Community
Profile
Why Kids Love
Wyeth Vaccines
 The
past year has brought opportunity and growth for Wyeth Vaccines
in Sanford, as the company has experienced increasing production
demands for several new vaccine components, company officials say.
The Sanford facility,
located in the Lee County Industrial Park, is responsible for
components of three vaccines for children, two of which were just
recently introduced to the market. Another plant in Pearl River, N.Y.,
completes the process by filling and packaging the vaccines.
Wyeth Vaccines is a business
unit of Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, a division of Wyeth, one of the
world’s largest research-based pharmaceutical and health care
companies. There are 600 employees on site in Sanford, and the company
hopes to recruit an additional 200 by December. Wyeth’s Sanford
facility spans 236,000 square feet.
Two expansion projects are
currently under way. The first, expected to cost about $125 million,
will add about 115,000 square feet of manufacturing space when
finished later this year. The project also includes administration
facilities, a warehouse expansion and a new utilities building.
The second project, which
only recently started construction, includes an expansion of the
utilities building and a commercial scale product development module.
This project will add an additional 40,000 square feet to the state of
the art facility.
The company manufactures
“conjugated” vaccines designed to protect infants and young
children against certain types of harmful bacteria. At a young age, a
child’s immune system is still developing and therefore does not
recognize certain saccarides from harmful bacteria. Conjugated
vaccines link these purified saccharides to protein carriers that are
easily recognized by a child’s immune system. “A conjugated
vaccine is like a Trojan horse,” says spokesperson Chris Culp,
“helping the immune system develop an effective response to disease
organisms.” The result is that infants and toddlers can be protected
at an early age instead of waiting for their own natural defenses to
develop.
In 2000, the U.S. Food and
Drug Administration licensed Prevnar, which protects against seven of
the most common types of Streptococcus pneumoniae, the cause of
systemic pneumococcal disease in young children. Clinical testing
demonstrated that Prevnar was 97 percent effective in preventing
pneumococcal pneumonia. The disease causes more than 1 million deaths
worldwide annually and accounts for 40 percent of pneumonia deaths in
children under 5.
The second new vaccine,
Meningitec, is the world’s first conjugated vaccine to prevent
meningococcal Group C disease, which has a high incidence rate in the
United Kingdom. It is one of the most common causes of death in
children and young adults up to age 20. The United Kingdom Medicines
Control Agency gave the vaccine marketing approval in 2000. Meningitec
won the UK’s Prix Galein 2000 award.
The Sanford facility
continues to be the exclusive producer of HibTITER, a conjugated
vaccine that has been effective against haemophilus influenza b (Hib)
and is licensed for use in more than 60 countries worldwide.
Hib bacteria affected one of
200 children before the vaccine’s introduction in 1990. The vaccine
has caused the rate of infection to decrease 98 percent in children
ages 4 and under.
Wyeth also has taken a
strong interest in the local community.
Thirty to 40 company volunteers tutor elementary school
children in science, math and reading. Basic laboratory demonstrations
are presented to help the children gain an interest and understanding
in the life sciences.
“The key to being
successful is being a good corporate citizen,” Culp says. “We have
many employees that are involved in a variety of different ways.”
— Heidi Russell Rafferty
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