OREANDA-NEWS. August 22, 2011. Daiichi Sankyo Company, Limited (hereafter, Daiichi Sankyo) has announced that the Daiichi Sankyo Group company, Kitasato Daiichi Sankyo Vaccine Company, Limited (hereafter, Kitasato Daiichi Sankyo Vaccine), has been approved for the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare's cell culture vaccine production facility capacity building grant, which is part of the Ministry's second H1N1 vaccine development and production capacity building initiative.

Kitasato Daiichi Sankyo Vaccine is to receive a grant from the Japanese government of approximately JPY 29,959,000,000 to be put toward the construction of new production facilities utilizing state-of-the-art technologies.

This second initiative seeks to spur the development and production of H1N1 vaccines to ensure preparedness for a rapid response in the event of an infectious outbreak. While the current Japanese domestic production systems require one to two years to grow virus cultures in embryonated eggs, the government seeks to bolster the production and supply system for vaccines in order to shorten the amount of time needed for cell cultures to six months.

In order to fully support this national initiative, Daiichi Sankyo and Kitasato Daiichi Sankyo Vaccine will strive to contribute to the improvement of public health in Japan by building the capability to rapidly develop and produce a stable supply of vaccines to tackle an outbreak of the H1N1 flu virus.