Sanofi Ceo to Shop For Biotech, Vaccine, Nonprescription Deals
Sanofi has already spent 6.2 billion euros ($9 billion) this year to buy health-care companies and products as part of a strategy to bolster “five growth platforms,” Viehbacher, 49, said yesterday at the companys New York offices. Viehbacher said Paris-based Sanofi is especially interested in expanding its vaccine operations, noting Johnson & Johnsons purchase this week of 18 percent of Dutch vaccine company Crucell NV.
Viehbacher, who joined Sanofi from London-based GlaxoSmithKline Plc 10 months ago, is under pressure to expand as rivals merge and drugs accounting for about 20 percent of its sales face generic competition by 2013. Abbott Laboratories announced this week it will purchase of Solvay SAs pharmaceutical unit for 4.8 billion euros. Pfizer Inc. agreed to buy Wyeth, and Merck & Co. said it will acquire Schering-Plough Corp. this year.
“There will be more shopping on the horizon,” Viehbacher said, declining to identify targets. Purchases must add to the companys growth, Viehbacher said. He has said in the past that he is interested in acquisitions costing as much as 15 billion euros.
Vaccines are attractive because the market will double during the next five years, because the products arent readily reproduced by competitors and because of the investment required to build vaccine plants, Viehbacher said. Sanofi in July announced it would purchase Shantha Biotechnics, the Hyderabad, India-based maker of an experimental typhoid vaccine, and will keep looking for such acquisitions, he said.
Bolt-on Acquisitions
Johnson & Johnson said it will work with Crucell to develop a universal flu vaccine. Sanofi considered buying Crucell, Viehbacher told employees on Jan. 30.
The executive continues to look for “bolt-on acquisitions” and isnt seeking to merge with a pharmaceutical company of a size similar to Sanofi, he said.
“People thought we had to do a large-sized acquisition,” Viehbacher said during the interview. “I am not saying we wouldnt, but it is highly unlikely.”
The company also will continue the hunt for “innovative” medicines such as the experimental breast cancer drug it acquired when it agreed to pay as much as $500 million in April for BiPar Sciences Inc., an 18-employee biotech company based in Brisbane, California, near San Francisco. The drug, called BSI- 201, attacks cancer cells in a novel way. At a science meeting in June, researchers said the medicine, when added to chemotherapy, prolonged survival in women with aggressive breast cancer by 3.5 to 9 months.
Clinical Trials
Viehbacher said the drug is being developed quickly, moving from the second of three phases of clinical trials to the third within “just eight weeks.”
Sanofi shares have gained 11 percent this year, giving the company a market value of 66.3 billion euros. Thats better than the 3.9 percent increase recorded in the period by the 17-stock Bloomberg Europe Pharmaceutical Index. GlaxoSmithKline has slipped 3.2 percent this year.
Sanofis fifth growth platform, along with vaccines, biotech, over-the-counter drugs and emerging markets, is diabetes treatments, Viehbacher said.
He reiterated he expects Sanofis earnings and sales in 2013 to equal their 2008 levels, excluding acquisitions. The company in July raised its forecast for 2009 growth in earnings per share to about 10 percent, assuming constant exchange rates, from the at least 7 percent previously forecast.
“Investors are beginning to look beyond 2012,” Viehbacher said. “Investors see we are one of the companies that is getting beyond its patent cliff.”
Obesity Trend May Hurt Improvement In Breast Cancer Mortality
The mortality rate in the U.S. continued to drop 2 percent annually from 1996 to 2006, the most recent year with data available, according to the report released today.
Women may accelerate that decline by maintaining a healthy body weight, engaging in regular physical activity and minimizing alcohol intake, said Ahmedin Jemal, an epidemiologist with the group and a report co-author.
Failing to adopt that kind of lifestyle “could hurt progress in breast cancer death rates,” Jemal said in a telephone interview yesterday. “The obesity trend is going in the wrong direction.”
About 30 percent of people in the U.S. are now obese, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Women who gain 22 pounds or more after menopause face an 18 percent increase in risk for breast cancer, according to a study cited by the cancer societys report. The chance of getting breast cancer within a decade for women age 50 is about 1 in 42 on average, according to the report.
