Hyderabad|India|October'2010: Bharat Biotech has announced the launch of India’s first indigenously developed cell culture H1N1 swine flu vaccine under the brand name ‘HNVAC™’.

HNVAC™ is the only developing world flu vaccine to be manufactured in cell culture, a highly sterile and controlled manufacturing process, instead of eggs.

HNVAC™ was tested extensively in one of the largest Phase I, II and III clinical trials for flu vaccines in India and has proved that it is safe and well tolerated.

Making the announcement Bharat Biotech’s Chairman and Managing Director, Dr. Krishna Ella, said we are pleased to announce the launch of HNVAC™ to help prevent the spread of H1N1 pandemic influenza, which can spread rapidly with a high rate of disease and death. Bharat Biotech is proud to develop and offer this vaccine with the best USFDA recommended cell culture technology for Indian consumers. While there’s certainly widespread and growing concern around H1N1, there are number of people who did not get a flu shot last year. Our goal right now is get the flu vaccine easily accessible and at affordable cost to high risk groups he added.

“The key benefit of our cell culture vaccine is its potential to scale up and produce large quantities quickly as required, it also has a much more sterile and faster production cycle, without the external dependence on eggs and thus enabling quicker response times in the event of a pandemic. We’ll also explore ways in which Bharat Biotech can assist consumers and government agencies throughout this and subsequent flu season to get HNVAC™ flu shot,” Dr. Ella added. Bharat Biotech’s goal is to develop world class technologies and offer them to the Indian population and for emerging markets. We are proud to offer this technology to global populations.

Bharat Biotech received the approval from the Drugs Controller General of India earlier this month to launch HNVAC™ vaccine. HNVAC was developed with approved strains from WHO and CDC Atlanta. This single dose vaccine has been developed by Bharat Biotech’s scientists at the Genome Valley facility in Hyderabad. HNVAC™ places Bharat Biotech’s superior, clean, safe and controlled mammalian cell culture technology ahead of several multinational and Indian vaccine companies which still use eggs for manufacturing. USFDA has discouraged the use of egg based vaccines due to adverse reactions from egg based proteins, especially in children.

Bharat Biotech expects the demand for flu vaccines in vaccine in India to rise as consumer’s awareness about the disease increases and they are more concerned about getting the flu than they were a year ago. HNVAC™ will be made available in the private market and through government procurement agencies. HNVAC™ vaccine will be competitively priced as Bharat Biotech is committed to ensuring pricing does not become a barrier for consumers to access its vaccines.