Entrance to Pfizer’s office in Cambridge, Massachusetts
The messenger RNA technology used by Pfizer and BioNTech to successfully develop the Covid-19 vaccine is New alliance This allowed the two companies to jointly develop a shingles vaccine-this is the third collaboration between the two companies. When their Covid-19 alliance started in 2020, the two companies have been collaborating on influenza vaccines since 2018.
Pfizer brought its vaccine expertise and a lot of cash to these alliances, but with the new collaboration on shingles, it brought more. The shingles vaccine will be based on a proprietary antigen sequence determined by Pfizer. The two companies announced on Wednesday that under the agreement, Pfizer will prepay $225 million to BioNTech to initiate a new partnership. The payment is divided into US$75 million in cash and US$150 million in equity investment. BioNTech will pay US$25 million in advance for Pfizer’s antigen sequence. Vaccine development costs will be shared; a clinical trial is expected to begin in the second half of this year.
Shingles is a viral infection caused by the same virus that causes chickenpox. After chickenpox infection, the virus remains dormant in the nervous tissue, but it can be reactivated later in life due to triggers such as stress or weakened immune system. Reactivation can cause nerve pain; in rare cases, it can cause facial paralysis, deafness, and blindness.
Vaccines have been developed for shingles, but they have limitations and safety risks. Merck’s ZostavaxMade from the active but weakened form of the varicella-zoster virus that causes shingles, it was approved by the FDA in 2006 for the prevention of shingles for people 50 years and older. However, the effect of the vaccine can only last about five years, so the Vaccine Advisory Committee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends vaccinations for people 60 years and older, and for people at risk of shingles and its complications. Protection is the greatest. Label update In 2019, the risk of rare side effects of Guillain-Barre syndrome was marked, in which the immune system damages the nerves and facial paralysis.
In 2020, Merck will stop selling Zostavax in the U.S. The company said in a statement letter Show the clinician that the decision was not due to any safety or manufacturing issues. The withdrawal of Zostavax left the U.S. shingles market to GlaxoSmithKline’s Shingrix, which was approved by the FDA in 2017. Unlike the Merck vaccine, Shingrix is not made from a live virus, but a recombinant vaccine that contains antigens that can trigger an immune response. The two-injection GlaxoSmithKline program has a higher efficacy than Merck’s single-injection vaccine. But Gillan Barre is also at risk of being vaccinated against GlaxoSmithKline.
An mRNA shingles vaccine with better efficacy and tolerability than or at least comparable to Shingrix will allow Pfizer and BioNTech to steal market share from their competitors’ blockbuster products.GlaxoSmithKline Report Shingrix’s global sales in the third quarter of 2021 were 502 million pounds, an increase of 34% compared to the third quarter of 2020. In the nine months ending September 30, revenue from the vaccine was 1.1 billion pounds. This is a 16% decrease compared to the same period in 2020, and the company attributes this change to the government’s prioritization of the Covid-19 vaccination program during the pandemic.
If Pfizer and BioNTech vaccines succeed in obtaining regulatory approval for mRNA shingles vaccine, commercialization will take place between the two companies. Pfizer has the right to sell shingles vaccines worldwide, with the exception of certain unspecified developing countries where Germany, Turkey, and BioNTech have commercialization rights. The gross profit from sales of shingles vaccine will be shared. BioNTech will also be eligible for regulatory and sales milestone payments that may reach $200 million.
“This collaboration aims to use the expertise and resources of the two companies to develop a new mRNA-based shingles vaccine,” said BioNTech co-founder and CEO Ugur Sahin in a prepared statement. “Adults 50 years and older and vulnerable groups such as cancer patients are at increased risk of developing shingles. Our goal is to develop an mRNA vaccine with good safety and efficiency, and at the same time easier to expand to support global access.”
Photo: Dominique Reuters/AFP, via Getty Images
