I do not want to defend the source, but let us remember that there are two Vical/Merck vaccine deals (both include HIV, I think). The most recent was for *therapeutic* vaccines; the older one (I can't recall how old at the moment, but it goes back to the initial collaboration between Margaret Liu's lab at Merck and Vical in the early 90's; Liu, by the way, left to become a VP at Chiron recently. Maybe we'll see some Vical good news coming out of Emeryville soon) covers *preventive* vaccines.
Going back to Murphy, one would think, as others have guessed here already, that by "FDA approval" he meant approval to proceed with trials, not marketing approval. Big pharma is known to be secretive, but in the world of HIV, it's hard to believe they can be that close to market with no one aware of this (no one, except, Saint Michael, that is -g-). Of course, I would not mind to be wrong, and have MM be right, on this one -g-
PB |
