Exec: Government is hindering BioShield efforts

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/nation/17096524.htm

Exec: Government is hindering BioShield efforts
By Greg Gordon
McClatchy Newspapers

* Drugmaker drops plans to make anti-radiation drug
* How one company lost out protecting the nation

WASHINGTON - Federal officials have undermined the national program to find medicines to protect Americans against chemical, biological or radiological attacks, the head of a San Diego biotech company will tell Congress Wednesday.

Richard Hollis, the chief executive of Hollis-Eden Pharmaceuticals Inc., whose anti-radiation drug was rejected by the government, plans to tell legislators that his company "will never again seek to work with the government." He said the Department of Health and Human Services rewrote the rules after his company spent $85 million developing a breakthrough treatment for radiation sickness.

In testimony prepared for delivery to a House homeland security subcommittee, Hollis said Congress has saddled taxpayers with a huge financial burden with little benefit in revamping the 10-year, $5.6 billion BioShield program last year. Under the revisions, a new government agency will underwrite a share of the costs of early drug development - expenses now bankrolled by shareholders of private companies.

Hollis and executives of two other companies that have had difficulties dealing with HHS over their countermeasures against deadly anthrax bacteria are due to testify during a hearing that will examine whether Project BioShield can effectively safeguard the nation against such threats.

The other two executives are Jim Panek, president and CEO of VaxGen Inc., whose $877 million contract for a next-generation anthrax vaccine was scrapped last year, and James Davis, a senior vice president of Human Genome Sciences, a company from which HHS committed to buying 20,000 doses of its anthrax anti-toxin.

Senior HHS officials and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases, also will testify. Fauci has assumed a leading role in BioShield, with his agency doling out $47 million annually in research grants and evaluating potential medicines.

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