New deal for Pfizer and BioNTech to develop first mRNA-based shingles vaccine

5 January 2022

Having taking the world by storm with their super successful COVID-19 vaccine Comirnaty, Germany’s BioNTech (Nasdaq: BNTX) and US pharma giant Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) today announced the signing of a new collaboration agreement to develop an mRNA-based vaccine for the prevention of shingles (herpes zoster virus, or HZV).

The companies will leverage a proprietary antigen technology by Pfizer and BioNTech's proprietary mRNA platform technology, which has also been used in the companies’ COVID-19 vaccine. Clinical trials are expected to start in the second half of 2022.

If any successful treatment from the collaboration is developed, it would challenge the current market leader in shingles, GlaxoSmithKline’s Shingrix (zoster vaccine recombinant), which was first approved in 2017, and took in sales of £2 billion ($2.7 billion) in 2020. Pfizer already has a drug, Lyrica (pregabalin), which is marketed for the treatment of pain associated with shingles.

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