MedImmune Licenses Flu Vaccine Technology To Novartis

MedImmune, Inc. (Gaithersburg, MD, www.medimmune.com), has licensed its proprietary reverse genetics intellectual property to Novartis (Basel, Switzerland, www.novartisvaccines.com), to support the development and construction of new vaccine strains to produce inactivated human seasonal, pre-pandemic, and pandemic influenza vaccines. By using reverse genetics, viruses like influenza can be generated from segments of DNA. For prospective pandemic influenza vaccines, reverse genetics can be a useful technology because the process does not require manufacturers to work directly with potentially highly infectious pandemic strains, such as H5N1, rather only segments of the virus's genome.