Fewer women may die from breast cancer if more effort were also made to get uninsured women to have yearly mammograms, Jemal said. While 70 percent of insured women over 40 years old have had a mammogram within the last two years, only 33 percent of uninsured females have had one, he said, citing the reports statistics.
Opportunity
“We have a tremendous opportunity to improve the numbers if we increase access to mammograms in economically disadvantaged populations,” Jemal said. The mortality rate among African-American women is 38 percent higher than among Caucasian females, according to the report.
Jemal said there is a 98 percent survival rate when the cancer is caught early with regular mammograms. The drop in mortality rates is attributable to early detection and improved treatment, he said.
“From 1989 to 2006, there has been a 30 percent drop in the death rate from breast cancer,” he said. “If the rate remained the same, 130,000 more women would have died in these years. I think this progress is huge.”
Overweight and obesity are generally measured by a ratio of height to weight known as the body-mass index. A 5-foot, 5-inch woman is considered overweight at 150 pounds (68 kilograms) and obese at 180 pounds.
Cancer Alert Asked as Sanofi, Novo Diabetes Drugs Put to Test
European scientists startled medical professionals and patients in June when they reported in the Diabetologia medical journal that Sanofi-Aventis SAs Lantus, the worlds biggest-selling insulin, may increase the risk of cancer. U.S. regulators delayed a decision on Novo Nordisk A/Ss liraglutide drug until the fourth quarter after cases of thyroid cancer emerged in animal tests.
The cancer link casts a spotlight on glucose-lowering therapies that have become standard care for people who cant control their blood sugar levels with healthy eating or exercise, said Edwin Gale, a professor of diabetes at the University of Bristol, England, and the editor of Diabetologia. Doctors attending this years European Association for the Study of Diabetes meeting in Vienna will discuss whether they need to weigh more closely the risks of such medicines when Sanofi and Bagsvaerd, Denmark-based Novo Nordisk present information on the safety of their long-acting insulins, Lantus and Levemir, on Oct. 1, Gale said.
Dogma
“As a general rule, the dogma has been that anything that lowers glucose is equivalent in terms of benefit,” said Gale in an interview. “Thats now being teased apart. Weve got a number of relatively equivalent glucose-lowering therapies. In the future, were going to be asking hard questions about what the other costs and benefits will be.”
Diabetes therapies metformin, Avandia and Actos may be protective against malignancies, Gale said.
Sales of Lantus, a so-called long-acting analog also known as insulin glargine, and Levemir are growing even after the Sanofi product came under scrutiny in June when four European studies published in the medical journal suggested it may increase the risk of tumors.
Sanofi said Lantus is safe and the studies have “significant, methodological limitations and shortcomings.”
Insulin analogs are tested for carcinogenicity because the hormone has long been known to interact with insulin-like growth factors in the body that play a role in cell growth.
Safety
“There will be data from the manufacturers of the long- acting analogs, which are reassuring as far as they go,” said Gale. “The question will be if they are sufficiently powered to answer the questions” about their safety and possible ties to cancer, he said.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, in response to the Diabetologia studies, in a statement on its Web site on July 1 questioned whether a link between Lantus and cancer exists. The reports examined one to three years of therapy, less than what is generally necessary to evaluate a link between cancer and drug exposure, the FDA said at the time. Variances such as patient weight and the dose of Lantus, also may have influenced the findings, it said.
Consensus
“While there is a consensus among leading scientists around the world regarding the difficulties of developing conclusive evidence, Sanofi-Aventis is committed to exploring this matter in depth,” the French drugmaker said.
Treatment for the more-than 200 million diabetics worldwide is designed to help the body convert blood sugar into energy. The drugs are taken for life, as the body gradually produces less of the hormone insulin that naturally controls blood glucose or sugar levels.
The number of people with diabetes worldwide is expected to rise to 350 million in the next two decades, according to Sanofi.
Sanofi is urging doctors to introduce insulin, often regarded as a treatment of last resort, earlier in the onset of diabetes amid evidence it may slow the progression of the disease.
Type 2 diabetes, the most common type, typically develops in overweight, sedentary adults. Most people with this form of diabetes are overweight or obese, a condition that is also tied to cancer. Obesity may have caused 124,050 newly diagnosed tumors last year in Europe, according to research released last week.
