Sanofi flu vaccine plant opens, doubling capacity

The front page of Friday's Philadelphia Inquirer featured a photo of a gloved hand inspecting a tray of eggs. The news? The completion of Sanofi-Pasteur's new flu vaccine plant in Swiftwater, PA.

Some of the numbers in the story: Construction cost $150 million; at full capacity, 600,000 eggs will be used daily, and the plant will double Sanofi's current flu vaccine capacity from 50 to 100 million doses annually.

As the millions of unused doses of seasonal flu vaccine last winter demonstrated, ensuring adequate supply is not a major issue for seasonal flu vaccination efforts. (The far greater challenge is increasing demand among the many populations in which annual vaccination is recommended).

However, Sanofi's new Swiftwater plant could also be used for avian flu vaccine production. (In fact, the Inquirer headline blared, "New Pa. vaccine plant poised for pandemics.") Not only would there be an immediate need for far greater capacity in a pandemic, but the possibility of multiple doses required to provide adequate immune protection could effectively cut avian flu vaccine supply by 1/2 or 1/3, depending on whether 2 or 3 doses are needed.

To that end, Sanofi is in the process of retrofitting an adjacent facility (courtesy of a $77 million federal grant) to increase capacity even further, to 150 million doses, by 2010.

By the way, while the news last week was that construction of the Swiftwater facility was complete, FDA approval is needed before operations can begin. Opening is not expected until late 2008.