University of Pittsburgh Medical Center proposes to create the world's leading vaccine-production center by 2013 to enhance the country's abilities to deal with pandemics and bioterrorism.

UPMC's plan would involve development and production of medical countermeasures critical to national security. The key point is to produce vaccines quickly and cost-effectively to counteract a new outbreak of disease or act of bioterrorism.

Today, Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., will hold a field hearing Downtown to examine the current national system for manufacturing vaccines. The hearing will be held at 10:30 a.m. in Courtroom 6A of the federal Courthouse on Grant Street.

The hearing will help to determine whether the nation's current vaccine production system is prepared for pandemics or bioterrorism.

Although details will not be confirmed until the hearing, UPMC hopes to convince the government to fund the project for security reasons. If Congress approves the plan, UPMC would seek to win the contract, then build a facility somewhere in Allegheny County that could generate many hundreds of high-tech jobs and generate economic advantages throughout the region.

UPMC, which has been studying the concept and preparing plans for years, is scheduled to announce anticipated costs and the number of jobs that would be created. It also will announce how it would develop and operate the facility.

Those testifying at the hearing will include UPMC President and Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey A. Romoff and leading experts in the field of vaccines, including Dr. Donald Burke, director of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health.

Others scheduled to testify include Dr. Philip K. Russell with the Sabine Vaccine Institute, and Phillip Gomez of PRTM Management Consultants, both in Washington, D.C. Nigel Darby of GE Healthcare Bio-Sciences AB in Sweden and Dr. Bruce G. Gellin, director of the National Vaccine Program office in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, also will provide testimony.

Vaccines necessary to treat pandemics and bioterrorism cannot be produced cheaply or efficiently, given the current system of pharmaceutical companies that generally produce vaccines needed annually and sold for a profit.

In the past eight years, problems with anthrax, SARS and the H1N1 influenza outbreak accentuated the need for a facility that can act quickly to produce vaccines under emergency conditions, officials said.

Proponents note circumstances in the past eight years that point to a need for a national vaccine-production program.

The anthrax letter attacks in the United States in 2001 killed five and caused panic across the nation, with decontamination costs on Capitol Hill amounting to $27 million.

The SARS outbreak in 2002-03 in Asia and Canada contributed to $19.5 billion in economic losses.

And since the H1N1, or swine flu, outbreak last spring, Congress has committed $7.7 billion for pandemic influenza preparedness with another $8 billion and likely more needed to counter another outbreak.