Canceled Project
Bayer, Onyxs Pill Doesnt Slow Breast Cancer In Second Study
The pill in combination with chemotherapy drug paclitaxel showed a “positive trend” toward helping women live longer without their disease getting worse, but the results werent statistically significant, the two drugmakers said in an e- mailed statement today. Bayer and Onyx didnt say how long it took the womens tumors to progress.
“These encouraging data warrant further investigation,” lead scientist William Gradishar, a professor of medicine at Northwestern University, said in the statement, adding that women with advanced breast cancer often lack treatment options.
Results of a different trial presented last week at the European Cancer Organization and European Society for Medical Oncology conference in Berlin showed that Nexavar delayed progression of breast cancer by 6.4 months when combined with Roche Holding AGs chemotherapy pill Xeloda, compared with 4.1 months for chemotherapy alone. Bayer is now considering whether to begin the last stage of clinical trials needed before Nexavar, already approved for use in kidney and liver tumors, could be marketed for breast cancer as well.
Bayer will decide by early next year whether to move Nexavar into the final stage of clinical testing, Robert Rosen, head of global oncology at Bayer, said in an interview at last weeks conference. The German drugmaker doesnt expect the medicine to reach the breast cancer market before late 2012.
Blockbuster Potential
Bayer, based in Leverkusen, Germany, and Emeryville, California-based Onyx are conducting two more mid-stage trials of Nexavar in breast cancer, the companies said. Full results of the study reported today will be presented at a future medical conference.
Bayer forecasts that Nexavar may generate as much as 750 million euros ($1.1 billion) in annual sales for breast cancer if approved by regulators, Rosen said.
Schumer, Democrats Oath to Fight For Public Option After Setback
The panel rejected amendments offered by Schumer and West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller to create a “public option” that would compete with private insurers such as Indianapolis- based WellPoint Inc. Panel chairman Max Baucus and two other Democrats joined with all of the committees Republicans to vote against both amendments.
While Baucus said he was voting against the program because it couldnt pass the Senate “at this point,” Schumer said he sees growing support. The public option has been the biggest point of contention in the debate over revamping the nations health system, with many Democrats arguing it would curb costs and Republicans saying it would hinder competition.
“Im more optimistic than I was six hours ago,” Schumer, the No. 3 Senate Democratic leader, told reporters after his amendment was defeated. “Every day, I get more optimistic that we can get this passed.”
The idea already has widespread support in the House, where its included in legislation passed by three committees. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she cant get a measure through without a public option, and a showdown between the two chambers looms if the Senate ends up dropping it altogether.
“The public option is on the march,” Rockefeller told other members of the Senate finance panel yesterday.
Paring Losses
Health insurance stocks pared losses after the votes. The Standard & Poors index of the six largest managed-care companies fell 1.2 percent yesterday, after dropping as much as 3.5 percent earlier in the day. Coventry Health Care Inc. of Bethesda, Maryland, rose 12 cents, or 0.6 percent, to $19.94.
Later in the evening, the Senate panel unanimously adopted an amendment by Iowa Senator Charles Grassley and Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning, both Republicans, to require lawmakers, their aides and all other federal employees to buy their insurance from health insurance exchanges created by the legislation after 2013.
The next major battle for insurers is over taxes to pay for the plans estimated $900 billion cost over 10 years. Baucuss proposal, the framework for the finance panels debate, includes a tax on high-end, or “Cadillac,” health-benefits plans. The insurance industry opposes new taxes as well as the public option, saying they would disrupt coverage.
Baucuss committee will begin a sixth day of debate today, missing the chairmans original target of three days. The group has been working late into the evenings and is holding the longest “mark-up” of a measure in 15 years, Baucus said.
Interesting Week
The three House committees and the Senate health panel finished their work in July on legislation designed to rein in health-care costs and cover tens of millions of uninsured Americans. Baucus spent two extra months trying to court Republican votes for his plan, so far unsuccessfully.
As part of that effort, he ditched the idea of a public option in favor of nonprofit, member-run insurance cooperatives that would get government seed money. Under his proposal, insurers would also have to issue policies to all who need them and face restrictions on the premiums they can charge the youngest and oldest policy holders.
“My job is to put together a bill that will become law,” Baucus said before the vote on Rockefellers amendment. “I fear if this provision is in this bill as it comes out of this committee, it will jeopardize” the overhaul effort, he said.
