US vacc delays halve BN's 1st-half income

Danish drugmaker Bavarian Nordic's first-half 2007 revenue almost halved on the like, year-ago period, to 51.4 million kroner ($9.3 million) from 111.0 million kroner, after certain smallpox vaccine studies under its RFP-2 contract with the US government were postponed. These studies will be adapted to the RFP-3 contract awarded to the company in June. The final design of the investigation is ongoing and the majority of the deferred revenue is expected to be realised during 2008.

As a result, the firm's loss before tax widened to 127.8 million kroner from 111.6 million kroner, while R&D costs almost doubled to 102.3 million kroner from 54.8 million kroner. This includes costs of 41.4 million kroner related to the optimization and testing of the manufacturing facility in Kvistgard, Denmark. The increase in R&D costs is attributed to increased activity in the company's development programs.

Commenting on the interim report, Bavarian Nordic's new chief executive, Anders Hedegaard, said: "we were awarded the entire RFP-3 contract for 20 million doses of our MVA-based smallpox vaccine, and with the recent settlement with Acambis on the legal disputes on the MVA technology, we can now focus on other projects in our pipeline. Our HIV, cancer and measles programs are all on track and at year-end the number of projects in clinical development will have doubled to six."