  Recent scientific advances and increased vaccine manufacturing capacity  have prompted experts to increase their projections of how many pandemic  influenza vaccine courses can be made available in the coming years.

In the spring, the World Health Organization (WHO, Geneva, Switzerland)  and vaccine manufacturers said that about 100 million courses of pandemic  influenza vaccine based on the H5N1 avian influenza strain could be produced  immediately with standard technology. Experts now anticipate that global  production capacity will rise to 4.5 billion pandemic immunization courses per  year in 2010.

This year, manufacturers have been able to step up production capacity  of trivalent influenza vaccines to an estimated 565 million doses, from 350  million doses produced in 2006, according to the International Federation of  Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations. According to experts in this  field, the yearly production capacity for the influenza vaccine is expected to  rise to 1 billion doses in 2010, if corresponding demand exists.

Manufacturers will be able to deliver around 4.5 billion pandemic  influenza vaccine courses because a pandemic vaccine would need about eight  times less antigen, the substance that stimulates an immune response. Vaccine  production capacity is linked to the amount of antigen that has to be used to  make each dose of the vaccine. Scientists have recently discovered that by  using adjuvants that enhance the immune response, they can reduce the amount of  antigen used to produce pandemic influenza vaccines. 

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Recent scientific advances and increased vaccine manufacturing capacity have prompted experts to increase their projections of how many pandemic influenza vaccine courses can be made available in the coming years.