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(Date)
Patrick Desbiens Senior Vice President
GSK US Vaccines
5 Crescent Drive
Philadelphia, PA 19112
Dear Mr. Desbiens,
I would like to take this opportunity to both thank and congratulate you and all at GSK on the recent development of your new shingles vaccine, Shingrix and its’ final FDA approval! In reading the published results from the FDA and your clinical trials, it appears that Shingrix has a distinct advantage over Merck’s Zostavas particularly in older patients who are at highest risk, and in duration of immunity.
I was also especially pleased to read that unlike Zostavax, your new vaccine does not use a live virus and that its’ antigen is produced using CHO cell lines rather than the aborted fetal cell line, MRC-5.
As you are probably aware, many of our patients as well as other physicians do not wish to use any vaccine or medicines produced with cell lines derived from fetuses following their intentional abortion. Shingrix will most certainly alleviate those concerns and will hopefully provide GSK with both a moral and financial incentive in your pursuit of future vaccines and medicines.
Also, in the literature I read that to produce Shingrix you combined a protein from the chickenpox virus called glycoprotein E with your new adjuvant system that combines monophosphoryl lipid A with the QS-21 saponin, the latter from the soap bark tree.
I do hope you will consider using this superior technology to produce other vaccines such as a product to compete with Merck’s Varivax which also is poor in both efficacy and duration of immunity and uses both MRC-5 and WI-38 fetal cells. Since Zostavax is really nothing more than a stronger dose of Varivax, perhaps GSK will be able to reduce the antigen or tweak composition for a safer and more effective varicella vaccine in the near future.
Again, I commend you for your efforts and look forward to advising my patients of your latest development. Congratulations, and best wishes in your future scientific work on behalf of patients!
Sincerely,
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