Focus on Families
Rockefeller said his amendment, which was defeated 15-8, would probably save $50 billion over 10 years and reduce costs for families, not focus on profits for insurers.
“Why would we not do this?” he said. “People come second and the profits come first if were against this.”
The Rockefeller amendment would have initially pegged the rates that the public option paid health-care providers to the lower levels paid by Medicare, the government program for the elderly. Schumers proposal would have required the program to negotiate rates with providers, as private insurers do.
Appeals Court Upholds Dismissal Of Vaccine Suit
The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington upheld a lower courts decision dismissing a case brought by eight service members who challenged the Food and Drug Administrations determination that the vaccine was effective.
The plaintiffs also wanted to stop the Defense Departments requirement that service members at risk for anthrax exposure must be vaccinated.
Anthrax is a bacterial disease caused by infection with spores that mainly affects animals but that humans can contract through skin contact, inhalation and ingestion. Inhaled anthrax is more difficult to treat and can be fatal.
The militarys vaccine, produced by Michigan-based Bioport Corp., was approved based on a human test in the 1950s that studied textile workers at risk for the disease because they routinely handled infected imported goat hair. Since then industrial conditions have improved and there has not been another study because of the health risks associated with exposing people to the spores.
The service members argued that because the one human study included only a few inhalation cases, there is insufficient evidence to conclude the vaccine is effective against them.
But the appeals court ruled that the service members who filed the suit did not provide any scientific evidence to prove the vaccine was ineffective. “We are presented with a scientific judgment by the FDA to which we owe considerable deference,” the court found.
John J. Michels Jr., attorney for the service members, said the case shows how difficult it is to challenge a ruling by a federal agency. He said they had not decided whether to appeal the case further.
Being Overweight Can Axe Womens Life Expectancy
For every one-point increase in their Body Mass Index, women had a 12 percent lower chance of surviving to age 70 in good health when compared to thin women. Researchers defined “healthy survival” as not only being free of chronic disease, but having enough mental and physical ability to perform daily tasks like grocery shopping, vacuuming or walking up a flight of stairs.
Experts consider people with a BMI between 19-25 to be healthy, while those from 25 to 30 are considered overweight and those over 30 are obese.
For every 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) gained since age 18, womens odds of surviving past 70 dropped 5 percent, researchers found. Women who were already overweight at age 18 and then gained more than 10 kilograms (22 kilograms) later in life only had about a 20 percent chance of surviving to age 70 in good health. The most commonly reported diseases were cancer, heart disease, and diabetes.
The study was published online Wednesday in the medical journal, BMJ. It was paid for by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the Boston Obesity Nutrition Research Center.
“People may think they can safely gain weight through their 20s, 30s and 40s, but there is no evidence that gaining weight is natural,” said Aviva Must, professor and chair of the public health and community medicine department at Tufts University School of Medicine. Must was not linked to the study. “These results suggest that small weight gains are not innocuous,” she said.
A British study published earlier this year found people with a BMI from 30 to 35 die about three years earlier than normal while those who were morbidly fat, with a BMI above 40, die about a decade earlier.
Other studies have found similar trends in men. Qi Sun, a research associate at Harvard University and one of the study authors, said men were probably equally at risk, since fat acts largely the same way in both genders.
Experts said the findings underlined the importance of preventing obesity in the first place.
“If you are on the obesity track early in life, it could get very dangerous by the time you are middle-aged,” said Stephan Rossner, an obesity expert at Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm. He said it was uncertain if people could regain the health benefits of being thin if they lost weight later in life.
While average life spans have increased in recent years with scientific advances in treating illness, experts warned the obesity epidemic could ultimately undo those gains.
“We know were extending life span, but we dont know if were extending healthy survival,” Must said. “If one is going to spend the last three decades of ones life with compromised physical and mental function, that may not be the picture of aging we have when we think of living into our 90s.”
—-
http://www.bmj.com
Uk Official: Vaccine Unlikely to Have Caused Fatality
Natalie Morton, who died in a hospital Monday only hours after being the given the Cervarix vaccine, which protects against the virus that causes cervical cancer, had a “serious underlying medical condition which was likely to have caused death,” according to Caron Grainger, the director for public health at Coventry City Council, the English city where the girl went to school.
