Adimmune to set up databank for locally produced vaccine

“Clinical trials will involve about 350 people in various age brackets to assess the effectiveness and side effects of our influenza vaccine,” said Adimmune Corp. spokeswoman Shen Ya-hui.

Taiwan usually imports its flu vaccine from abroad, but few foreign vaccine manufacturers have ever conducted clinical tests on Taiwanese people to evaluate their responses to the products, Shen said.

As a result, she said, there is no data or information about the extent of the protection the imported flu vaccines can provide to Taiwanese people.

Taking influenza A(H1N1) as an example, she went on, foreign studies have shown that older people might be as much as 30 percent immune because of the higher chance that they were infected with a less virulent form of the virus in the past.

However, Shen said, Adimmune-conducted clinical studies have shown that Taiwanese people are only 3 percent immune to H1N1 infection.

The company's new vaccine, Shen continued, will be able to provide protection to local people against the virulent and sometimes fatal H1N1 form of the virus, because it contains one of the virus strains that was prevalent in Taiwan last year.

According to Shen, Adimmune is conducting the clinical trials among both adults and children, with tests on 120 adults in two age brackets — those aged 18-60 and those older than 60 — getting under way Aug. 9.

The pediatric clinical trials, which will be conducted among children in three age brackets — those aged between 6 months and 3 years; those aged between 3 and 9; and those aged between 9 and 18 — are scheduled to start later this month.

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