SEOUL - South Korean pharmaceutical company Green Cross recently started "test production" of its own A/H1N1 flu vaccine, after receiving a virus strain from the UK's National Institution for Biological Standards and Control and from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the U.S.

After completing clinical trials, the company plans to market the vaccine in the Korean market beginning in 2010 - at the latest - after acquiring Korea FDA's approval.

The vaccine will be produced at the company's plant in Hwasoon, southwest of Seoul. The plant opened and began test production in early July as part of government efforts initiated in 2005 to better fight various strains of flu by fostering the building of domestic vaccine plants instead of importing vaccines.

South Korea has been importing vaccines from the multinational companies GSK, Novartis, Berna Biotech and Sanofi Pasteur.

"In light of the emergence of new viruses that can become resistant to Tamiflu and other antivirals, South Korea and our company need to prepare for new flu viruses through the supply of proper vaccines," Green Cross spokesman Park Jae-Hyun told PharmAsia News. "Our production of flu vaccines will make South Korea the 12th country capable of producing its own flu vaccines."

Park said his company's vaccines will initially focus on the Korean market, but could be sold in other countries in the future.

Although Korea has the world's second highest inoculation rate for influenza, it has had a hard time in securing enough supply of flu vaccines and drugs.

"The vaccine plant of Green Cross signals that South Korea will be able to produce its own flu vaccines in the future, without depending on imports of completed products from the four multinational companies" a KFDA official said. "The dependence on antiviral drugs such as Tamiflu, Relenza and others could be eventually weakened when flu vaccines are properly and timely provided at early stage of a developing disease."

The opening of the vaccine plant came amid moves by the South Korean government to acquire more doses of Roche's Tamiflu (oseltamivir) in the fight against the swine flu virus.

Alarmed by the rising number of people infected with the H1N1 virus in neighboring Japan, and in Korea, the South Korean government has signed contracts to secure more of Roche's Tamiflu (oseltamivir) and GlaxoSmithKline's Relenza (zanamivir). (Also see "Korea Signs Deals With Roche, GSK For More Tamiflu, Relenza" - Scrip, 25 May, 2009.)

"We signed two separate contracts with the Seoul offices of Roche and GSK on May 20," said Lee Sun-Jae, an official at the government's Public Procurement Service. "We will receive the products in October under a [government] bid to expand stockpiles of the products to cover 10 percent of our population from the current 5 percent."

In 1971, Green Cross produced Korea's first albumin. Since then, Green Cross's key projects have focused on the production of blood products and vaccines.

- Peter Chang (p.chang@elsevier.com)

South Korea's Green Cross Begins "Test Production" of Flu Vaccine

More from Archive

More from Scrip