Pfizer tackles Lyme disease in the wake of Covid-19

The pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has made a lot of money with its vaccine against Sars-CoV-2. Now he is developing a vaccine against tick-borne Lyme disease with the French biotech company Valneva. Such would also be very welcome.

A fully engorged tick after falling off a host animal. A vaccination against Lyme disease would be very welcome because of the increasing number of tick bites.

Claudia Ostrop/AP/Keystone

Tick ​​bites have become a bugbear in many places. For fear of being infected with Lyme disease, some nature lovers avoid meadows and forest areas away from wide paths. Each year the disease breaks out in Europe and North America in an estimated 600,000 cases and according to experts, the number is increasing from year to year.

Vaccination would be all the more welcome. But unlike tick-borne encephalitis (TBE), which is also transmitted by ticks, there is no such thing yet. A potential supplier has been working on a product with the French biotech company Valneva for some time. In view of the entry of the pharmaceutical group Pfizer, she received the accolade on Monday, so to speak. The US giant, which thanks to its successful vaccine and recently also thanks to a drug against Sars-CoV-2 has capitalized on the pandemic like no other healthcare company, now has an 8.1 percent stake in Valneva.

The news sent Valneva’s share price up over 20 percent at the start of the week. This is a great consolation for the company’s shareholders, who recently had to watch their commitments becoming less and less valuable. The trigger for the latter was that a vaccine against Covid-19, also developed by the company, is probably too late to be commercially successful.

Analysts expect that the very rich Pfizer group could one day take over Valneva entirely. He is already on board with the candidate for the Lyme disease vaccination. The two companies have been cooperating on this project since April 2020 and will now also tackle the forthcoming phase III study together. However, there are still a few hurdles to be overcome before the hoped-for market maturity. Even in the final phase III of clinical development, success is by no means guaranteed.

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