As bivalent booster uptake crawls, Pfizer and BioNTech start early-stage pan-variant trial

17 Nov 2022
endpts.com
VaccinemRNAPhase 1
Pfizer and BioNTech announced Thursday morning that they began a Phase I trial of a new pan-variant Covid vaccine combined with their Omicron-specific booster, hopefully producing a longer-lasting and more effective shot. Unlike previous iterations of mRNA Covid vaccines, the new vaccine doesn’t encode for the virus’ hallmark spike protein. Instead, it produces other viral proteins that Covid variants have in common and that rarely mutate. In the early-stage trial, Pfizer and BioNTech will enroll around 180 people who have gotten three previous doses of an mRNA vaccine. The new shot, dubbed BNT162b4, will be tested in three doses (5, 10, 15 µg) in combination with Pfizer/BioNTech’s bivalent booster. It will compare immune response with people who received an additional dose of the existing bivalent booster. The new trial comes amid waning booster uptake. According to the CDC , only about 10% of people 5 years or older have gotten an Omicron-targeted booster shot. In Pfizer’s Q3 earnings call earlier this month, CEO Albert Bourla said that Pfizer suffered its first quarterly revenue dip since its Covid vaccine was authorized back in 2020. Though he said that Covid product sales may fall from projected 2022 revenue of $55 billion, he said he expects them to “remain multibillion-dollar revenue generators for the foreseeable future.” Pfizer is also testing a one-shot mRNA flu and Covid combination vaccine in an early-stage trial. Moderna executives described the next stage as the “endemic Covid market” during the company’s Q3 earnings call. Previous reports have detailed that Moderna and Pfizer may charge private payers upwards of $100 per shot. By comparison, Moderna originally charged the US government between $15 and $16.50 per shot, according to the New York Times . And despite low bivalent booster uptake thus far, Moderna chief commercial officer Arpa Garay said during the call that Moderna envisions the “endemic COVID vaccine market” could be as large as or even larger than the flu market.
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