Pfizer and Valneva pen $308 million deal to co-develop Lyme disease vaccine

French biotech firm Valneva (Euronext: VLA), a pure play vaccine developer, and US pharma giant Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) today announced a collaboration to develop and commercialize Valneva’s Lyme disease vaccine candidate VLA15, which is currently in Phase II clinical studies.

Reacting to the news, Valneva’s shares leapt nearly 25%, hitting 3.96 euros as trading drew to a close this afternoon.

VLA15 is the only active Lyme disease vaccine program in clinical development today, and covers six serotypes that are prevalent in North America and Europe, said Valneva. The investigational multivalent protein subunit vaccine, VLA15, targets the outer surface protein A (OspA) of Borrelia, an established mechanism of action for a Lyme disease vaccine. OspA is one of the most dominant surface proteins expressed by the bacteria when present in a tick. VLA15 has demonstrated strong immunogenicity and safety data in pre-clinical and Phase I studies.