The British pharmaceutical giant Glaxo-Smithkline relies on several partners for the corona vaccination.
(Photo: Reuters)
Frankfurt With the takeover of the US biotech company Affinivax for up to 3.3 billion dollars, the British pharmaceutical company Glaxo-Smithkline (GSK) is strengthening its product development in the vaccine area.
At the same time, the pharmaceutical giant is underlining that, when expanding its vaccine program, it does not want to rely solely on entering mRNA research and its alliance with Curevac in Tübingen. Rather, he also relies on alternative technologies and has now invested significantly more there than in the cooperation partner and mRNA specialist Curevac, in which GSK invested around 300 million euros two years ago and acquired around eight percent of the capital.
GSK is now paying 2.1 billion dollars directly for the unlisted Affinivax. An additional $1.2 billion could be added depending on certain achievements.
The US company is working on vaccines based on proteins and uses a technology that, according to the company, allows vaccines to be produced with a particularly large number of antigens. To do this, Affinivax packs not only protein fragments of the pathogens into the vaccine, but also sugar structures that trigger immune reactions.
Top jobs of the day
Find the best jobs now and
be notified by email.
Affinivax believes that it can trigger particularly broad immune reactions. GSK research director Hal Barron describes the concept of Affinivax in a press release as a “potentially disruptive technology”.
The main development product is a vaccine against pneumococcal infections, which is in phase 2 clinical trials and contains 24 antigens of the pathogen. A pivotal phase 3 trial of the vaccine candidate is expected to begin shortly. If successful, GSK could use it to attack the pneumococcal vaccine Prevnar, with which the US company Pfizer recently achieved sales of 5.3 billion dollars.
Vaccines against hospital germs planned
Several vaccine candidates against hospital germs are in the early stages of development. In addition, Affinivax is also working in cooperation with the vaccine alliance Cepi on a Covid vaccine, which is also still in the preclinical development phase, so it has not yet been tested on humans.
With the purchase of the US company, GSK puts its vaccine research on an even broader basis and thus spreads the risks in product development. The British pharmaceutical company was the largest vaccine manufacturer in the world until 2020. However, he did not get a chance in the Covid vaccines business and was therefore overtaken last year by Pfizer and its partner Biontech and by the US biotech company Moderna.
A protein-based Covid vaccine that GSK is developing together with Sanofi showed weak results at first attempt. An improved follow-up version is now in the approval process.
GSK and Curevac collaborate on work on second-generation Covid vaccine
GSK is also working with Curevac on a second-generation Covid vaccine and an influenza vaccine based on Curevac’s mRNA technology. However, these products are still in the early stages of clinical development.
More: Glaxo-Smithkline is acquiring US cancer specialist Sierra for $1.9 billion