MedImmune Licenses Technology to Hungary's Omninvest for Influenza Vaccine Production

MedImmune (Gaithersburg, MD) has licensed its proprietary reverse genetics intellectual property to Omninvest, a Hungarian research and manufacturing company, to support the development and construction of new vaccine strains to produce non-live human influenza vaccines. Reverse genetics allows viruses such as influenza to be generated from segments of DNA so that manufacturers do not have to work directly with potentially highly infectious circulating pandemic strains, such as H5N1. This announcement marks the second agreement of this kind that MedImmune signed in the third quarter of 2008.

Most influenza vaccine manufacturing companies and governmental agencies are now using reverse genetics technology in their development of pandemic vaccine candidates. As the owner or exclusive licensee of key patent estates for use of the reverse genetics technology in human influenza vaccines, MedImmune has offered other influenza vaccine manufacturers non-exclusive licenses to these intellectual property estates for use in manufacturing seasonal or pandemic vaccines.

In a first for any influenza vaccine manufacturer, MedImmune applied the reverse genetics process to the development of its seasonal live, attenuated nasal spray influenza vaccine for the 2008–2009 season.