China's SFDA approves Phase II trials for H5N1 vaccine

China's State Food and Drug Administration has approved the Phase II trials of a locally-developed vaccine against avian influenza (Marketletters passim). Sinovac Biotech, a Beijing, China-based biotechnology company, said that, in Phase I studies which ended in June last year, none of the 120 people injected with the vaccine against the H5N1 strain of bird flu suffered any side effects.

Sinovac focuses on the R&D, manufacture and marketing of vaccines that protect against human infectious diseases. The firm's existing products include: Healive (hepatitis A), Bilive (combined hepatitis A and B) and Anflu (influenza). In addition to its work on a human vaccine against a potential influenza pandemic caused by a mutation in the H5N1 strain of the disease, the biotechnology firm is investigating products for Japanese encephalitis and severe acute respiratory syndrome.

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