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In contrast, a report by the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), the world’s largest biotechnology industry association, found that companies with potential anti-cancer drugs received 38% of venture capital funding over the same period, or 12 times more. It is said that they received 72.6 billion dollars, which is equivalent to 72.6 billion dollars.
Pharmaceutical companies around the world are testing 249 new vaccines against dozens of diseases, but some common diseases, such as Lyme disease and the sexually transmitted disease chlamydia, have no experimental vaccine candidates in the pipeline. There is only one type.
The 41-page report, which analyzed vaccine candidates for diseases ranging from HIV to yellow fever, said: “Clinical pipelines are broad but needed to successfully develop products against many important pathogens. There’s a lack of depth.”
BIO officials cite a variety of factors for the lack of funding for vaccine development, including limited return on investment.
Some vaccines for infectious diseases require only one or two doses to stimulate lifelong immunity. This makes them less profitable than drugs that are prescribed for long periods of time, sometimes years.
“When I was at Merck, I always joked that if you were vaccinated, you would lose your job,” said Phyllis Arthur, senior vice president of infectious diseases at BIO.
Merck, which employed her for 16 years, was one of the few multinational pharmaceutical companies to invest heavily in vaccine development. In recent years, other giant vaccine makers such as Merck, Sanofi, GSK and Pfizer have been joined by biotech companies such as BioNTech, Moderna and Novavax, all of which have developed or helped develop coronavirus vaccines.
Additionally, because vaccines are administered to healthy people, pharmaceutical companies face high regulatory hurdles before they can be approved by government agencies.In the United States, the vaccine It must be approved by the Food and Drug Administration and vetted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which issues guidelines for use by children and adults.
Even if new products are approved, misinformation about health risks is creating headwinds for drugmakers hoping to release vaccines for other diseases, BIO said.
“Combatting vaccine misinformation and disinformation and increasing vaccine confidence are critical to realizing the widespread benefits of vaccines,” the report said.
According to BIO, from 2013 to 2022, vaccines were more likely to be approved than medicines. During this period, vaccines had an 11% chance of being approved by the FDA, compared to 7.6% for biologics (complex medicines made or extracted from living organisms and made up of genetic material and proteins); The rate was 5.6% for tablets that were not.
Nevertheless, this still means the chances of a vaccine being approved are only around 1 in 10, which is one reason why BIO is encouraging further investment.
“When you dig into the actual diseases and indications, there aren’t that many shots on goal,” said David Thomas, BIO’s senior vice president of industry research and one of the report’s co-authors. “Some pathogens only have one or two vaccines in development.”
This situation may seem surprising given the remarkable success of coronavirus vaccines. But experts were not surprised by BIO’s report.
Dr. Dan Baruch, who runs the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, who helped develop Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine, said coronavirus vaccines are one of the most lucrative medicines ever. He said it was one. However, he added: “It is unlikely that this situation will be repeated unless there is another global pandemic. Of course, we hope that there will be no pandemic.”
Mani Fluhar, an analyst at investment bank Leerink Partners in Boston, said the comparison between BIO’s venture capital investments in vaccine companies and cancer drug companies is “a little bit of apples and oranges.” said.
First, companies developing vaccines typically have to test their safety and effectiveness on healthy patients over many years to know if the vaccine prevents disease. If a vaccine is effective, companies must devote significant resources to marketing it to vast populations in the United States and abroad to increase the value of their investment.
In contrast, he said, “Patients are dying in real time, so if the science works, it’s very easy to show the benefit that cancer drugs provide.” A drug is said to be effective if it can prevent or slow the spread of cancer in clinical trials.
Michael Yee, another analyst at Jefferies, agreed that while a vaccine could be lucrative, it could take “many years” to determine whether it is safe and effective. .
The first coronavirus vaccine, made by Pfizer-BioNTech, was approved by U.S. regulators in December 2020, less than a year after business partners received a copy of the virus’ genetic sequence. That was an outlier,” Yee said.
Operation Warp Speed, a public-private partnership, has spent billions of taxpayer dollars to accelerate vaccine development. And because the new coronavirus was so contagious, it didn’t take long for clinical trials to prove that vaccines prevented the disease, Yi said.
Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jonathan.saltzman@globe.com.
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