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MALARIA. Tuberculosis. Alzheimer’s disease. Aids. Pandemic flu. Genital herpes. Urinary tract infections. Grass allergies. Traveller’s diarrhoea. You name it, the pharmaceutical industry is working on a vaccine to prevent it.

Many could be on the market in five years or less.

Contrast that with five years ago, when so many companies had abandoned the vaccine business that half the US supply of flu shots was lost because of contamination at one of the two manufacturers left. Vaccines are no longer a sleepy, low-profit niche in a booming drug industry. Today, they’re starting to give ailing pharmaceutical makers a shot in the arm.

The lure of big profits, advances in technology and growing government support has been drawing in new companies, from nascent biotechs to Johnson & Johnson. That means recent remarkable strides in overcoming dreaded diseases and annoying afflictions likely will continue.

“Even if a small portion of everything that’s going on now is successful in the next 10 years, you put that together with the past 10 years (and) it’s going to be characterised as a golden era,” says Emilio Emini, Pfizer Inc’s head of vaccine research.

Vaccines now are viewed as a crucial path to growth, as drugmakers look for ways to bolster slowing prescription medicine sales amid intensifying generic competition and government pressure to cut down prices under the US federal health overhaul.

Unlike medicines that treat diseases, vaccines help prevent infections by revving up the body’s natural immune defences against invaders. They are made from viruses, bacteria or parts of them that have been killed or weakened so they generally can’t cause an infection.

Investment in partnerships and other deals to develop and manufacture vaccines has accelerated since the swine flu pandemic began.

While prescription drug sales are forecast to rise by a third in five years, vaccine sales should double, from 19billion (around R140bn) last year to 39bn in 2013 . That’s five times the 8bn in vaccine sales in 2004.

That jump is due to a couple of new blockbuster vaccines and rising use of existing ones. The government’s list of recommended vaccines for children has more than doubled since 1985 to 17. It now also calls for a half- dozen vaccines for everyone over 18 and up to four more for some adults.

The past decade brought breakthrough vaccines against pneumococcal disease and rotavirus – two of the world’s top killers – meningitis, cervical cancer, and more.

Better technology to create and mass produce vaccines is bringing progress in preventing tropical dengue fever and new threats like superbugs MRSA and C difficile, even ending addiction to cocaine and nicotine. Success on some vaccines in development, particularly for Alzheimer’s and Aids, would likely bring billions a year in sales.

Just this autumn and early next year, the swine flu vaccines are expected to bring their makers at least a couple of billion extra dollars.

Unlike most vaccines now “manufactured” in mammal, yeast or other cells – quickly, purely and at high yields – flu vaccines are still grown over many weeks in chicken eggs because it’s economical and those newer, faster methods aren’t US-approved yet.

Because the swine flu vaccine grew slower than expected, there have been shortages – and lines of anxious consumers. But a horde of biotech companies, many using multimillion-dollar US government grants, are already testing state-of-the-art technology for the next pandemic.

Scientists are even working to develop the Holy Grail: a universal flu vaccine targeting a part of the virus that doesn’t change year to year.

And some future vaccines will come in patches, pills and nasal sprays, rather than painful shots.

In the past century, vaccines dramatically lengthened lifespans by stopping diseases that killed or disabled millions, from smallpox to polio.

There’s been more research on flu vaccines in the past five years than in the previous 20, notes Dr William Schaffner, Vanderbilt University’s head of preventive medicine and a spokesperson for the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

Even Pfizer Inc’s 68bn acquisition of Wyeth in October was partly about getting its vaccine expertise, now being put to work against Alzheimer’s. Wyeth makes the most successful vaccine ever, Prevnar, which protects children from ear infections and potentially deadly pneumonia and blood infections. Prevnar brought in 2.7bn in 2008 sales, and with approval of an improved version pending, billions more are expected.

Experts call Prevnar the “game changer” – the first vaccine to exceed 1bn in annual sales. — Sapa-AP