By
Tolu Ajiboye
December 13th, 2023
The vaccine from the duo of Pfizer-BioNTech as well as Moderna is expected to fetch the firms as much as $15 billion in sales by the year 2023.
The BNT162b2 COVID-19 vaccine that was developed by American multinational pharmaceutical corporation Pfizer Inc (NYSE: PFE) and German pharmaceutical firm BioNTech SE (NASDAQ: BNTX) has been shown to have efficacy against a new variant of the coronavirus dubbed B.1.1.7 which was first discovered in the United Kingdom. This claim was made in a research study conducted by the two firms which was published on preprint server bioRxiv.
PFE stock reacted to the news with a slight rise. Today in the pre-market, it is 0.25% up, trading at $36.82.
While these pharmaceutical firms, as well as a host of others, worked tirelessly to develop a functional and effective vaccine to combat the coronavirus, a disease that plunged the world into economic and social chaos. At the point where there appears to be a breakthrough, the discovery of different mutant strains is now appearing to frustrate the efforts thus far.
Some of the vaccines under development last year have now been approved for use in various countries and the emergence of these new strains including those from the UK and South Africa brings in the concern that existing vaccines may be ineffective against the new variants. This has been the case until this latest research study lead by BioNTech’s Chief Executive Officer, Ugur Sahin.
As reported by CNBC, the researchers believe that the BNT162b2 vaccine helps the body to generate neutralizing antibodies which are also effective against the B.1.1.7 strain but warned the rapid spread of Covid variants worldwide required “continuous monitoring of the significance of changes for maintained protection by currently authorized vaccines.”
The research involved 16 participants who had previously received the COVID-19 vaccine shots. Half of the participants were aged between 18 and 55 and the other half were aged between 56 and 85. Though the research was primarily focused on the UK strain, Sahin had earlier insinuated that his firm’s vaccine may also prove effective against the South African strain.
Pfizer-BioNTech Vaccine to Drive in $15B in Sales by 2023
The race to develop the vaccine against the coronavirus has been for all of the companies a profit-making venture. This is expected seeing that all of the firms taking up the challenge have invested billions of dollars in research and a commensurate profit is appropriate. According to a recent report by Yahoo Finance, the vaccine from the duo of Pfizer-BioNTech as well as Moderna Inc (NASDAQ: MRNA) is expected to fetch the firms as much as $15 billion in sales by the year 2023.
The pharmaceutical companies all have extensive deals with several world governments, many of which even paid in advance to secure a sizeable number of the vaccines with which to innoculate their citizens. With the vaccination campaign ongoing in several parts of the world today, the profitability of each of these firms as well as their counterparts will be determined to a large extent by how much of their vaccine can be adapted to fight existing mutant strains of the virus.