regular talks with Glaxo about the project’s status. Glaxo says that the US government has estimated that a flu pandemic could kill up to two million Americans and cost the country more than $500 million. The company has also increased production of Relenza, its antiviral drug.

Mr Garnier told the Observer: “They are keen to get things under way, investing in what is the equivalent of a half-finished house. There is a great deal of concern.”

Glaxo has two H5N1 vaccines in development, both of them are currently undergoing clinical trials in Germany. H5N1 is a type of the influenza A virus that is common in many species, including humans. So far there have been no reported cases of human-to-human contagion of the disease, although the avian form of the virus has spread from south-east Asia into northern Europe.

In 2003, virologist Roger Webster told the American Scientist: “The world is teetering on the edge of a pandemic that could kill a large fraction of the human population.” Last month the Sunday Times reported that a confidential Home Office memo said that as many as 320,000 Britons could die from a human outbreak of the H5N1 virus, raising the possibility of the need for mass burials.

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