VaxGen to miss deadline for anthrax vaccine

The Washington Post reports that VaxGen will not meet a November deadline to deliver 25 million doses of a new anthrax vaccine, leaving the company staring at a potential default in its agreement with the government. VaxGen officials say that the vaccine has failed a major human trial and the company is a year behind schedule in its work on the billion-dollar vaccine project. But researchers add that they have determined what the problem is and are far along in fixing it.

The disclosure comes at a time when a growing number of questions are being raised about the government's Project BioShield. The government has funneled $5.6 billion into the project, but the slow pace of discovery work has left the programs far off the mark set by President Bush. The Washington Post report says that most of the major drug developers have kept away from the program, wanting to avoid the negative publicity that would have greeted failure or missed deadlines. That left the work to a group of smaller, financially shaky biotechs.

- here's The Washington Post report