Aeras vaccine could wipe out TB

Rockville nonprofit hopes to provide world supply in next seven years

Friday, March 24, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Brian Lewis⁄The Gazette Jerald C. Sadoff, CEO of Aeras, talks with Rep. Christopher Van Hollen Jr. (left) at Thursday’s dedication.

On Thursday, the eve of World TB Day 2006, the nonprofit Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation dedicated the facility, which CEO Jerald C. Sadoff hopes will produce the world’s supply of an improved TB vaccine in the next seven years.

Although a minor disease in the United States and other developed nations, TB kills 1.75 million people a year and infects one-third of the world’s population, according to the World Health Organization.

‘‘More than 4,700 people die every day from TB, and the world needs an effective vaccine as soon as possible,” said Sadoff, a former vaccine researcher and manager at Merck Pharmaceuticals. ‘‘Waiting even one day would be unconscionable.”

About 125 guests were on hand for the dedication, including Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R), Rep. Christopher Van Hollen Jr. (D-Dist. 8) of Kensington, leading vaccine scientists from the National Institutes of Health, Johns Hopkins Medical Center and Walter Reed Medical Center, and diplomatic officials from Uganda, Kenya, Zambia, Namibia, South Africa, Norway, England and Denmark.

Aeras is focusing on only one disease, with the goal of providing the first effective TB vaccine since 1925.

‘‘Anyone connected with the public sector in Maryland has a smile on his face today,” Ehrlich said. ‘‘The facts on TB are staggering, are disquieting. And now you [Aeras] are a symbol of hope for millions of people around the world every day.”

‘‘It is great to be in a building where there is a goal of wiping out TB in our lifetime,” Van Hollen said.

The foundation is supported by grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Danish government.

The 20,000-square-foot facility is specially designed for producing TB vaccine, Sadoff said. He said the foundation has four versions of a TB vaccine and that all four will be in phase 1 clinical trials this year. The goal, he said is to be in phase 3 by 2009.

‘‘The science is available — we know how to do it — but the money is not all there yet,” Sadoff said. He said Aeras plans to be fully funded for the next decade through private support.

Sadoff said the current TB vaccine is only 30 percent effective, at best, and is typically administered just once.

‘‘A vaccine like this should be given three or four times for boosters. Our vaccines will be at the 50 to 70 percent efficacy level,” he said.

Aeras currently has more than 60 employees. In 2003, it raised $80 million, according to a foundation attorney.

When in full production, the facility will be capable of producing 10 million doses per run. The vaccine will be shipped to needy areas in the developing world frozen in 5-liter packages. Aeras employees will be on-site to help ‘‘validate the vialing” of the vaccine as it arrives overseas, said laboratory technicians.