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Intercell Executes Multi-Year Contract for Supply of IXIARO® to the United States Military
- Exclusive, multi-year contract executed by Intercell and U.S. Department of Defense for purchase of IXIARO®
- First sales of IXIARO under this military contract expected soon
Vienna (Austria), May 8, 2009 – Intercell AG (VSE: ICLL) announced today that the Company has successfully entered into a multi-year contract with the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), Defense Supply Center of the U.S. Department of Defense to supply IXIARO, a vaccine against Japanese Encephalitis (JE). The first sales of IXIARO under this contract are expected in the near future.
This supply contract was negotiated in response to a Request for Proposals (RFP) issued by the DLA in August 2008. The parties were able to move forward to finalize the contract after IXIARO was approved by the Food and Drug Administration on March 30.
The major terms of this contract are as follows:
- Exclusive contract for Intercell to supply DLA with all their requirements for JE vaccine
- Five-year contract, with annual options for price modifications
"With a mortality rate that can exceed 30 percent, Japanese Encephalitis is a clear danger to the thousands of military personnel – and their families – that are stationed in areas where the disease is endemic. IXIARO will provide a new level of protection for this group of people at risk," stated Gerd Zettlmeissl, Chief Executive Officer of Intercell. "Intercell is very pleased that the Department of Defense has acknowledged the value of IXIARO by entering into a long-term supply agreement.”
IXIARO was developed by Intercell under an agreement with the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR).
JE is a very serious and growing public health threat in Asia. The U.S. military plans to use IXIARO to protect its troops, families and contract workers who are deployed to affected countries.
Intercell will directly distribute and market IXIARO to the U.S. military. Novartis Vaccines USA will market and distribute the vaccine to the private market in the U.S.
About Japanese Encephalitis
Japanese Encephalitis is a mosquito-borne infection that strikes 30,000 to 50,000 individuals a year, causing 10,000 to 15,000 deaths (both probably an underestimate due to underreporting and other factors). Up to 50 percent of survivors have persistent neurological sequelae. Japanese Encephalitis is the leading cause of viral neurological disease and disability in Asia and the most important viral encephalitis in Asia. The disease is most common in several developing countries in Asia, including India and China. As there is no specific treatment for JE, health care experts recommend vaccination as the only highly effective protection for the millions of travelers and military personnel who live in or travel to areas where the virus circulates.
About IXIARO
Intercell's novel Japanese Encephalitis vaccine is a purified, inactivated vaccine for active immunization of adults against the Japanese Encephalitis virus. The total development time of this vaccine took more than 10 years. The vaccine was developed under a Collaborative Research and Development Agreement with the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, a biomedical research laboratory for the U.S. Department of Defense.
Intercell's Phase III trials for the vaccine found that the vaccine demonstrated excellent immunogenicity against Japanese Encephalitis and an overall clinical safety profile similar to the control arm, combined with an excellent local tolerability profile. These data were published in The Lancet in December 2007:
- The immunogenicity was comparable to that of the U.S. licensed product, JE-VAX®.
- Intercell's vaccine demonstrated an overall clinical safety profile similar to the control arm.
- Further, Intercell's Japanese Encephalitis vaccine had a more favorable local tolerability profile in the head-to-head study with JE-VAX®.
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