Pfizer ook nog steeds serieus bezig, uiteraard. Vooral de CEO ervan maakt zich sterk. Er is het geld en het netwerk van Pfizer en de biotech van de Duitse vaccin-specialist BioNtech. Zelfde techniek als Moderna: messengerRNA (mRNA).
Shot of Hope. Volunteers receive injections of Pfizer’s experimental Covid-19 vaccine in early May at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore.
University of Maryland School of Medicine
For Bourla, 58, the last four months have been a rollercoaster, an unending series of setbacks and victories. Pfizer is not alone in the race. Most of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies, including Johnson & Johnson, Sanofi, AstraZeneca and Roche, are throwing everything they can at Covid-19.
Some experts feel Bourla’s timeline—a viable vaccine in a matter of a few months—is simply unrealistic. Undeterred, Bourla has tasked hundreds of researchers to scour Pfizer’s trove of experimental and existing medicines to look for potential therapies. Early on, he openly authorized having discussions and sharing proprietary information with rival firms, moves unheard of in the secretive world of big pharma. Bourla has made Pfizer’s manufacturing capabilities available to small biotech concerns and is in talks as well to make large quantities of other companies’ Covid-19 drug candidates.
Pfizer’s most prominent effort is its work with Mainz, Germany–based BioNTech, an innovative $120 million (2019 sales) outfit that is mostly known for making cancer medications. The resulting experimental Covid-19 vaccine works with messenger RNA, a bleeding-edge technology that has never resulted in a successful treatment. Pfizer is hoping to get emergency-use authorization from the U.S. government for the vaccine by October. Its unique strategy is to rapidly pit four different mRNA vaccine candidates against one another and double down on the most likely winner.
In preparation, the company is shifting production at four manufacturing plants to make 20 million vaccine doses by the end of the year and hundreds of millions more in 2021. Bourla says Pfizer is willing to spend $1 billion in 2020 to develop and manufacture the vaccine before they know if it will work: “Speed is of paramount importance.”
While the vaccine effort is getting most of the public’s attention, Pfizer is also rushing to start a clinical trial this summer for a new antiviral drug to treat Covid-19. Additionally, it’s involved in a human study that seeks to repurpose Pfizer’s big arthritis drug, Xeljanz, for later-stage Covid-19 patients.
“Being the CEO of a pharma company that can make a difference or not in a crisis like this is a very heavy weight,” Bourla says. “Even the way my daughter or son ask me, ‘Do you have something or not?’ Every person who knows me does the same. You feel if you get it right, you can save the world. And if you don’t get it right, you will not.”
________________________________________
In January, Ugur Sahin, the brilliant immunologist who founded BioNTech, read an article about Covid-19 in The Lancet. Sahin built BioNTech to hack human cells to go after diseases, particularly cancer, and he thought similar tech might work against the coronavirus. Soon after, Sahin spoke to Thomas Strüngmann, the German pharma billionaire who for years has backed Sahin and his wife, immunologist Özlem Türeci, in their ventures. “He said, ‘This is a big disaster.’ He said the schools will be closed, that this will be a pandemic,” Strüngmann says, referring to Sahin. “He switched most of his team to the vaccine.”
A New Reality. Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla under lockdown in his suburban New York home, from which he has directed his troops to “make the impossible possible.”
Jamel toppin
In February, Sahin (who is also now a billionaire, as BioNTech’s stock has soared) called up Kathrin Jansen, who heads vaccine research and development for Pfizer. Sahin told Jansen BioNTech had come up with vaccine candidates for Covid-19 and asked if Pfizer would be interested in working with him. “Ugur, you are asking?” Jansen replied. “Of course we are interested.”
Over the last few years, scientists have become intrigued by the idea of using messenger RNA, the genetic molecule that gives cells protein-making instructions, to develop medicines for cancer, heart disease and even infectious viruses by transforming human cells into drug factories. Because SARS-CoV-2, as the coronavirus is formally known, is an RNA virus, researchers like Sahin focused on the idea of giving mRNA the cellular machinery to make proteins that would create virus-protecting antibodies.
An mRNA vaccine has huge advantages over a traditional one. Because it can be made directly from the genetic code of the virus, it can be invented and entered into clinical trials in a matter of weeks, rather than months or years. But there’s a big downside: No one has ever successfully made one.
BioNTech is not alone in pursuing an mRNA vaccine. Moderna Therapeutics, a biotech in Cambridge, Massachusetts, also got going in January and has launched a big human trial for its mRNA vaccine, backed by $483 million from the federal government. Moderna is likewise aiming to produce millions of doses per month by the end of the year.
Pfizer was already comfortable with BioNTech. Two years ago, the two companies inked a $425 million deal to develop an mRNA flu vaccine. Pfizer was intrigued by the potential of an mRNA approach to short-circuit the process of developing a vaccine for a new strain of the flu every year. That same flexibility and speed appealed to Bourla when it came to working with a partner on a potential vaccine for Covid-19.
On March 16, Bourla convened Pfizer’s top executives and informed them that return on investment would not play a role in the company’s Covid-19 work. “This is not business as usual,” Bourla told them. “Financial returns should not drive any decisions.”
________________________________________