“We are awaiting further test results which will take some time,” Grainger said in a statement. “However, indications are that it was most unlikely that the … vaccination was the cause of death.”
The Cervarix vaccine consists of three injections given over a six-month period, and the shot Morton received at her school had been her first. Morton appeared to be healthy before being given the shot, and her dramatic death sent a ripple of concern across the country.
The council, which has declined to give any further details of the death, did not elaborate on Mortons “underlying medical condition.”
Officials have temporarily suspended Coventrys vaccination program and quarantined the batch of vaccine given at the school.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has delayed a decision on whether to approve Cervarix. A decision on the vaccine was expected Tuesday. But GlaxoSmithKline UK, which manufactures Cervarix, said the death in Britain did not influence the FDAs decision to extend its review.
The National Health Service in Coventry said it stopped the vaccination program for two days to give staff administering the vaccine training in how to answer questions from anyone concerned about its safety.
“We fully expect to resume the program in the coming days,” the health authority said in a statement.
The state-run National Health Service began offering the Cervarix vaccine to teenage girls last year, and more than 1.4 million doses of the vaccine have been given out so far under the program. The virus is often transmitted through sexual intercourse and authorities wanted to give the vaccine to girls as young as 13 so they are protected by the time they become sexually active.
The cervical cancer vaccine is routinely administered to millions of young girls across Europe and North America. No safety concerns about the vaccines have been raised elsewhere.
“As with any medical intervention … one can, on rare occasions, see tragic consequences,” said Professor Malcolm McCrae, virologist at the University of Warwick. “But overall this is an extremely well-tested vaccine which has been produced in response to a critical health issue – cervical cancer – a disease responsible for almost 1,000 deaths annually in the UK.”
Dr. Pim Kon, medical director at GlaxoSmithKline UK, said in a statement that the company is working with the Health Department and health regulators to investigate the case and that the exact cause of death was not yet known.
—
Associated Press Writer Meera Selva contributed to this report.
Pregnant? Get A Flu Shot _ But It May Be A Hassle
While federal health officials are working hard to raise that number this year, repeated swine flu warnings wont automatically overcome a key obstacle: Many obstetricians dont vaccinate. And not only are many women reluctant to go hunting for flu shots elsewhere, historically some pharmacists and other providers have been wary of vaccinating them.
“Maybe this year we can change that culture,” says Dr. Anne Schuchat of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Its not supposed to happen that you, when you are pregnant, are fighting for your life on a respirator.”
Yet getting simple vaccine information took Charla Bason of Washington, D.C., repeated requests, as she was bounced between her obstetricians office and her primary care doctor a few weeks ago.
“I feel like if I hadnt brought it up, they never would have mentioned it to me,” says Bason, 30, who is seven months pregnant with her first child.
Bason decided to seek vaccination after watching a CDC Webcast about pregnant women and talking with a physician in the family. But she still has no clear answer about where to get one.
“Its been incredibly frustrating. Theres a terrible disconnect between the message that was getting out and, once you decide you want it, how do you get it?” she says.
Any kind of flu is risky during pregnancy, and pregnant women have been on the get-a-flu-shot priority list for years. Their reluctance to take any medication during pregnancy is part of the reason for the low vaccination rates.
With swine flu, what doctors call the 2009 H1N1 strain, pregnant women seem at particular risk for complications. Pregnant women make up 6 percent of H1N1-confirmed deaths even though they account for only 1 percent of the population, according to the CDC. Theyre at least four times as likely to be hospitalized as other flu sufferers.
Vaccine is a two-for-one deal during pregnancy: It can protect not just mom but the baby, too, for the first few months after birth. The mothers body makes flu-fighting antibodies that easily cross the placenta to be carried by the fetus, explains Dr. Neil Silverman of the University of California, Los Angeles. Thats important because flu can easily kill newborns, yet babies cant be vaccinated until theyre 6 months old.
Once women get that vaccine advice, where do they get the shot?
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has no count of how many OBs offer flu vaccine. Its still considered a minority although recent surveys suggest many more may be starting this year, especially in large cities.
An extra complication: Each states health department ultimately will decide who gets to offer the H1N1 vaccine, aiming for locations that vaccinate the most people. Those decisions havent been made public yet. Even if your OB requested swine flu shots, he or she may not get any, at least from initial shipments.
