CT company says they have flu vaccine

Meriden (WTNH) - U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has said what the country needs is a new method of producing the H1N1 flu vaccine. And, a small company in Meriden said they're capable of doing that. The only problem: they're not licensed by the federal government.

The company, known as Protein Sciences Corporation said they can make millions of doses.

"We have enough capacity to make several million doses right now in our current facility," said Trey McPherson of Protein Sciences Corp.

Because the company is licensed by the FDA, all of its vaccine has been destined for clinical testing in Australia. And the results of that testing has not yet been released. It could be published in the New England Medical Journal within the next week.

The CEO of Protein Sciences said the current shortages are because traditional vaccine makers are still using eggs.

"A combination of factors including low yields and the need for a lot of testing on this vaccine have really shown us that we didn't dodge the bullet this time," said CEO Dan Adams of Protein Sciences Corp.

Adams revealed that traditional egg testing for H1N1 vaccine is what's slowing things down.

"Instead of taking one egg per dose, it probably takes in the neighborhood of two or three or maybe more eggs per dose," said Adams.

The Protein Sciences method is entirely different; it's really vaccine by genetic engineering.

"We are able to work, not from a live flu virus; that means we don't have to get a flu virus to grow in something. We just take the genetic code for that virus," said Adams.

Protein Sciences comes up for approval from the FDA in January.