Frankfurt The Mainz-based biotech company Biontech uses the financial strength from the still strong business with Covid vaccines to further expand its cancer and vaccine research. The quarterly figures presented on Monday make this clear. After that, Biontech will post a decline in sales and profits in 2022. The profit should still be higher than previously expected.
A possible approval of the vaccine in China could further increase the scope for expanding research. Hopes were recently fueled after the leadership in Beijing approved the vaccine for foreigners in the country on the occasion of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s visit. However, Biontech did not provide any information in the quarterly report on a possible general approval in China.
In the oncology area, the company has meanwhile brought three new product candidates into clinical trials in the past few weeks alone. These include two new mRNA products against lung cancer and other tumors as well as an antibody that Biontech wants to test against various types of cancer in cooperation with the Danish company Genmab.
Biontech is researching more cancer drugs than Bayer or Merck
In total, the cancer research program of the Mainz-based biotech company now includes 19 potential active ingredients that are being tested in 24 clinical studies. Biontech’s oncology pipeline is now significantly more extensive than that of established pharmaceutical companies such as Bayer, Boehringer and Merck.
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However, almost all of Biontech’s oncology projects are still in the relatively early test phases. They still have to prove their effectiveness in larger studies. For at least five of the projects, however, so-called phase 2 studies are already underway, which could bring fundamental confirmation (proof of concept) for the approaches in the near future.
In the field of infectious diseases, Biontech recently started a large phase 3 study outside of the Covid activities with an mRNA-based flu vaccine that the company is developing together with its cooperation partner Pfizer. Four more vaccine candidates are expected to enter clinical testing in the fourth quarter or early months of 2023. These include vaccines against herpes, shingles, tuberculosis and malaria.
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Biontech recently presented the first clinical data from a larger study for its Omicron-adapted vaccines. The bivalent vaccine, which contains elements of both the original virus and the omicron variant BA.4/5, subsequently produced three to four times higher antibody concentrations against omicron than a booster vaccination with the original vaccine.
To date, the company has shipped around 300 million doses of its two bivalent vaccines adapted to Omikron. The vaccines were approved in September, before more clinical data were available. Overall, Biontech assumes that, together with Pfizer, it will be possible to deliver 2.1 billion Covid vaccine doses worldwide in the current year.
Company boss Ugur Sahin wants to open a new chapter
The company boss Ugur Sahin announced on Monday that the experience gained in the rapid adaptation of the Covid vaccine will be used in the development of other product candidates and in other disease areas.
“We remain committed to improving the health of people around the world.”
(Photo: imago images/photothek)
The next chapter in Biontech’s development is now within reach. “We remain committed to improving the health of people worldwide by developing immunotherapies that harness the full potential of the immune system to fight cancer, infectious diseases and other serious diseases,” said Sahin.
Meanwhile, the Covid business will continue to deliver very strong, albeit slightly declining, earnings in the current year, as the figures for the third quarter confirm. Biontech’s sales fell significantly during this period from 6.1 billion euros in the previous year to 3.5 billion euros. At the same time, the Mainz-based company has tended to raise its forecast for 2022, similar to US partner Pfizer before it.
Revenues of 16 to 17 billion euros are now expected from the Covid business, while Biontech had previously stated a range of 13 to 17 billion euros for 2022. The company is benefiting from higher deliveries, higher prices and a positive currency effect.
Pandemic as a booster
17
billion euro
Biontech expects sales from the business with corona agents.
All in all, the biotech climber should be heading for a net profit of around nine billion euros for the year as a whole, after 10.3 billion in the previous year. According to Bloomberg, analysts have so far assumed sales of around 16 billion euros and net profit of around 8.4 billion euros.
A large part of Biontech’s sales results from the profit shares that the Mainz-based company receives from the partnership with Pfizer. While the US group gets the lion’s share of sales from the Covid vaccine Comirnaty, the two companies share gross profit. In the first nine months of 2022, only 2.3 billion euros in sales came from direct vaccine sales by Biontech in its own sales areas of Germany and Turkey. The remainder was attributable to earnings shares and preliminary product deliveries to Pfizer.
More: Business with Covid vaccines is developing better than expected for Pfizer