Yet providers who dont routinely treat pregnant women may not understand flus risk and the shots safety record, says Silverman, who helps set ACOG practice guidelines.
Take pharmacists, expected to be key H1N1 vaccinators. Silverman gets occasional phone calls from women who say a pharmacist wont fill the flu-shot prescription he wrote.
“They act like the doctor who prescribed it didnt know what he or she was doing,” says Silverman, who settles the standoff by getting the pharmacist on the phone. For every patient who calls, “I know there are at least two who just say, Well, OK, Im not going to do this, and just walk away.”
The American Pharmacists Association is urging its members to follow the CDCs pregnancy guidelines but cant mandate that, and a few stores may still balk, says association chief of staff Mitchel Rothholz.
But some are embracing the potential customers. The large Walgreens drugstore chain told states that if picked as an H1N1 shot site, it might put get-vaccinated-here signs next to the pregnancy tests, or print vaccine reminders for people who bought prenatal vitamins.
Volunteers Key to Success Of Thai Vaccine Trials
Many of the volunteers – an eclectic mix of housewives, fishermen, factory workers, laborers and prostitutes – had seen firsthand how the disease ravaged this region of plantations and industrial estates in southeast Thailand, part of the epidemic that kills millions worldwide each year.
“In the 80s, the coffin business was booming around here. It was one family after another,” said Tanad Yomaha, a volunteer whose sister and brother-in-law died of AIDS. “The temple here had at least one cremation ceremony every night and people were in perpetual mourning.”
Their dedication – 90 percent of the volunteers stuck with the trial for more than six years – paid off when American and Thai authorities announced Thursday that the experimental vaccine had been found in some measure to prevent infection with the AIDS virus, an unexpected result that many scientists thought would never be possible.
The vaccine was shown to cut the risk of HIV infection by more than 31 percent. While the vaccine did not meet the researchers goal of 50 percent, it could still have a big impact. Every day, 7,500 people worldwide are newly infected with HIV; 2 million died of AIDS in 2007, the U.N. agency UNAIDS estimates.
Soon after the Thai trials started, Col. Jerome Kim, who helped lead the study for the U.S. Army, said volunteers heard neighbors say the vaccine contained HIV and that the U.S. Army – which sponsored the study with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases – was using a vaccine too dangerous to test in the United States.
Some even complained they risked losing their girlfriends or jobs after word spread they were participating in the trials.
“I was scared I would become a guinea pig and that they would inject us with AIDS,” said Saichon Booncharoen, a 36-year-old who later became a volunteer and helped recruit other participants.
The volunteers, however, said their doubts subsided when they learned the vaccine was not made from whole virus – dead or alive – and cannot cause HIV. Ministry health workers educated potential volunteers about the vaccine and AIDS, and researchers worked with communities to stamp out misinformation.
“I spoke to my parents and local doctors and thought about it for months,” Saichon said. “Eventually, I decided I wanted to do this to be a part of something bigger, something beyond myself.”
The study was conducted by the Thai Ministry of Public Health, which used strains of HIV common in Thailand. Scientists stressed, however, that it was unknown whether the vaccine would work against other strains found in places like the U.S. or Africa.
The study tested a two-vaccine combo in a “prime-boost” approach, where the first one primes the immune system to attack HIV and the second one strengthens the response.
The first, named ALVAC, is made by Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccine division of French drugmaker Sanofi-Aventis, and the second is AIDSVAX, originally developed by VaxGen Inc. and now held by Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases, a nonprofit founded by former VaxGen employees.
The study tested the combination in HIV-negative men and women ages 18 to 30 who were in good health and at average risk of becoming infected. They were counseled against having unsafe sex or intravenous drug use and were allowed to drop out at any time. No other conditions or limitations applied.
Half received the vaccine combination and others received placebo shots. No one knew who got what.
New infections occurred in 51 of the 8,197 people given the vaccine, and in 74 of the 8,198 people given placebo shots. That worked out to a 31 percent lower risk of infection for the vaccine group.
“We enrolled people irrespective of where they worked and what they did,” said Kim, who oversaw the trials for four years in Thailand with the Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences. “It is a true representation of the people who live and work there.”
Volunteers received 300 baht ($9) to 500 baht ($15) for each clinic visit, Kim said.