"We have already demonstrated the speed of our technology by producing an H1N1 vaccine candidate and initiating animal testing while other vaccine manufacturers were still waiting for a seed strain from the WHO. These additional data expand upon the results we announced in June and support our belief that our influenza vaccines are also capable of providing protection against different circulating viral strains," said Andy Sheldon, President and CEO of Medicago. "Unlike current vaccine manufacturers that have experienced difficulties producing a pandemic candidate for H1N1, our H1N1 vaccine candidate was well expressed in our plant-based system and has produced good yields."

Vaccine makers currently developing vaccine candidates for the pandemic swine flu using egg-based and cell culture technologies have advised the WHO that the influenza seed strain used to produce their new vaccine is not growing well and therefore giving poor antigen yields. The yield is approximately 25-50% of that vaccine makers typically get for seasonal flu vaccine production. The WHO recently made a new set of seed strains using new viral isolates, such as the California/07, in hopes of increasing the vaccine yield. Medicago's vaccine is produced using its VLP technology that does not require a virus and therefore does not rely on the ability of a viral strain to grow.

medicago/