Brookings firm has bird flu vaccine for cattle, but federal bureaucracy in the way

Medgene has licensed methods of rapidly responding to emerging pathogens

Gary Bosch, Medgene’s executive vice president of sales and marketing, reviews cattle during a conference highlighting the company’s development of a vaccine to combat bird flu in cattle. (Submitted)

In 2015, the federal government issued a challenge to the animal health industry: Come up with technology that would enable it to react quickly to foreign diseases whose sudden appearance pose a threat to animal populations.

Medgene, a startup company in Brookings, responded, developing a platform technology that allows vaccination development for emerging threats within weeks of their discovery — as opposed to years. Since then, the company has successfully developed a suite of animal vaccines, including a rapid response vaccine to the emergence of a foreign hemorrhagic disease almost universally fatal to rabbits.

Now, with the sudden emergence of H5N1 in cattle – the virus that causes what’s commonly known as bird flu – Medgene has a vaccine ready to respond. There’s just one problem: The agency that issued the 2015 challenge — the U.S. Department of Agriculture — is now proceeding with a traditional response. And that means it could take years to license a bird flu vaccine.

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