CUBA ANNOUNCES NEW VACCINE!

While some in this forum demand that Cuba remain wedded to 18th
century agriculture, Cuba will announce development this Wednesday of
a critical new vaccine!

Also, I was informed last week by a key official in the Cuban
hierarchy that Cuba is making "excellent" progress on an AIDS vaccine.

Matthew

Cuba Produces Key Synthetic Vaccine for Children
Sun Nov 23,10:32 AM ET  Add Health - Reuters to My Yahoo! 
 

By Anthony Boadle 

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuban researchers have developed the first
synthetic vaccine against a bacteria that causes pneumonia and
meningitis, a breakthrough aimed at lowering the cost of immunizing
children in poorer countries.

In Yahoo! Health 
 
 Chronic Heartburn
Need Relief?  

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
More from Yahoo! Health: 
•  Check Your Symptoms  
•  How Is It Diagnosed?  
•  Available Treatments  
 
 
   

The vaccine protects against haemophilus influenzae type b, a bacteria
that causes upper respiratory infections, mainly in children up to
five years of age. The disease is a leading cause of meningitis, an
infection of the brain and spinal cord coverings that can cause brain
damage, deafness or death.


The research on the new vaccine, which has already been tested and put
into production in Cuba, will be presented on Wednesday to experts
from the world over at a biotechnology congress in Havana.


This is the first vaccine for humans made with a chemically produced
antigen, Cuba says. The available, conventional vaccine is made using
a difficult and more costly process of growing antigens in a bacterial
culture.


"It took us six years," said Dr. Vicente Verez, head of the University
of Havana's Synthetic Antigens Laboratory.


"But what could be more precious for society than to have healthy
two-month-old babies," he said.


Poor nations that depend on multinational pharmaceutical companies for
the vaccine -- now costing $3 a dose -- will now have a less expensive
alternative, Verez said.


The disease has been almost erased in the United States, the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control said. But it remains a problem in
developing countries where the cost of the vaccine has been a barrier
to widespread immunization.


Clinical trials conducted in the central Cuban province of Camaguey,
first on adult volunteers, then on four-year-old children and finally
on babies, showed a 99.7 percent success rate in developing the
required antibodies.


The technology for the new vaccine was patented in 1999 by the
University of Ottawa and the University of Havana. The Canadians
discovered how to simplify crucial chemical reactions and Cuba applied
the method on a larger scale, Verez said.


Cuba could not afford the conventional vaccine when it appeared a
decade ago. The Cuban economy was in deep crisis after the collapse of
its communist ally the Soviet Union. So Cuba turned to its own medical
and biotechnology industry, one of the most advanced in the Third
World.


Havana has invested millions of dollars in the industry since the
1980s, achieving major successes such as the discovery of a
recombinant vaccine for meningitis B, which has been used in Latin
American countries and was licensed to GlaxoSmithKline for sale in
Europe and possibly the United States. It has also developed a
hepatitis B vaccine that is exported to more than 30 countries.


Haemophilus influenzae type B is the main cause of almost half of the
infections in children under five in the world and kills 500,000
children a year, mostly in developing countries, according to UNICEF
(news - web sites).