VaxGen has missed a federal deadline to resume human testing on its controversial anthrax vaccine. The trial had been put on hold by the FDA due to concerns about the vaccine's stability. And VaxGen says it has no way to know when the trial hold will be lifted. Health and Human Services, which has been tracking the billion-dollar contract with VaxGen under Project BioShield, issued the deadline but did not say what would happen now that it had passed.
VaxGen's contract is the largest single program under Project BioShield, which was intended to produce new therapies to safeguard the country against a bioterror attack but has run into a host of problems. Congress recently authorized spending a billion dollars to encourage research in the field in the hope that the new funds would help accelerate progress.
- see VaxGen's release
- here's the report on VaxGen from the Washington Post